Week 8 - Deliberations on the Concept!

After class we sat down as a group to single out the elements of the project, discard those that were not crucial and to focus on incorporating those that were seen as crucial to the design, output and meaning of the product.

The aim was to arrive at a concept that satisfies the commercial viability problems that were coming up in the Object workshops and to reduce the level of distraction that was becoming a concern in the Scenario workshops.

First was to revisit the initial concept again:

Week 5 - Concept Presentation: Burning the Candle at Both Ends...

Upon revisiting the initial concept the following were identified as crucial outputs within the original design concept:

• Real Flame:
• This is a major feature of the product as it provides a very real sense of presence.
• The depth of ingrained meaning meaning behind the candle and fire/flames.
• The use of a real flame can also assist the user due to the creation of negative ions that improve air quality. This in turn improves the users energy levels and the ability to focus on the task at hand. (See here for more information on the effects of Negative ions and Negative ion creation: Health Benefits of Negative Ions - About Air Ions - Neagative Ions For Healing)
• Consistent motion as a result of the real flame:
• Adds to the depth of interaction
• motion as a result of more people working gives the user better visual cues
• Provides additional 'nice' visual cues
• Assumptions:
• Prevents bordom

Unfortunately we still have concerns regarding the distraction that the motion may cause so the new concept needs to limit the motion to a less distracting medium.

Using Fire as an Indicator


Having decided that the use of a flame is crucial to the design we needed to define how we would manipulate it to produce a desirable output. The options available to us were:

• Candles (big, small, fast burn, slow burn, number of flames)
• Oil lamps (wide wick, narrow wick, adjustments to wick size, number of flames)
• Gas flame (flame size due to gas release, adjustable nozzles, electronic ignition, auto extinguish when gas is shut off, ignite from a distance)

The gas flame appears to be the best option for the moment as it seems to provide the most controllable output. 

Breaking Down the Motion

Having settled on the main requirements for the output of the product we set about trying to define the type of motion that we require. To do this we defined the constraints as driven by fire/heat, continuous, adjustable in terms of speed and non-erratic. The following is a list of motions that we deemed appropriate:

 After much brain storming, idea bouncing and discussion we came to a much more feasible heat driven motion. The resulting brain wave takes us to a Christmas ornament that uses heat from candles to drive a spinning propellor:

The German Chistmas Carousel/Candle Pyramid

The following explains what the video partly shows.

The previous bobbing candle simply contained far to many logistical challenges and had proven a logistical nightmare in regard to candle replacement, ignition of wicks, extinguishing of wicks etc. The new solution nolonger requires a moving flame or wax (as we will be able to utilaise gas) meaning that the end product will be less complicated and can be designed to be commercialised more easily.

I believe that we have found a viable concept that we can now develop the object and behaviour for. Next up is to test the principle and to see how it performs as a controllable output.