Category: Assignment 7

After reading Make it So Chapters 6 and 10, I have realized that sound has many more roles than I thought. To people, sound can provide clues of the size of the space, direction, or even the distance. It is far more capable of being used as an alert/alarm. The sound is one of the strongest elements to involve in a device. It does not only interacts with people physically but also psychologically. Sound is a valuable part of human memory. This means, that in a device, one can even approach to condition one to the sound of the device. For example, when we hear our phone ding, the thumb is already tapping the screen for thumbprint recognition/password. The power of sound can also be seen in emotional interaction. For example, music can make one feel the whole spectrum of emotions such as being gloomy or calm. This can be used in devices that cooperate for one’s emotional support in situations like when one indicates physical signs of being angry such as faster heartbeat/increase in blood pressure, the device can detect those signs and play calm music. Sound can also interact with the user from sound to sound —  like a conversation. As Chapter 10 mentions, features like playback can also play a big role in devices even if the sounds don’t necessarily make a full-on conversation (even siri today fails to make a smooth conversation!) Sound gives people a lot of space to work with, and the fact that sound doesn’t necessarily have to be audible to human sounds makes it even more potent.  (If anyone’s a fan of the netflix show Umbrella Academy, *spoiler alert* I think you would know that the sound is so powerful)

Use your Arduino, speaker, and servos or solenoids to make some noise.  Post something to the blog if you like, this is mostly an exercise making sure you have all the hardware we need for the Sound section.

Reading assignment: Make It So chapters 6 and 10.

Post something to Looking Outward showing use of sound in physical interaction.