Igoe’s List
Maybe it’s because I haven’t been exposed to as many physical computing projects as professionals in the field, but I personally felt that Igoe’s list was overly critical of a great deal of genuinely cool artifacts. I do, however, think this list is useful as a reference point of what types of things others have used microcontrollers for.
While I will be careful not to incorporate any of the cliche subjects that Igoe mentions, a lot of great design comes from incremental improvements to preexisting things; not necessarily huge creative leaps in technology.
Descendant
I thought this was a very interesting story, and I enjoyed how certain realities of what the narrator is going through are progressively revealed as the story goes on. To me, the intentional confusion as to whether the human in the suit is dead or alive and if the suit’s AI is real or imagined illustrates the epitome of invisible design. It is both exciting and terrifying to imagine intelligent, designed products whose presence is seamlessly integrated into daily life.
This narrative almost evokes the same emotions as a Black Mirror episode in the sense that much of that series focuses on what happens when the things we want technology to become do indeed become a reality—however, it ends up not being what we wished for.
Background
I’m pretty new to both Arduino and programming, however I have had quite a bit of experience using laser cutters, 3D printers, and most shop tools to make things in an industrial design context. I’m OKAY at modeling things in CAD software, and I once folded an origami model that went on tour around the country.