APD wk1 Play & Self

By Gin Lin

Wk 1 response - Play and Self
When I think of observation and self, the most recent experience that comes to my mind is the time during lock down. In the past two years, I’ve been trying to cope with the pandemic like the rest of the world. It was a difficult, while trying to keep the daily life routines and adjusting my disrupted school/ career plan. It was a dark time for me. And it got worse after I decided to postpone school after my first semester in 2020. I felt isolated not only physically but also mentally. I felt I was left behind and everyone else has moved on. I spent a lot of time trying to “fix myself” with different solutions, but nothing seem to work.
During the period, I noticed that I took deep breathes/ sigh so many times a day, which had turned into a habit of mine. I would do it unconsciously whenever and wherever, such as cooking, taking shower, doing laundry, eating chips, gardening and etc. It was a shocking discover, because I had never been a sulking person.
It’s probably a coping mechanism that my body developed, trying to survive from stress and anxiety. Fortunately, after things got better (especially be able to get back on campus), I started feeling more relaxed with less sighs through out the day.
In response for week 1, I build on this behavior change of mine. I looked into how the sound of my inhale/ exhale corresponding to the sense of relief and the thoughts that follow.

Method:

• I will observe the sound of my breath. I will try to visualize the thoughts and relief with animation. The idea is: if my brain is currently programmed sigh = down mood / drown in stress / gasp for air perhaps I can use play (interaction / manual activate) to “reprogram” it, by teaching it with up-lifting animations and with repeating hand gesture.
• recored a few different types my sigh
• short animation clips corresponding to the sound and thoughts
• got a few items that serve as “stress ball"
• working with makey makey 1. coding for keys that trigger sound and animation 2. connect the objects to Makey Makey and the computer
• recording the play

Context:
The four items I collected are:
1. Melamine sponge
2. Dog chew toy
3. Stress squeeze pineapple
4. Worry stone (Shiva Lingam)
The themes for the animations are transformation and inspiration.
I observed the energy of my breathing. I wanted to transform the negative energy into something positive.
The clips all started out with a seed, which represents that my mind/ thought was wrapped inside and trapped. I created four clips, a boat, a tree, a city sketch of Melbourne, and  a ballon. The concept for the tree is straight forward, the seed growing into a tree of ideas. The boat and the ballon both represent motion/ movement, moving myself forward and free. I apply the voiceprint of my sigh and recreate a quick sketch of Melbourne city line. The image symbolizes I enjoy coming back to Melbourne and being one of the voices in the city.
I encountered some technical hiccups while working with Scratch and Makey Makey. I set up the animated sprites with trigger keys smoothly, following the tutorial.
However, when I tried to assign the sounds to each clips, I discovered that the length of the sounds didn’t match the durations of my animated clips. I had to redo some recordings and also adjust the  playback speed and frame speed to better align them.I also had to try a few different sound coding to have the sounds playing and ending on point.
When I connected my objects to Makey Makey, I also tried a few different way of wrapping  the wires for alligator clips to have a better result in squeezing experience. I also missed the part where it needs to be grounded for it to work in the first few test runs. I had to go back to website back and forth to figure out that obvious setup.

Project outcome: https://youtu.be/SlUgj1tsN4Y
Animations: https://youtu.be/0exZ4a6IyCo

Reflection:
The project outcome is quite satisfying. I like the squeeze feedbacks of the objects. The Stress squeeze pineapple is my all time favorite, artificial pineapple scent is a plus. Squeezing the objects is satisfying enough and the short animated clips serve like the sprinkle on ice cream.
I had a few test runs with my housemates. They state that they are fans of squeezing toys to begin with, but they were also drawn to the visuals. Because the clips are only a few seconds long, they were lured to squeeze the toys a couple more times trying to take a better look a the animations.
The experiment reminds me of two things, sensory toys for kids and fidget toys.
There are lots of researches about these two kinds of toys. In Sheryl and Brasell’s research, Using Stress Balls to Focus the Attention of Sixth-Grade Learners, the stress balls, as fight toys, helped students focusing more in class learning. I personally own a few fidget toys. Based on my experience, they do help reducing my anxiety. For this project, I also put in my worry stone, which I use to calm myself.
Purrble, a mouse-plushie look companion toy also work with a similar theory. (https://www.purrble.com/about.html) Purrble has heartbeat vibration and it responses to hug and fidget. It starts out with fast heartbeat and then calm down after being patted. Purrble is build based on the research, I just let him cry...: Designing Socio-Technical Interventions in Families to Prevent Mental Health Disorders by Dr. Petr Slovák, whose professional field being in Human Centred Interaction, mental health intervention, and learning sciences.
While I was generating my animated clips, I thought of the sensory toys for infants. They are often with vibrant colors and require some sort of gestures playing them. These are visual and touch stimulation, which are similar to my project outcome. Perhaps I can consider this project as my "Purrble", a calming toy for myself that help me re-larning how to calm myself again. (or I just missed it the first time)
My housemate also pointed out that how the project building experience is similar to Nintendo Labo series, where you build the cardboard kit and play the video game with what you build. In result, building this project is also part of play.

References:
Purrble https://www.purrble.com/about.html
Stalvey, S., & Heather, B. (2006). Using Stress Balls to Focus the Attention of Sixth-Grade Learners. Journal of At-Risk Issues, 12(2), 7–16.
Slovák, P., Theofanopoulou, N., Cecchet, A., Cottrell, P., Altarriba Bertran, F., Dagan, E., Childs, J., & Isbister, K. (2018). "I just let him cry... Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 2(CSCW), 1–34. https://doi.org/10.1145/3274429