The Media Computing Project (Winter '24/'25)

Instructors

For any questions about the class, please contact René Schäfer.

Syllabus

This year, you will work in groups of three to create an exhibit in the realms of deception called Deceptive Dungeon. For this, each group will conceptualize an interactive experience that takes people into the world of deception. All projects will be combined to form the dungeon. Little Gameboy-like devices called PyBadge serve as logic controllers for your prototypes. To build your projects, you will fabricate the needed parts in our Fab Lab. You will be creating software and hardware within the constraints, which poses interesting challenges for things like conveyed mood, deceptive techniques, and user experience. Your goal will be to make sure that basic Human–Computer Interaction (HCI) principles are still incorporated. During the semester, you will learn:

• the role of HCI in software/hardware prototypes;
• how to use beginner-friendly ATmega-based Arduino microcontroller boards and PyBadge, as well as the Arduino IDE to program interactive behavior in embedded software;
• how to create components for your game using our Fab Lab;
• the role of user tests.

After some quick introductions to these tools, you'll then have most of the semester to iteratively design, prototype, and test your ideas.