Collaborators : Ruoxiao Sun, Jinny Kang

Week 11 : Human Wheel Interaction Piece Design

In this week we decided the specifications of the interaction design and the virtual space animations.

To develop the proof of concept we decided to fix 4 different electric appliance that can be powered by rotation of the crank shaft by the user. To show the crank shaft rotation generates electricity we decided to use LEDs as power lines. According to the appliance powered, hamster will do the related actions in the hamster house as below.

1. Powering Gramophone: Listening Music and doing Hamster dance.
2. Powering TV: Watching TV of human running on the hamster wheel.
3. Powering Coffee machine : Making Coffee & Drinking Coffee from Coffee machine.
4. Powering Lamp: Hamster reading book 'Understanding Comics'.

If the crank stops rotating, electric power will decay, appliance will stop and LED light decays to show electricity running out and hamster reaches the middle of the room.

Rough Design

We wanted physical system design to give the affordance of the reverse of the hamster wheel. We brainstormed through various physical interaction designs such as,

1. Circular wheel for human. (Complex in design due to weight bearing capacity.)
2. Treadmill.(Sturdy enough for human weight bearing)
3. Crank shaft rotation replicating the circular motion like hamster wheel to generate electricity. (Scalable for the scope)