This project was driven by my curiosity of people’s intuitive behaviours with physical interface design and their reactions to what happens after. I found this to be an interesting area to learn and experiment as a product designer because it allows for me to creatively approach and influence my practice of experience design. The Button & the Switch is the first iterative process of learning how people interact with physical interfaces and its relation to digital projection.
The Button was created as an interactive game where the buttons on the interface trigger different reactions to the elements that are being projected. While one person will be playing around with the interface, another person is needed to interact with the projections of the elements. I gave no instructions as to how the physical interface will communicate with the projection other than that at least one person was needed on either side.
I found this particular interaction with Gerald, our INTM technician, to be how I imagined audiences would interact with my installation.
I had some expectations and assumptions on how people will interact with the minimal instructions I gave them, which proved to be different when I presented the project. I still found myself having to guide people on how to communicate with the projection and the interface, and explain what each button does. As this was an experimental and first phase of the installation, I still found value in the discrepancy in people’s interactions with the interface.
