DSDN Project 2

Facts about NZ energy use

New Zealand are number thirteen in the worlds energy power consumption.

Current energy monitoring devices

Most home energy monitoring devices provide prompt convenient feedback on electrical or other energy use. They may also display cost and estimate greenhouse gas emissions. Some examples are the TED (the energy detective), which monitors energy use and incorporates billing structures. The KILL A WATT which displays hourly consumption and calculates expenses by day, week, month and year. The WATTSON glows different colours depending on the energy use, blue for low use and red for high use. The Google Power meter shows up on the Google homepage telling you how much energy you are using. The Smart Strip looks at energy usage with appliances that are in use and not in use. For example an appliances energy use on and on standby.

Recommended ways to save energy

There are many ways to save energy; some can be as simple as just switching a light of if you are not using it. Not using your hairdryer can save you two hundred dollars a year. Using eco friendly light bulbs can also save a lot of energy and money. Purchasing new fridges can save more energy rather than using your old one. Use your dishwasher at warm or cold setting rather than hot.

Websites that compare stats

These are some popular stat comparing websites: Nike +, Map My Run, Mathletics, Google Flu Trends, Price Spy.

DSDN 112 project 1b : Interactive Objects

My interactive object is a touch maze. The intention is to test the senses of site and touch to see which one people trust more to solve the maze. I have designed a maze where site or touch can be used to solve, Using both visual keys and distinctive materials creating a path. The idea was that generally people tend to trust site more than touch so I wanted to test if people would trust touch over site. I created a shorter simpler path using touch and a longer more complex path using site. If people decide to trust their sense of touch they are going to solve it much faster, however if they decide to go with site because it is the first though they will take longer.  The intended experience is to play on your senses and to show how you can do more without site than you think, even something as complicated as mazes, which are normally thought of to be quit tricky even when using site. I used many different unique materials to provoke thought and interest, and promote the use of touch and make users think about what they are touching and where the material is taking them.  The materials are meant to create an exciting experience in itself as some are nice to touch, some bad, and some you know through memory. The red dots subtly provoke the visual aspect, and tricking users into following this path, which takes them on a long route rather than the shorter route taken when trusting touch. They are red dots as they strongly contrast and bring out a hierarchical visual aspect, again tricking the user.  It has been painted black to take away the visual influences of the contrasting materials.

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Test model

I investigated different materials to see which ones worked together
and created a contrast to each other. Also which ones created an
interesting affect and provoked the sense of touch.

 I created different versions of the maze to get to my final design. I had to make sure I had
to separate paths that begun and finished in the same place while being different contrasting
paths which used the different senses. I also looked into crossing the paths over and which
idea would work best to promote the visual aspects of the maze.