Interaction Design Institute Ivrea @ Belmer Negrillo  see personal portfolio at www.mindness.net
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Dance Position Study

       

An important point for the Wrist Brace VJ tool is the possibility of the pin-buttons (tags) being set according to the desire of the user, in positions of the body that are more comfortable, fancy or functional. To arrive in a good selection of positions and how these positions could mean specific commands, I did an exploration about basic dance movements that could be identified with a unique combination of angle of the wrist brace and pin-button tag contact.

The Sketches
I startet with my ugly sketches:


Opened arms, hand in the back, arms in cross;


Elbow in the wrist, fingers folded, hand in the ass;


Hands in the knees, hands behind the head, arms raised;


Hand in the waist, hand in the chest, arms relaxed;


hand in the pocket
, rubbing hands and hands in 90 degrees.

The Photographs
Then I tried with myself to see if I could get new positions or if the positions in the sketches were unconfortable:

First, put the Post-it tags:



Then, some basic dance positions (I am really far away from being a good dancer):










And, finally, with this material I could start to define how the main commands could work.

Conclusion
The conclusion I had was that, to identify a gesture in a unique way, it will be a kind of really complex and delayed recognition (which is a problem for VJ), even more with just a combination of angle of the wrist and tags. And, better, if I keep this recognition superficial enough (not too detailed) to just give the feedback to the user that his movements are generating specific real-time changes, and not worry in thousands of nuances and in the cultural meanings of the gestures, it will be really more effective to be a feasible product. Then the tags can be used for discrete commands or to set the meaning of the analog movements of the wrist, like, for example, "now the raised arm will mean increase the speed" or "now the raised arm will mean increase opacity".