Comments on: Tom Igoe’s “Physical Computing’s Greatest Hits (or misses?)”

By: tianhony@andrew.cmu.edu

tianhony@andrew.cmu.edu — Tue, 08 Sep 2020 00:07:19 +0000

When I first saw the title of “Greatest Hits (or misses?)”, I thought the article would be about what are or are not considered as physical computing, but it surprised me that these “overdone” concepts/ideas don’t appear “overdone” to me, and that’s probably just because I haven’t seen enough. Therefore, I’m really excited to see what will come out of this class, especially with covid-19, when”physical interactions” are looking extremely different.

By: Z

Fri, 04 Sep 2020 17:09:13 +0000

I used to think of physical computing’s interaction in a purely pragmatic way, but the mechanical pixels and the fields of grass show me that the interaction can also be creative and aesthetic. I also used to think of the interaction with the user as the dominant input and the device responses accordingly. But the mechanical pixels and the fields of grass rather possess “the will of technology”, even though might be basic, by acting in and reacting to its environment not for an end given by people but for creating an interaction with people. For example, the “leaves” of the mechanical pixels start to gently quake for attention when no one is nearby. And when people pass by, they form a wave and produce tinkling sound.

By: wanqiao

wanqiao — Thu, 03 Sep 2020 14:26:16 +0000

There are a lot of amazing physical interaction ideas come up every year. No matter what themes they are or what sensors they are using, they are all trying to explore possibilities combining the full-body movement to the object. This actually provides more interesting interactions than just using the fingers tapping on a screen. So I would say that my mission of this course would be to explore the body movements and provide intuitive but surprising feedback.

By: sakamath@andrew.cmu.edu

sakamath@andrew.cmu.edu — Thu, 03 Sep 2020 03:08:32 +0000

I found this compilation of themed projects interesting overall, but from what I’ve seen some are more rare than popular. I do however agree that everyone at some point or another makes a project where LEDs are the star. I liked the gloves, floor pads, hand-as-cursor, multitouch interfaces, and tilty controllers best because there are so many applications that can be made to use them. I’m really surprised that remote hugs has been a recurring theme- I feel like with the COVID-19 pandemic they could be really helpful for making people feel more connected and loved, but in normal times a project wouldn’t be nearly a good enough approximation of the comfort a hug provides.