This excercise was to think up a single-use kitchen tool, with a specific function. I chose to create a "bacon clip". This clip is designed to help when cooking bacon in the oven. Instead of flipping the bacon with tongs (which can be a little fiddly) you can clip all the bacon together, drizzle maple syrup or sprinkle brown sugar (so it will candy), and then when you need to flip it or get it out of the oven, you can lift the whole lot cleanly in one go.

Today we learned about service design, how we can design services in such a way as to make people want to use them, this can be in many different ways from designing the entire architecture of the buildings in question, to simply making queueing up for a service more efficient. This can extend to things like firefighting, for example, encouraging backburning as a method of reducing fuel loads and thus fighting bushfires long before they start, like in this bus stop ad excercise that we did today.

This excercise is a yoga teaching computer game, using something like an xbox connect or nintendo wii. there are two screens, one is a status report screen, which shows the pose you have to do, next to a video image of yourself with instructions as to how to do the pose. The voiceover tells you exactly what to do. When it tells you to start the pose, the voiceover will give you timing of your pose (hold for five seconds, breathe in, five four three two one, out five four three two one) and on the screen, you will also see the timers ticking down (for the poses in which you are facing forward and can actually see the screen).

Most of the directions from the computer would be given by a voiceover, because of the difficulty in watching the screen. So you have an opening screen with diagrams of the poses you should use, and then when you start getting into the poses, you still have audio telling you what you are doing right and wrong, and also in the audio you will have the timing for each of the poses, and how long you should breathe for. If you have gotten a pose too badly wrong, there will be a gentle voice warning you that you are getting it wrong.

Once the pose is completed (successfully or unsuccessfully), you will see a screen of your pose, and the pose you were aiming for. If you got the pose wrong, the areas of your body you got wrong will be highlighted in red.

Scores out of 100% would be given for timing, posture and breathing, breathing being measured by sensors on the body or maybe using voice recognition.
INTERACTIVITY
This is highly interactive, the computer is constantly updating and giving feedback on how you are doing, in real time, particularly with timing of the poses, and the exact posture you are using, both in real time (although this information is only usable in poses where you are facing forward) and after the event (useful for poses where you are not facing the screen).

The interface would be controlled by the posture of the player, as well as the breathing of the player. Data on posture  may also be provided by sensors in the yoga mat.

excercise 2

Today we were given several products to write slogans for quickly, within 60 seconds.

Here were the initial results of the brainstorming:

TWENTY SIDED DICE:

All ladders, no snakes. Twenty sided dice.

Straight to Mayfair, next throw. Twenty sided dice

Because life is more complicated than six.

 Go directly past Go, collect 200 dollars. Twenty sided dice.

KEYCHAIN WITH A LITTLE MILK BOTTLE ON IT:

A little milk goes a long way.

All the goodness of milk, all the portability of a keychain.

SMALL PENCIL BOX:

(picture of a big overflowing pencil case with leaky pens in it and used inky tissues and stuff)

All the pencils you ACTUALLY USE, instead of all the pencils.

Small juice bottle called "fruzie"

Fruzie, for when too much coffee is not enough juice.

Sometimes you just need a fruzie

Australian fifty cent coin:

Your money does not go away so easily (picture of a 50c coin standing there)

Know how much you have, without even looking. Choose the fifty.

(footage of coins of many nations rolling down a gently sloping table)

Keeps its value, keeps its place.

I decided to produce the pencil case ad.

And, of course, in a real world billboard, it would look like this.

Basically, it was all about telling a story, within a very few words, this one being one which explains why you do not really need a big pencil case.