Temperature Sensitive Glass

More Research

http://www.inventables.com/technologies/temperature-sensitive-glass

This would be perfect for my project. It's made of glass so the visual appeal and the want to touch is already very strong. It uses liquid crystals so it will respond rapidily and efficiently to subtle temperature change on the hand. Also just by the image posted you can see how visually appealing this project could potentically be.


I have emailed for a quote on shipping and time of delivary. Fingers crossed I can get 4 of these delivered in time for project submission.

Research

I have been doing some research on other ways I can get my visual experience that I want by not using mood rings. I feel that the mood rings are too small and it would be more benifical to have a larger surface area to touch. After a lot of googling I found some more information on Thermochromism. The definition of thermochromism is something that changes colour due to temperature change. Liquid crystals are used in mood rings, but another way to achieve thermochromism is leuco dyes. Liquid crystals are hard to get hold of and require careful handling. Leuco dyes is simply like a paint that can be applied. The actual substance of it is contained in microcapsules. The down side to Leuco dyes is that they are not as responsive and effcient as liquid crystals and I believe for my project to be successful, I need my material to change colour rapidily and easily.

More Development

I have decied to change the platform that holds everything. To reduce any confusition the user may experience, I will colour one side of the board blue and the other side red. This is to contrast with the heat pad and the cold pad. This will tell the user that the board is only there to hold everything and not have anything to do with the intereaction.

Storyboard final

What I plan to do

Introduction to interactive design – 112

What I plan to do:

I plan to make a rod made out of mood rings. It will be pitched up on a stand so that the user will be able to grab it. I want to modify the rod in a way that invites the user to grab it. I will do this by changing the centre of the rod to look a bit like a handle. These rings change to different interesting colours just by the slightest change in temperature. I will have this stand placed on a board along with a block of steel and a heating pad. The idea of the block of steel is to cool down the surface temperature of the users hand for when they place their hand on it. The heating bad is to heat up the user’s hand. As per the results of my experiment, I will place the red hand print on the heating pad and the blue hand print on the block of steel. By changing the users hand temperature, they are able to create different colours on the rod just by touching it. This design is a visual experience as well as a touch experience. It gives the users a feeling of magic and power by being able to change an objects colour simply by touching it.

By Shaun Dorresteyn.

Storyboard concept

More development

These are the notes i wrote down after the experiment.

Experiment results

As shown in the results, the red hand print had the most votes. therefore i will use this one for my interactive object.

Experiment

The four surfaces that i used to experiment with which one was more appealing to a person.

More development

On this page you will see my thinking process into the experiment i set up. I was looking at different ways to invite the user to touch a surface.

Temperature idea development

From my ideas i decided to develop my thinking on the temperature concept. I did some research on how a mood ring works, and i wanted to somehow incorporate this into my project. I also looked at having different materials to change the surface temperature of the users hand.

Ideas 2

Ideas continued.

Ideas

These are the main ideas that i thought of and wrote down. I presented these during the next class.

Brainstorm

In the first tutorial we were asked to do some brainstorming based on the objects we had brought into class. Here is my general thinking during that class and also some thinking towards some ideas of an interactive object.