I'm happy to report that we have brought the Seduction project to a very satisfying end. We seem to have made ourselves, our client and the Applied Game Design research group of the HKU very happy. Above you see the promo of this project.

In the Seduction project we tried to, for a change not just tell people to life more sustainable, but to make it easier, more accessible, more fun or maybe even cheaper to live sustainable. To do this we did a lot of research into motivational design.

After exploring several concepts to seduce households into a more sustainable lifestyle we choose to go for the Lightgun. This is a gun with which you can shoot out lights. The idea is to make turning off lights more fun and by doing that make people save energy. 

You might think, does that even help? Well, we came across some statistics that told us that 18.9% of what households waste is because people leave their lights on in rooms where nobody is. According to the CBS that costs us around 111'496'000,-.
Since 43.1% of what we waste we waste on leaving devices on stand-by, this product could mean even more when it can also shoot off other devices.

Experiments

To test our ideas we did a couple of user tests throughout the project. In the beginning we did these Wizard of Oz, meaning that people though it worked but we where secretly pushing buttons behind the curtain. Later on we managed to get into events like Bring your own Screen and Ignite because that where good places to find our target audience. What really helped is that people that come there are open for a experiment, since they are there to relax. Fin made some great video's of them.

Prototype

Because of my background in Fablab Amersfoort I was, amongst other things, responsible for the construction of the physical prototype. After we proved that our idea worked using a cardboard and lego prototype I wanted a technical prototype that was sturdy, something that was relatively easy to do, cheap and preferably flexible. After considering 3D printing and CNC milling I came up with the idea of simply layering layers of wood, that are cut out using a laser cutter. 

Working together with Mirte in the Fablab we where able to create our first prototype in 2 days. I created a “FabPublication” at the Fablab Amersfoort website, so you can get more information on how it's build.

For the logic we added a arduino mini and some components like a battery, button, infrared light and later on a vibration motor and a speaker.

Cardboard prototype of trigger section

Inside of first prototype

First prototype closed

Inside of second prototype

Vibration motor inside of second prototype

Second prototype closed

Fablab Amersfoort website

Since te summer of 2011 I have bin slowly building a new website for Fablab Amersfoort. Main focus was creating better documentation of projects that are done in the Fablab. To enable this Harmen Zijp (one of the Spullenmannen) and I though up a more elaborate form people can fill in when they create a "FabPublication". We ask then for example the design file, used materials and machines, step by step instructions, a good image etc. 

The website is build using  Drupal (version 7), a open source CMS. This makes it very dynamic and flexible. It includes a calender, featured fabpublications, a garentue tracking system, the new Media system and it's multilingual. 

Next steps will hopefully include a redesign. 

The coming semester (about half a year) I will be doing a project inside the HKU again. This project we start a company and work for an actual client. Together with a few students we composed our own team, and to our delight our team suggestion was accepted. We now call ourself Q5. The team consists of Marc de Vreede, Bram Geerlings, Eva Delincáková, Joseph Noel and me.

The project were put on is called Pervasive Playful People Place, our client is Fourcelabs. FourceLabs designs physical games and playful spaces that form a bridge between the players' and the clients world.

Our current debrief states that we will be designing:

A collective experience for a conference with a physical component that will enhance the perception of the conference in a playful manner and make the experience more worthwhile. It will be interwoven into the conference; pervasive, spread out, subtle. The product will be either modular or generic enough to be easily adaptable to the content of different conferences. The product should change the way the visitors perceive the content of the conference, their own activities or the way they interact with other visitors.

A challenge we happily accepted.

We are already in the third weak, and it seems there's great chemistry in the team, I feel confident we can create a great product. 

The summaries of some of the lectures I attended.