COURSE DESCRIPTION:

An introduction to interactive technology with a focus on how we use technology to express ourselves and interact with our environment. This class will combine a hands-on exploration of sensors and microcontrollers with concepts of interaction design employing a structured design process. Students will work on creative group projects and provide on-line documentation of their work. An array of sensing technologies from simple switches to video tracking will be introduced. Students will use the simple programming of microcontrollers to process incoming data from sensors.

project description: After a few weeks of introductory materials and exercises students will propose a final project idea. The proposal requires them to state a problem that they will try to solve using the technologies taught in this class. They will present their proposals to their classmates and vote in ranked order what are their top 4 favorite project proposals. The three highest ranked projects will go forward with the student who proposed it as the team leader for and the remaining students will be assigned to the projects they ranked the highest. The students will then do research on methods to solve their chose problem, prototype a solution to it and document their design process and problem solving methodologies which will be presented at the end of the semester with a group presentation and accompanying page on the openlab site for the class.