I got a good night’s rest last night and woke up with possible project ideas on the brain, initially for my Flash course. The train of thought gained enough momentum that I decided to boot up and write a little to start my day…
Flash is an application that motivates and reassures me sometimes. Why? Well, it’s a piece of software that combines technical coding (with Action Script) and visual design (with the ide). It’s a blend similar to ITP itself — on a micro or macro level, depending on your perspective. AS3 specifically seems to be more hardcore than AS1 or AS2, more closely related to other object oriented programming languages, so that’s positive in the sense that my draw to the application will automatically force me to improve my “engineering” self. And there’s Flex and Flex builder for development, which I still don’t fully understand, but seem beneficial, much the same as Eclipse is beneficial for Java and other software development. The ide with Photoshop-like tools and a timeline is much more natural for me to use, since I would consider myself a visually oriented person, and my instances of “flow” generally occur when I’m creating something visual. I remember spending many hours in a foundation design course on simple assignments, not because I hadn’t fulfilled the requirements already, but because I was so wrapped up in analyzing different possibilities until my eye was satisfied.
Anyway, needless to say, I think Flash is great, and I will improve my skills with it with time undoubtedly. But this entry should be more about my ideas interconnecting coursework and general career path / project direction. I took a class with Amit Pitaru called Designing for Constraints last year. It wasn’t a stressful course, but it was challenging, built new skills, and exposed my mind to various new concepts, which is really my ideal course. In the context of this mornings brainstorming, it is relevant for a couple reasons. 1- Amit is an interesting instructor and I suspect a really cool person, whose path I’d like to know better and potentially follow, and 2- I made a game in his class called Burbujitas, which I could work on evolving now. If I do expand the game, it would become a project both for Flash and Live Web; it would be significant enough to serve as a fundamental direction/pillar in my ITP work.
The game itself would be assistive, education, and social. The primary audience would be paralyzed individuals who are learning to use sip-and-puff technology and would benefit from a connection with others experiencing the same lessons who might be living in different parts of the world. In short, Burbujitas is a 2-player, lightly (ferociously) competitive game, with a goal of improved coordination and a prize of victory and virtual ice-cream delight. At this point, the controls are marginal and the design functional. As a Flash project, I could take the graphics and animation to the next level and migrate the code to AS3. As a Live Web project, I could add live video screens around or in the game itself to allow players to view their competitor in real-time. This would require the use of shared objects and the Flash Media Server.
Further, I attended a Web2NewYork networking event last night in the Lower East Side (LES), where four groups of young entrepreneurs pitched their concepts to what seemed to be a room full of middle-aged venture capitalists. How does this relate? So, there’s an overload of information in my generation, and ITP, a graduate program focused on technology and the information age doesn’t exactly reduce the amount of information, though it does offer ways of filtering and understanding the information at times. This perhaps is why I’m so drawn to meditation/sleep, exercise, and dreams as a form of escape. Additionally, maybe it’s part of why I want to keep “quality of life” at the core of my work. Getting back to the event last night, I’m reminded that much of what my peers and I are reading and thinking about is designing for and actually building the future of technology and thus the future of interaction and society. I’ve put myself in an environment where staying on the cutting edge is the aim. In one sense, I think of this as progressive thought and infinitely important. On the other hand, I think it’s super challenging to come up with original ideas for the traditional privileged audiences that seem to be easier to keep in sight. So, as the masses move forward, are their populations needing better designs, needing universal designs? Clearly. What’s keeping me from having my focus there?
End brain dump. A good night of sleep is… good.