Project 3.2 The UX of Gravity

Brief: Relate gravity and time and us

Group Partners: Hugh Allen, Maša Planinc, Winnie Wong, Zoe Yan, Chun Li

After the Behavioral Mapping, we struggled about how to let people experiencing the time pass. It's so obvious, but it's also such untouchable.

Purpose: Letting people feel the gravity is controlling time.

Prototype:

There are three buckets, look the same from outside, and also they all have a hole on top, which could let hands put in. Inside the bucket, they all have a magnet ball at the bottom. Three buckets will fill with different densities of materials, when people put their hands in, they will feel resistance within several levels.

Participants will wear a bracelet made by magnets, put their hands in and get the magnet ball at the bottom.

People will try all three buckets, and feel the different levels of resistance so that they will take different amounts of time to get the reward (magnet ball). This artifact will help people to understand experiencing different velocity of time.

Outcome:

Due to the limit of time, we cannot make three same magnet balls. Then we decided to change the plan. Instead of three buckets, the same bracelet, we choose to use one bucket but with three different magnets bracelets.

Put different amounts of magnets into fabric sheets and then glued became bracelets. We use a square tube as our 'bucket', which could be sucked by the magnet bracelet.

People will firstly wear a magnet bracelet and put their hands into the tube; they will be asked to 'travel' through and get the reward.

Presentation:

Summary and reflection:

In the beginning, we would like to combine gravity with time and age. However, we confused ourselves. Gravity controls the time, and time proves our existence. We are affected by gravity and time through aging. The outcome is more like an activity, to let people have an awareness of gravity is force, but it's way more than just related to mass. We live on this little blue planet; technologies had widely developed, we may travel to the mars, landing on the moon. However, we are all under control by a mysterious, seems far away but also close to us everyday power, the gravity.

It's a hard topic for our group to design an experience of gravity. The outcome was simple, but it represents what we understand of gravity. I enjoy the time of researching and learning Einstein's theory of relativity, time dilation, and so on. Thanks to my team partners.