Meet Virtuoso

This is the Interactive Conducting Baton in its current state. It's called Virtuoso, a toy for little musical geniuses, creating the possibility for them to play with music by conducting it.

Virtuoso is a toy that contains a music box and a conducting baton. Out of the music box comes music that the player can influence by waving with his conducting baton. The music is adaptive, which means that instead of a linear piece, this music contains out of small pieces of music, which can be put together in different orders, depending on the movement of the baton. By making big movements or small movements, you can change how much instruments are playing. By making quick movements or calm movements you can let the orchestra play a busy part or a calm part of the musical composition. And by pointing in certain directions you can call different instruments to influence them individually.

Boxes

Pantone color

Very important for choosing colors for toy designs

Grip Prints

Project: affording grip

Baton examples

Different designs for batons. 

The design variety lies mostly in the grip-handle and the materials

Colors and Layers

First style idea

Feature List of Interactive Conducting Baton Concept

Configuration Baton
Hold by one person; to be hold with one hand, pointy

Configuration Box

Two speakers, receivers, adruino, music shield, record/play/stop/on/off button, hole for 'musicfile', portable on back, container for baton, opens and closes

Scale Baton
Children hand
Scale Box
Childrens fingers and back


Functionality
Designed for children of the age of 6, both boys and girls to let them play with music. Product must be not too expensive and should be able to endure throwing and falling. It must not get dirty quickly.


Personality
Colorful, playful, merry, creative, welcoming, youthful, friendly, hand-made like

Moodboards

Color

Form

Style

Patterns

The product design process

Identify feature list
- Configuration
- Scale
- Functionality
- Personality

Visualize solutions, combining, adapting, cross-breeding and morphing features of related products

Explore potential material-process combinations

Materialize through model building and rapid prototyping

Prototype with production materials and processes


Reference: Materials and Design, the art and science of material selection in product design. By Make Ashby and Kara Johnson. Elsevier Butterworth-Heinemann, Oxford UK, 2006

(Functionality is a measure of how well a product meets its technical expectations. Personality measures the degree to which it provides emotional delight and satisfaction in ownership.)

Literature study: Materials and Design

Last week I've read the book 'Materials and Design, the art and science of material selection in product design' by Mike Ashby and Kara Johnson.
The book focused on the role of materials and processes in product design, with emphasis on the ways in which they can be used to create the aesthetics and associations of the product, and the ways in which it is perceived. For me this book was very valuable to understanding how products are designed, what elements there are in product design and products. I hoped that by understanding all of this, I could get a better understanding of how affordances are designed.

During the reading of this book, I've made a lot of notes. Some of them are exact copies of important information, some of them are my own thoughts or brainstorms about this information. Especially the little brainstorms give me a lot of insights in how to visually design affordances.
Most important insight about using visual design to create affordances was that it is very hard to create some sort of absolute list of how to visually design affordances, because a visual design can't be right or wrong, it is not binary, and every case is different. There are millions of affordances, it cannot be listed. I believe it is better to create some sort of diagram of elements of affordances to give designers of toys or products some sort of handle for visually designing the elements of products to create affordances. These elements should tell something about what types of affordances there are and what kind of visual handle you can give the user or player.

I think it is also necessary to explain what influences the perception of a user (context - environment, scale, etc.). I didn't know what all of these elements were before, but during the reading of Materials and Design I came to the understanding that by looking at how a designer designs a product, I also learn about how a user perceives a product. Because a user doesn't just perceive a product, he or she actually communicates with the designer through the object the designer has made. Or the other way around: the designer communicates with the user by the object.
So by looking at how designers design a product, what elements and features they name, I can learn what elements and features involve affordances.
So lets start:

Design of product interface contains three broad aspects - Human Factors:
1: Matching product to the capability of the human body
2: Matching to the reasoning power of the human mind
3: Matching with the surroundings in which the human lives and works.

So out of the perspective of affordances, affordances have three broad ways of communicating - Factors of affordance:
1: The capability of the body of the user - The product has elements that fit in a way to the body of the user which explains how to use it.
2: The reasoning power of the mind of the user - The product has elements that give the user a logical 'conclusion' of how to use it.
3: The surrounding in which the human finds himself with the product - The product has a certain context that explains the user how to use it.

Physical elements: Height/length, mass, weight, strength, body shape, bend-ability, hear, sight, smell, etc. All of these elements can be used to communicate physical affordance factors.

Products nowadays are more complex and have more functionality than at any time in the past. Much of the functionality is now derived from, or is controlled by electrons. (Toys in chips, chips in toys)
Electrons, unlike simple mechanical things, are invisible and give few clues of what they are up to or that they are responding to the users' wishes. Thus two sorts of communication must be built-in to the overall design:
- The passive one, indicating function (icons, pictograms)
- The active one, indicating response to an input
You want a product to be clear, so that the user is not insecure about using the product.
A person operating a device is part of a closed control-loop. Such a loop requires:
1: One or more displays that document its current state (visual displays are most efficient, though for urgent warnings sound is better).
2: Control elements or input methods. Pust buttons, knobs, levers are replaced by keyboards, mice, laser pointers, touch sensitive screens and speech recognition systems. The inputs are interpretet by the device which reacts to them.
3: Indicator (visual, tactile or acoustic) that the input has been received; without it the operator has no immediate confirmation of acceptance and may mistakenly repeat or override the operation.
4: The decision, which is provided by the operator.

For instance:
Control element: A shower has knobs you can rotate to get (more) warm or cold water out of the showerhead.
Control channel: The tube between the knobs and the showerhead where the water flows through to get to the showerhead.
Display element: When you interact with the control element (opening the knob to get water), water comes out of the showerhead.
Display channel: The water that comes out of the showerhead gives you feedback that there is water coming out of the display element, so it is feedback to your interaction with the control element.
Decision element: The brain of the user that wants to get a shower.
Decision channel: The muscles, bones and blood from brain to fingers that turns the knob.

A product has perceived attributes and associations - it is these, in part, that give it its personality.

Formulation of desired features in products (This is very handy as a diagram for elements of affordances)
Generic features are configuration and scale
Configuration: Hold by 1 person, grip, points
Scale: 0.3

Attributes of an object:
Formal attributes: features such as shape, measurable dimensions and components.
Stylistic attributes: decorations, pattern, color and surface finish.
Technological attributes: Describing the material and process used to make the object.

To what extent can the attributes of materials - technical, aesthetic, perceived - be used for expression? The are some obvious examples. Gold, silver, platinum, diamond and sapphire have associations of wealth, success, sophistication and lasting value; used in a product they give it the same associations. Polished woods suggest craftsmanship; granite - permanence; steel - strength. Metals, generally, are recognizable as metals; a product made from them acquires, as part of its personality, the character-traits of metals. But polymers can - at least in appearance - assume the character of almost any material; in particular, they can be made to look like metal, or like wood, or even like glass.

The aesthetics of a product are created by the materials of which it is made and the processes used to shape, join and finish them. Ideas are expressed and perceptions and associations created by the ways in which these are used. The technical requirements of the product impose certain constraints on shape, but within these there is still room for expressing quality, or humor, or delicacy, or sophistication. Joining, too, can be used to suggest craftsmanship, or robustness, or to differentiate parts of the product that have different purposes. Above all, surface treatments modify color and reflectivity, texture and feel, and can add pattern, symbol or text to instruct, amuse or deceive.

There is more than one way to approach the selection of materials. One is through technical function. The other iis through form and features, seeking materials capable of providing them.

The act of design transforms a need into a product. Some definitions:
A need is an abstract idea. The need for illumination carries the idea of light, but says nothing whatever about its form, its feel, how it will be achieved or how it will be perceived.
A concept is one way in which the need might be met. A candle, an incandescent lamp, etc. ANd for each of these there is a set of possible sub-concepts.
A product is a realization of one of these it is a concrete object, with forms and features that can be seen and touched. It is made by processes, using materials that themselves have visual and tactile behaviors.
A feature is an aspect of the design that contributes to its functionality, usability, or personality. Features are of many types. There are topological features, defining the configuration of the product. There are geometric and dimensional features, some determined by technical requirements (strength, stability, efficiency etc), others by the needs of the user (ergonomic features), still others to give the product certain visual and tactile qualities. Beyond these, there are perceived features - those that create the associations of the product and the meaning it conveys.
Solutions are combinations of features that embody the concept, making it real, and which do so in ways that, to some degree, meet the intentions of the designer. The solution that is chosen for manufacture becomes the product.

The starting point for developing form is the formulation of the desired features of a product. The features define the constraints to which the form and materials must comply. Formulating and applying constraints is central to any act of selection. But why designing includes the act of reducing the set of possible solutions, it importantly also contains also the act of expanding them. The designer, experimenting with ways in which the features are used, evolved and combined, visualizes new solutions. Thus moving from concept to product involves both narrowing the number of solutions by screening out those that fail to meet the constraints and expanding it by creating new solutions that are in turn screened.

Features are identified, and solutions synthesized and screened in ways that we shall group under the headings:
Identification, Visualization and Materialization.
Using a text-based analogy: design, and particularly the creation of form, is not a linear procedure like filling out a tax form ('if this, then that...'), it is more like a multi-dimensional crossword puzzle ('does this fir with these... or perhaps these are not yet quite right... what if we tried this instead...')

Identification of concept is the first step in developing a feature list for an initially abstract idea. When choosing a concept (for instance a chair) the choice of chair implies that it will have certain generic features - features that are accepted characteristics of a chair. There are of two types:
Configuration: a chair, normally, is designed to support one person; it has a horizontal seat, supported above the floor by legs or some quivalent structure, and it provides support for the back. This combination of generic features already differentiates it from all the other concepts of seating.
Scale: The chair is to support an adult; if it is to do this, the depth and width of the seat, and its heigh above the floor are constrained to lie within certain broad ranges.
The use of intentions to guide choice of features goes further than simple market objectives: design van be adapted to meet economic objects, environmental objectives, and, of course, performance objectives. The phrase 'Design for X' nicely captures the way broad underlying intentions in mind - here, design for public use, or design for children.
Intentions describe the broad visions that guide the design. A single product may have more than one dominant intention.

Market
Design for public use
Design for woman
Design for the elderly...
Economics
Design for minimum cost
Design for assembly
Design for mass production...
Sustainable
Design for the environment
Design for recycling
Design for biodegradability
Performance
Design for a maximum insulation
Design for minimum mass
Design for minimum volume

Personality describes the associations and meaning that a product has for those who own or use it. Personality relies most heavily on the visual and tactile: a sense of order, proportion and internal coherency, and on shape, color and texture. And it includes the sense of compatibility with the lifestyle and aspirations of the consumer.

Perceptions are harder to express precisely, and are usually described by loosely defined words or metaphors like 'rugged', 'feminine' or 'classic' that suggest rather than define the perception, but still convey a certain set of features created by the choice of form and material.


Color, texture, feel, a sort of 'character' deriving from the shapes to which it can be formed, its ability to integrate with other materials, the way it ages with time, the way peopole feel about it. The kind of creativity that gives a product its personality, making it satisfying, even delightful.
A material has many dimensions:
A technical dimension, the one seen by the engineer;
An eco-dimension, that seen by the environmentalist;
An aesthetic dimension, the one encountered by the senses of sight, touch, hearing;
And a dimension that derives its features from the way in which the material is perceived, its traditions, the culture of its use, its associations, its personality.
There are words to describe visual, tactile and acoustic attributes; they can even, to some extent, be quantified. Perceptions are more difficult. A few, perhaps, can be identified - gold is, almost universally, associated with wealth, steel with strength, granite with permanence, plastics with the modernity...
Perceptions depend on time, on culture, demographics, taste, and more. But the consumer encounters materials only in the products in which they are used, and these are designed to appeal to a specific culture, demographic and taste.

Materials have an intrinsic personality, but one that is hard to see until brought into sharp focus by sensitive product design.
The first step in product design is that of identification of concept - the principles on which the product will be based.
In the second - visualization - the desired features are developed, using sketching, model-making and computer graphics to sharpen the constraints on configuration, size, functionality and personality,.
It is in the third - materialization - tat the choice of materials and processes is made, prototypes built and tested, and the final design agreed.
The choice is guided not only by technical requirements but also bu requirements of product aesthetics and personality. To achieve it we need selection methods that are flexible and can deal fluently with information of many different types.

A material can be characterized by its name, technical and aesthetic attributes. It can be indexed, so to speak by the processes able to shape it and by products in which it is used. Products are designed with certain broad intentions in mind. These intentions condition every design decision, including the choice of materials; thus materials can be linked to intentions through products. Products also have aesethetic and perceived attributes that are deliberate part of the design, materials can be linked to these too. This is not the only way to organize the information product designers need, but it is one that works.

Literature study: Affordances and Product Semantics

I decided to do more study about affordances and what they are because I stumbled upon a discussion about affordances and product semantics. I did not know what product semantics were and if this had anything to do with what I'm researching (how to use visual communication for affordances).
The following text are my insights in affordances and product semantics.

Sensory elements
Affordances are elements of an object (or environment, but I will be focusing on objects) that communicate possibilities for actions with this object that have been given through sensory elements.
The main sensory elements to communicate actions are tactile and kinematic senses.
The kinematic sense (kinestetic) is the feeling of movements in limbs, relating to sensations in muscles, tendons and joints.
The tactile sense is the skin as sense organ, including sensations of pressure, temperature and pain. This is a passive sense, since you don't need to move to use these senses.
The haptic sense is impressions conveyed by the kinematic and tactile senses (Revesz, 1950).

Example: Doorhandle
Visual exploration:
First impression tells us it is a handle which can open the door to allow passage. This is perhaps followed by an anticipation of how to grasp the handle.
Haptic exploration:
This first impression does not always tells us how the handle can be manipulated regarding to the amount of force, when to pull or even the amount of rotation required. That will require haptic exploration or some kind of visual guidance (mostly product semantics are used in this case)

Product semantics:
The study of the symbolic qualities of manmade forms in the cognitive and social context of their use and application of knowledge gained to objects of industrial design. Product semantics are cognitive, not perceived (Krippendorf and Butter 1984)

Affordances:
Gibson: Affordances, or clues in the environment that indicate possibilities for action, are perceived in a direct, immediate way with no sensory processing. (Buttons for pushing, knobs for turning, handles for pulling, levers for sliding, etc.) (Learning Theories Knowledgebase, 2010)

Environment: Buttons, switches, knobs
Affordances: Push-able, flip-able, rotate-able
Constraints: Buttons allows it only to be pushed, rotating it will not turn on the light bulb.
Feedback: Light of the bulb (action is succesfull or not), on or off, up or down or counterwise or clockwise.

Structure of affordances, Chemero 2003:
'Affordances are relations between the abilities of organisms and features of the environment (or object).'
Affords-X (feature, ability)
Example:
Affords-sitting (flat surface, butt and bendable legs)
If affordances are properties of the environment relative to an animal then we can state that we can design affordances in a toy, because they would be properties of the toy relative to a learner/player.
All the 'action possibilities' latent in the environment, objectively measurable and independent of the individual's ability to recognize them, but always in relation the the actor and therefore dependent on their capabilities.

Ecological psychology (Young, 2001):
The importance of the environmental or ecological niche in cognition, hence it considers cognition as situated. So:
'What and how' people think depends on the situation they found themselves in.
Micheal Young (2001): 'Affordances can be thought of as possibilities for action. Affordances are detected by a goal-driven agent as they move about in an 'information field' that results from the working of their senses in concert with their body movements.

The theory of affordances, James Gibson (1977)
When a user perceives the affordances clues from the appearance features of a product, the user can correctly and intuitively operate the product to complete the operating tasks without any exploration or specification.
The theory of affordances are what it offers the animal, what it provides or furnishes.
Exaple: if an object which has a rigid, level, flat and extended surface and it is about knee-high to human, then it affords sitting-on.
If a human can detect visual information of the five properties, the object can offer the affordance of sit-abillity to the human.


Conclusion:
The difference between affordances and products semantics is very clear:
Affordances is that what can be immediately understood based on perceived properties of an object. Affordances reflect possible relationships among actors and objects; they are properties of the world (Norman 1999)

Product semantics communicate an affordance by using symbols. They are not affordances theirselves, they are not interactive or tangible. Product semantics are based on conventions, they are arbitrary, artificial and learned.

So to make my research more clear, I say that with researching how visual design communicates affordances, I'm not talking about product semantics (using symbols and conventions to communicate affordances), but about the properties of an object, how these are perceived to come to an understanding of how the object can be used. I'm not interested in researching product semantics because I think that the challenge for designers should be in creating products where exploration is encouraged until skilled performance is possible (so don't put an icon on everything to tell how it works). Visual exploration is okay, but only with haptic exploration you can really learn to use a product (skilled performance).