Saturday Sessions

So Saturday a handful of us came in and worked for the afternoon. Pics!

real vinyl!

Nick asked me to hang some test vinyl QRs and see how color/finish was. One was glossy pink, the other matte red. The matte works SO much better and refracts nearly no glare at all. When Alex held his CELL PHONE light up to one of the registration marks on QR, my scanner couldn't read it. Plus, I think matte just looks better. Anywho, heres a couple pics.

Tilingg

So the tape QR was removed, and we projected a new QR leading to the show site. We took measurements, and I took pictures. Figured it all out in illustrator and then I printed and tiled the entire thing (66 sheets!!!!!) It worked (PHEW) and so it's just a few more steps till the real deal...

vinyl frustration

Soooooo in an attempt to see how a nice cut vinyl qr would look, I want to murder vinyl and never look at it again. I thought it would be easy...it was not. I spent about 40 minutes formatting the document so it would cut right, I then cut on black vinyl, white vinyl and furry brown vinyl becuase I ran out of the others. I wasted over $20 in material and killed about 3 hours of my time. I'm extremely frustrated and really just not happy right now. In any case, here is some damn process:

And the language for the phones and wall after scanning

Will it scan?

Hello and welcome to this weeks edition of Will It Scan?

All I have to say is that my fingers hurt and you should watch this awesome video:

Prototyping

We did some preliminary prototyping with different kinds of materials and different angles, brightnesses and phones.

The important facts are these:

>>brightness DOES matter, too high sometimes contrasts out, while too low doesn't always read
>>a direct parallel to the camera is essential for the best read and reaction time
>>the fiducial does not read on all brightness levels when colored (it was pink)
>>the fiducial seems to work on both iphone and android on all brightness levels when black
>>how well the fiducial reads is directly tied to how fast the reaction is
>>the reaction seems to lag about a half of a second at it's highest read
>>the camera will have to be mounted under the plexi, all in a self-contained space



So I measured the windows and these are the dimensions. We really want to use vellum as it rear-projects nicely and looks the most professional when mounted on the glass.

Will was very excited.

What they do and how they be

Fiducials!

Here are plans for incorporating the population experience into the fiducial one, and some functionality and how the users affect the aesthetics. The background will not be a grid, I just haven't quite figured that out yet and it was easier to design on it in the meantime.

The interaction will start with only a few "pink" squares. We'll call these "population" squares because they will have the ability to change color. The # of population squares in the interaction is based entirely on how many people have scanned the QR code. This causes the fiducial interaction to be tied to the population count, and creates an experience with a lot of variety and change as the event progresses.

The green square is the repeller. It not only moves the population squares away, but if it comes in contact with the black attractor square, it causes an explosion of all the population squares following the attractor and scatters them across the screen.

Example of the repeller square pushing away some population squares

The "orange" square, we'll call it the "controller" square, has the ability to change the color of the population squares.

If it comes into contact with any of the population squares, they will take on the controller square's color.

More color changing

Once the controller square is out of range, the colors stop changing. This allows for the interaction to become multi-colored and more interesting for the users

The repeller square can also repel the controller square

The user that has the fiducial for the controller square can rotate their phone to switch the color of their controller. This makes it so that it can change the population squares into a variety of colors at the users will.
A diagram of how more people scanning the QR code causes more population squares to appear