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blackbirdsings · 3 years
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Looking back on one semester Creative Technology
Well I must say that this was a pleasant and educational experience for me in general. Because it was exactly what I've expected from it, but it had some challenges along the way.
For example: I started out this semester trying (with emphasis on the word trying) to keep myself grounded on the ideation part. In which I succeeded for the Solo Project. But that new found way of moving a bit too quickly through the ideation process went out of the window real fast for the Duo Project (or at least... so it seemed).
At the duo project tables seemed to turn and I fell back in an old pattern, not to say that I didn't have fun with that project but it was less than ideal. Let's state that we didn't get the end result we've hoped for because we kind of fell into our own set up trap: our project was about the playful human and guess what we didn't do? Indeed, well done, you guessed it.
The client project was somewhat of a relief but also a stress factor for me. This was due to the fact of it being a very narrowed down assignment. While it was fun to take our own liberties with the scope, it was equally as hard to get to that point. But that is especially where creativity can come in handy (haha!)
So there you have it. My portfolio is handed in and I must say I've never felt so bummed out by that fact as with this semester. So to the creators of this semester, the teachers and the classmates I've worked and socialized with: thanks for this semester!
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blackbirdsings · 3 years
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Project Description and Reflection
Project Description
We were assigned by Greenhouse to research possibilities for and eventually create a synthetic voice for a Virtual (Digital) Influencer named Nova Green.
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Tools used to prototype:
o Pure Data (for the Pitch Shifting prototype)
Reflection and Wrap up
Let's begin this reflection by telling how much fun I had working with the last project team. I enjoyed the cooperation and also how we gave each other input was very pleasant.
If it comes to the assignment as we got it from Greenhouse; it was a bit too narrow to be creative. So what we did, taking certain liberties like making assumptions and building whole cases on those assumptions, was really needed and done to get some more creativity into our project.
We did do a lot of research and will transfer everything over to Greenhouse in a transfer document (showing here). We also will include our presentation findings there because in this case that could be very useful to
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blackbirdsings · 3 years
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Requirements and Incorporating Use Cases and Activity Diagrams.
For this part of the project I chose to create a requirements document so I could hypothesize where the priorities lie and how the company in question (Greenhouse) envisions the interaction with Nova Green.
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blackbirdsings · 3 years
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Nova Green's Positioning Analysis
In this document I wanted to advise Greenhouse on the field where I think the impact of Nova Green could be bigger and maybe get more engagement in the process.
Edit 18th of June 13:28: Got some feedback from Eva The opportunities and threats needed some substantiation. I also patched up the wording so it would read easier, looked up some sources and nuanced some statements.
Edit 21th of June 15:19: Got some feedback from Judith, the analysis is not really a SWOT analysis but more an analysis about how to position a digital influencer.
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blackbirdsings · 3 years
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My research question was about how the interactions with Nova Green work now and how Greenhouse envisions it.
The use case diagrams are made to give a global understanding of how things work. I will make an edit with some Activity diagrams later on.
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Edit: 23rd of June I got some feedback from Ronald about this use case diagram: "I shouldn't use conditions in a use case diagram so you should remove it from the diagram"
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blackbirdsings · 3 years
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Pitch shifting a voice
So I made this Pure Data patch with a goal to morph my voice to a more feminine voice. For Nova Green.
The questions I would like to test out with this patch is "What do I need to create a woman's voice?" and "When does the pitch become a problem for the realness of a voice?"
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Moving forward I am going to make some samples of multiple voices using this shifter to see if we can recreate it with the help of WaveGlow or other libraries.
Edit 31st of May: I have made some samples with my own voice and the voice of a roommate of mine to figure out when the pitch was too high and when the pitch became too robotic
My voice became more robotic in the end because of the low tones in my voice are shifted up as well as my tendency to speak up loud. It gives a kind of distorted ring to it.
The voice of my roommate became less robotic because she has the tendency to speak less loud. I noticed that with the same settings my roommate's voice became more childlike.
A few results are found below, the samples are in Dutch: "Hello, my name is Nova Green".
Edit 16th of June: After further evaluation we discovered that the whole point of adding an automated voice and text to speech solution to Nova Green was to remove a human voice / interaction out of the equation. So when we evaluated the program I've made it seemed like a useful tool to shape and design a voice that Greenhouse wants. It isn't a useful tool to automate text to speech and synthesize a voice for it.
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(My first use case diagram for how the pitch shifter works, if there is feedback on it I will post this below).
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After some feedback from Erik I came to the conclusion that the extend relationships didn't make sense. And because the pitch adjust is optional for the rest of the flow they shouldn't be connected.
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blackbirdsings · 3 years
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Assumptions we've made about Nova Green's personality
Because we need to design a voice for a digital influencer we've (my team and I) decided to make some assumptions about what Nova Green would be like if she were a real person: click here.
We've mailed those assumptions to the proper channels and will have a meeting about it today at 1 pm. I have noted some questions for this meeting that should help the meeting:
- Are there sources we could look at to guide us on how the voice should be?
- Is there a recorded tone of voice (like a brandguide for a voice) we should keep in mind? Should we try out a lot of things?
- Should Nova Green interact with the followers and how would she interact with the followers?
Just out of curiosity: What did we get right in our assumptions?
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blackbirdsings · 3 years
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Vision about Digital Influencers
We have started a project with the Greenhouse Group to create a digital voice. We wanted to know if a personality could add to a voice or vice versa.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qZQb0xo8Xp6UhFU4THXlVrWC_78hS_4o89_IVuvCmj0/edit?usp=sharing
Edit (June 19th 2021): What I tried to research is the question: "How do I think adding a voice to Digital Influencers could change the landscape of social media?"
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blackbirdsings · 3 years
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Professional Development Goals (Personal Growth Goals)
At the beginning of this semester I had certain goals to reach at the end of the semester:
- I want to try out different ways of planning ahead to see which ones work.
- I want to be able to communicate the ideas in my head about my projects more clearly
- I also want to be able to translate my thoughts and questions into prototypes because I think that should be a more developed skill
I need to upload proof of this in this portfolio to see which steps I took to develop those skills.
Edit: I took it upon myself to try out sticky notes as a way of planning ahead.
Pros: It really helps to see all the things that are already done as a motivation
Cons: You should really keep track of what you are doing and what has been done to make sure you still don't lose track of what you still need to do.
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Edit: Added an extra goal. (31-5-2021)
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blackbirdsings · 3 years
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[Index Post - Duo Project]
Friday afternoon drink #4: Project closure.
After a long project we have to hand in our portfolios and call it a day. It was a really good learning experience with a lot of trial and error and pitfalls.
We started out this project with the desire to connect people using the kinect, which transformed very quickly into making generative art with the kinect. [click here].
After that we decided to do some research into playful interaction and we slowly changed our vision into wanting to show grownups the importance of playful interaction. So we decided to form our vision by defining what playfulness means to us by defining some core values and running a questionnaire. [click here]
We pinned our vision here: [click here].
After that we kind of fell into our own pitfall: Adults don’t play, we kind of crawled out of this by proving our vision in a very playful fashion: by playing around with the arduino and creating a lot of random stuff.
My ideas included Glowing building blocks: [click here]
A decision maker : [click here]
And a cup phone synthesizer: [click here]
All and all we have had a lot of fun doing those projects .
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blackbirdsings · 3 years
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Cup phone buzzersynth
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Well because we were playing around with childish games we thought it was a good idea to put an arduino mic and a piezzo buzzer to work as a sort of chip tune synth
It takes the sensitivity it picked up and transforms it into a tone.
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blackbirdsings · 3 years
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Proof of Concept 1: Decision maker
So me and Zonar had some goofy idea, to use a stressball and give it an opinion. In this Minimum loveable project it will look at the answer for a question you'll give it.
The movement of the head will be triggered by the ultrasonic sensor.
Zonar came up with the idea of making it rotate towards the different answers and how it should look.
I wrote the code.
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blackbirdsings · 3 years
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We got some feedback about what actions we want to trigger when it comes to playful interactions. My idea was to build some building blocks from transparent plastics to inspire people to be creative with it. So for my first proof of concepts I made this simple construction with old bicycle lights.
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Well to get this project further we should need an Arduino and some research into the I²C-protocol which makes this project kind of ambitious to start up for the time we have got. So I am going to abandon this project for now.
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blackbirdsings · 3 years
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Friday Afternoon Drink #3
I've been busy with the research for this project which is about playful interaction.
In this document I described how we define certain core values and how we define 'play' / 'playfulness' in this project.
I also have made some plans to start tinkering with some playful interactions. I am curious how it will turn out.
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blackbirdsings · 3 years
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'Shaping the Playful Human' - A vision
Where did we come from?
We came from a vision that we wanted to connect people using some fun interactions with the Kinect during the COVID-19 pandemic. We kind of drifted away from this idea because it was kind of hard to create a context for this particular idea without violating the social distancing rules.
A change of attitude.
When we drifted away from the initial plan we thought of why we wanted to create fun interactions and human connections. It all boiled down to one thing: we wanted to get more people open to play.
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We did some research (in Dutch): click here. In which we defined certain core values for our project. After that we put out a questionnaire to our social circles to see how they view our premise.
Most people weren't really ashamed to tell us that they still play but that the activities they do just alter. Because interests change and so do people.
Our vision: We dare people to play more.
We want people to open up to the idea that not everything needs to have a use or purpose. Because some things shouldn't be about efficiency or productivity.
(This video was from our end-exposition where some people started to play with their own colorful shadows on the kinect. And it exemplifies the behavior we want to stimulate)
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blackbirdsings · 3 years
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My research regarding the playful human
So, I had some research done for the subject regarding the playful human. The document is in Dutch. We also included a questionnaire in Dutch and it gave us some really helpful insights in what people do and did when it comes to playful activities.
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blackbirdsings · 3 years
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Friday Afternoon Drink #2
This week I have made a kinect example of a pointcloud, shown here.
I also made some efforts for a Concept for the Duo project. This will be worked out in a document in the Easter weekend and uploaded on monday.
This week was kind of chaotic for me, this was due to the fact that I forgot to make a planning for myself. So next week I will introduce some structure again.
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