Day one
2007-07-02 12:16:38Monday
We got the first introduction today and some good advice of our teachers how to do organize the next few days. It's been great to meet this big group of people coming from Sweden, the Netherlends, Turkey and Austria. We of course do not know each other very well but - as it was recommended to form groups of four people as soon as possible - most of us already found common interests with some of the other students. The turkish students already showed us the city a bit so we have of course a lot of influence here in Istanbul which we can put into our project.
Day two.
2007-07-03 12:16:45We fixed the groups today and started working in the studios. Our group name is "Mucize" which means miracle in turkish. So far our ideas are going in the direction of representing digital stuff physically. We seem to have a lot of analog idea fragments currently and have to focus a little more on the possible meaning for interaction design and the whole user experience part.
Day three.
2007-07-04 12:16:53We have to make some decisions today althought the whole process of keep ideas flowing is of course not finished yet. There should have been a presentation in the afternoon - formal critic - by our teachers. But it was postponed until tomorrow at 9.00 in the morning. So we still have some more hours today to focus on what we are going to 'present' tomorrow so that it's going to be possible for the speakers to give us some useful input.
We decided to create some simple slides and a very short flash-demo until the next day as we had the impression that our idea - THE MIRACLE MIRROR - was not too easy to understand when described with a hand drawn poster we used first.
Day four - Formal critique
2007-07-05 12:16:58At 9.00 in the morning we started the presentations today. It was quite a good atmosphere - serious and relaxed at the same time. The speakers of the summer school gave some useful feedback but unfortunately some technical problems avoided conveying the core ideas of our idea. The projector didn't work so we couln't show the MAC OS X application Photobooth well which should make our idea of people being fascinated by mirror clear. Anyway there were some hints that were useful.
In the afternoon some of the students started an individual round of giving feedback which was very informal but extremely useful. It turned out to be a lot easier for us to take a different perspective onto other students' projects than it was possible for themselves.
Currently we are thinking about the best way of bringing our idea to the point and finding the appropriate visualization.
Day five.
2007-07-06 11:44:37Brainstorming again. Talks about the poster we have to produce until the next week. We are totally into the ideas about the mirror interface. Currently we decide who is going to do what until Monday. We went to historical places in the city in the afternoon which is already part of our fieldwork we are going to continue tomorrow. Our turkish colleagues were guiding us to the Hagia Sophia. One of the most important mosque in Istanbul. The size of the building and its many changes throughout the centuries were most impressive.
There are a lot of impressions in the city - from tourism to history and modern art - that can and shall influence the outcome of our project.
Day six. Field work.
2007-07-07 13:20:04Today we did field work where we officially had time to see Istanbul and focus on the impressions we would like to put into our work.
Day seven. Prototyping ...
2007-07-09 17:54:25We were fiddling around with Eyecon for creating a very basic interface for test purposes and also to be able to show our teachers which way we are going to develop our idea. After a short feedback in the afternoon we were told to more focus on a more formal description of the project and an appropriate presentation concept. So this means that we concentrate on the task and how to share them among the team members.
Day Eight.
2007-07-09 18:42:42Today we were finishing our scenario and the necessary imagery for the presentation on Wednesday. As we needed to find a big mirror we somehow had to improvise by using the mirrors hanging in the toilet of the university. In Photoshop we created one big mirror out of this to visualize the scenario and the overall effect we wanted to achieve.
Day nine.
2007-07-11 13:44:16Day ten. Presentation day.
2007-07-11 13:46:38We had our presentations starting today at 9:00 o' clock. Everything went well except that we had to fix a flash error that appeared in the mirror dummy right before the start of our show. We also had to change the laptop that we wanted to use for showing our outcome because of an hardware error when connecting with the beamer.