Designing For Contraints – first class

The idea of this class is to look at the constraints when designing a product, interface or device. Both external constraints such as time, users, costs, and complexity and internal constraints such as expertise, intention, and ability. 
For next week we have to create a working prototype of a clock or watch for blind people. If less than half of the class is not able to tell time (does not have to be the actual time) from your device, you must redo it. 
My initial idea, and the one I am going to develop, is a wristwatch that vibrates the time. I believe that by tapping the numbers in distinct rhythms, it shall be easy to tell what number it is outputting. 
Other ideas I had involved an ear piece or an adaptor for any headphone that would speak the time. 
Problem is that I think that most blind people do not walk around listening to their iPods 🙂 
Here are the sketches I made in class:

Detailed view of the one I decided to implement:

More drawings to come soon.

Back in NY

So the holidays are over and I am back in NY. Great to be back and find everything in order and a not so cold weather! Sure – nothing compared to Miami but not bad at all!

In Miami I worked on my website (coming very soon) and went cycling but one of the high points was going out sailing with Kim & friends:

New Year!

After a very quick but delightful visit to Brazil where I spent Christmas with my family, I came back to the US and went straight to Miami where I spent the new years with Raffa.

We then splurged and went to Las Vegas for 4 days! What a crazy place – exaggeration is an understatement. Everything is VERY expensive and luscious.
We did quite a few cool things:
– Indy-style race car drive – cool but slow compared to what the car can do – it a 600hp car that reaches up the 220 mph – we went up to 150 mph – but what really “frustrated” me was the fact that it was an oval track! Boring to drive but was worth it just to feel the power of the car.
– Cirque du Soleil – “O” – very cool show, an amazing water filled stage with moving platforms and the “standard” body twisting/equilibrium impossibilities of the actors/dancers.
– Helicopter ride over the Hoover Dam and the Grand Canyon – amazing last minute trip!
Some interesting facts about Vegas:
– Fastest growing city in the US
– One new school district created every month
– 3000 new inhabitants a month
Here are the pictures:

iPhone Unlock site

Just for reference – found this site, iPhone.Unlock.no, to be by FAR the best site for unlocking your iPhone. It addresses most situations, 1.0.2 and 1.1.1 unlocking, unbricking, jailbreaking, activating and all.
Note: 1.1.2 out of the box(OTB) iPhones have not been unlocked via software as of yet. This has only been achieved by using TurboSIM – a very cool product – a SIM card and APIs to develop SIM Toolkit applications + 802.15.4 2.4GHz radio for mobile phones AND ZigBee optional! The “hackers” used it to unlock the iPhone’s GSM features.

TOGI FINAL

That’s it! Have to stop at some point 🙂
TOGI is “officially” done… for this semester at least.
This final version has 3 levels:
1. Touch – Togi tells the kid explicitly to touch the bed or the pizza
2. Eat-Sleep – Togi tells the kid that Togi wants to eat or sleep
3. Tired-Hungry – Togi tells the kid that Togi is tired or hungry
The levels are ordered by increasingly “complex” cognitive steps. From following instructions in level 1 to recognizing verbs in level 2 to making the association of a problem and its solution.