Your first experience of the day is your wake-up experience. The course “Aesthetics of Interaction” looks into the possibilities to design for enrichment of this crucial experience. Shake-up fosters the beauty of reciprocal action, by connecting user input and device output via rhythmic action.
Throughout the process, I learned about different approaches to conceptualize meaningful interaction. I enjoyed the design focus of the “extreme characters” and “relabelling” excercises, which challenged to explore unconventional design concepts and discover the new potential functionality of existing daily products. The (sometimes) extravagant ideas from others taught me about the value of reciprocal action, which defines how action evolves into a perceived experience. I learned how feedforward and -back playes a crucial role in the user experience.
With my design group, we designed “Shake-up”, which is a hand-held device which relates a rhythmic output based on user input; reciprocal action. The bottom of the grip is pulled out to a certain level, which determines the magnitude of the following action. Shake-up will then vibrate in a playful and meaningful motion, which the user has to synchronize by shaking the device. The semi-transparent globe on top includes little grains, amplifying the feedback with a tinkling sound. Setting your own rhythm in the morning, that’s the beauty of reciprocal action!
I learned to explore many different types of feedforward and feedback, which are able to really empower the experience of a design. Besides, it was interesting to explore different materials for the Shake-up design, such as the tennis grip, painted globe and little grains.