Exploring Inclusivity in Patient-Centered Health Care | Week of 10/26

Reflection

We decided to do a debrief as a class after all the conversations and mid-terms happening the week before. What was interesting and slightly tangential from our project was the emphasis that some groups put on how to better block out the rest of the semester. Most people have generated the same amount of progress but have produced a variation of studies and research, so since there’s not definitive deadlines, groups wanted to gauge what exactly they need to get done before winter break and finals. This encouraged me to figure out what steps I need to be taking in the next few weeks. Considering that I have to change the main output and structure of my installation slightly, I want to spend the next week or two to perfect what I want the users to get out of it and what it needs to look like so that it’s inclusive to all, and both excited yet not intimidating. After that, I want to work with some Arduino equipment to configure the specific outputs that I want to explore. I simply need to do this for a feasibility reason so that I know whether or not I need to change the experience slightly (or make it more hypothetical) and, just as important, I want to develop it fairly early for research and feedback purposes. I’m going to work on things like haptic feedback that’s a fairly new concept and could come off jarring to people, especially those of an older age, if it’s not presented and communicated correctly. I want to talk to a few focus group members in order to figure out what is the most comfortable degree of intensity with this virtual touch. And I want to get similar feedback with what my sound is going to be. Hopefully that will only take a week or two as well and then afterwards, from my research I can mold and perfect the final product for the rest of the time.

For the rest of this week, I started to revise and curate a new idea. From previous conversation with teachers and students, it was clear that I have to put more attention into how to make this easily approachable for visitors and how to create a visually pleasing installation that fits well with the interactions and is possibly a theatrical scale, but isn’t too visually stimulating for those that are visually impaired and would feel uncomfortable. I’ve expressed this before but it is fair to assume that there are patients that have recently lost their vision, and if something have extreme color and lights, that could be very sad and upsetting for them. So I looking a very subtle visual motions and movements that could come off very impactful. I first started to figure out a movement by think in black and white for color. That way I know that it’s effective regardless of other factors such as vibrancy. A solution I’ve been drawn to is this idea of working with black being negative space and white being positive space, and white space outlining your body if you come close towards it. The amount of fidelity would be determined off of how close you are to the installation and the haptics would give you that general idea as well. Something that I’ve had a more difficult time figuring out is sound. This is for several reasons. One being that since I want this to be an installation that multiple people can enter at the time, how can one interact without distorting the experience in some way for the person next to them. Something to brainstorm is how simple of complicated I wanted the production of the sound to be. How can I make this collaboration that can come intentionally and unintentionally? How can I make the interaction simple but the physical installation appealing? These are questions that have be answered trough the display of my installation. The communication of my project is the most important part and something that I’ve been working with in the last few days.