Experiment 2 Trick and Treat

October 26th, 2021 · Winter Yan · Experiment 2 No comments

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Project Description

Trick & Treat is an interactive installation designed for trick-or-treaters for Halloween. Before Thanksgiving, Dr. Kieran Moore, Ontario’s chief medical officer of health, released new guidelines on the celebration of Halloween. Trick or treating is officially back! However, social distancing is still accentuated, so I come up with the idea of designing a little monster box that can do tricks and collect candies at the same time.

In this work, I used purple card paper to wrap the box and decorate it with orange LEDs – they will work as blinking “eyes” of the little monster. Since the colors are traditional pick for the Halloween, the ones who see it appear at the doorstep will immediately relate it to trick or treat and interact with it. This installation uses level of luminosity to measure the proximity. Light sensor is placed at the front the box as the nose of the little monster. When a person approaches the box at a short distance, the amount of light received by the sensor will be reduced, which will trigger the LEDs change into 3 different modes. There is also a correlation between proximity and servo motor. As the person get closer and the level of lights goes down, the servo will push the lid of the box up and down, to surprise the person who interact as well as invite him/her to give a treat.

Bibliography:

CBC News (2021). ‘Trick-or-treating back, Thanksgiving dinners on (for the vaccinated), Ontario’s top doctor says. CBC, 7 October 2021

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/covid-19-ontario-october-7-2021-halloween-thanksgiving-1.6203047

Discussion of Calm Technology

This project uses one principles of Calm Technology:

Technology can communicate but doesn’t need to speak: The color palette and monster-like figure deliver the Halloween information in a natural way that in a lucid way that the user will probably understand. The change of blinking LEDs when the user approaches conveys a succinct signal that makes user know it reflects on the change of distance between him/her and the object. Through the up and down of the box lid, it indicates that the little monster also displays function of a box.