GMU:Printed Circuit Board Art/mxkllmnn: Difference between revisions

The good thing about dismissing this first idea was the new opportunity to find a topic closer to what I was doing in my thesis at that moment. To call a spade a spade: I wrack my head around systems whose user interfaces were modified as the result of process automation. In most cases, if the cybernetic loop of control and display is being altered, a transformation of the underlying system’s user interface is implicit. In home automation, for example, this has led to the disappearance of well established interfaces and now all too often leave us frustrated. In a nutshell, this project is about designing new interfaces as an alternative to popular but dystopian smart home futures or: How to teach old switches new tricks.

Furthermore, by temporarily decoupling the switch from the circuit of the object to be turned on or off and putting a microcontroller in between, the (automated) system becomes capable of utilizing the acoustic, visual and haptic signals evoked via the usage of its interface to articulate intent (at least this is the hypothesis to be confirmed). To conclude, my thesis is about designing output gestures made of sequences of clicks in combination with flickering lights as means of communication. To do so a conventional switch is being equipped with some more advanced technology, and that is what this project is about.

At this point, the switching mechanism was fully developed and all components were in place, although only on a breadboard. As mentioned before, I would have installed all the technical components on the back if it hadn't been for the idea of realising the backend as a frontend. So the transfer to a PCB was the next logical step.