Thinker
SPECULATIVE UX • ACADEMIC • 2020
Thinker adopted a speculative approach to conceptualise a faster way to brainstorm,
mind-map and record large amounts of data for Cause & Effect thinkers by using gesture recognition and a voice based UI.
Project Details
3 weeks long
UED - II @Indian Institute of Art & Design
Work Overview
Research (Primary & Secondary) - Gesture to Action Identification - VUI Flow - Device Design
Mentor
Mr. Shyam Attreya
Introduction
Visual mapping of information has been steadily favoured over the past few decades. During the time of writing this, Miro and Whimsical have taken over teams of different disciplines as the go-to software for visual maps. However, during my interviews with researchers of varying levels, I realised that digital tools were simply slower for certain people with a specific thinking pattern.
Cause & effect thinkers often find logical connections between seemingly unrelated pieces of information. They do this by looking at an outcome as the effect of a cause and then that cause being looked at as an effect of another cause. This process is constantly driven by the question: why?
When interacting with people who used this method of lateral thinking, I came across another interesting fact: these thinkers usually thought aloud when mapping information (usually on a Whiteboard). Simultaneously, I was also looking at whether these inherent practices have any sort of implication on learning / connecting different pieces of information. To my surprise they did. You can read more about the study done by Brian Ross, a University of Illinois psychologist.
This began the conceptualisation of Thinker, a gesture-based mind-mapping & brainstorming tool coupled with a voice-enabled User Interface.
Due to the time constraints of this project, I was never able to build out the visual interface for Thinker. Hence, I presented the platform to my class by using it as an overlay on the UI of Miro.
The most exciting part of this project was to venture into the world of Voice Based User Interfaces. However, with the very little understanding I had about the field, I created a happy path to suffice as a concept. The interface is nowhere near completion as voice-based interfaces require many iterations as human input can be varied.
