In this three-week module in Interactivity, students explored the phenomenological understanding of space with the material of web technology.
In Interactivity, students purposefully do not create concepts or solve problems, they are engaged with pure experimentation and building knowledge through design.
The notion here was to support quick spatial organisation through the use of categories which have a sense of spatial locality.
Scheme for organising things on the basis of categories. Once assigned, items take on a colour and position.
Can the orientation of the phone be the means of navigation? Rather than manipulating an on-screen element, in these sketches it is the device itself that is manipulated.
An early sketch for revealing different content depending on the orientation of the phone. The colour of the circle and black dot are placeholder visual indicators.
Here, orientation is explored in a more bodily manner.
A series of experiments about how to furnish screen space.
Tilting the phone to the left or right shifts the position of the ‘hamburger’ menu.
Tilting the phone makes items available.
Making a confined space - items can only be re-arranged horizontally.
“While having an endless (working) space might seem tempting (and is certainly possible), removing any dimensions makes it very hard to comprehend such space or navigate in it. We only understand space by understanding how the things in it relate to each other and to the dimensions of the space itself. Removing the possibility to compare things to the dimensions of the space puts even more pressure onto being able to compare things in space to each other. So, for instance, when working with text in an endless space, one needs to think how text can be made into landmarks that would help user find their way around.” - Kovtun
Zooming in and out of regions.
Using colour to suggest location.