TINK - sketching product experiences of connected objects

Market analysis - 45
2.5.1 Hardware
A wide range of different electronic
prototyping boards are present on the
market, each of them comes with a
different set of specifications regarding:
• Connection capabilities (usb,
bluetooth, wifi, ethernet, zigbee,
etc.)
• Numbers of available input output
• I/O capabilities (i2c, PWM, ADC etc.)
• Programming language (C, javascript,
python, linux, MaxMsp etc.)
• Processing power
• Hack-ability 5 (does the board come
with a fixed set of extension sensors
or can you connect a wide range of
other electronic devices?)
An electronic platform is required whenever
an experiential prototype requires reading
value from the world and/or affecting it
trough sensors and/or actuators.
Although this category of archetypes
describes hardware platforms, it must be
specified that in most of the cases, in order
to define the behaviour of an electronic
board, the board has to be programmed.
The practice, also known as physical
computing 29 requires the user to acquire
knowledge on two quite different discipline
such as programming and electronics.
Some boards however are intended to
make the application of interactive objects
and environments more accessible. Thus
allowing interaction designers to use them.
Two main strategies are leading the
development of electronic prototyping
boards for interaction designers:
• The first one is providing the user
with an “easier” way to program the
board. In the case of Arduino 28 for
example it was decided to use an IDE
that is very minimal and similar to
processing with which Arduino also
shares the programming language.
Lego Mindstorm 30 instead can be
programmed via a graphical user
interface by connecting several
building blocks together (Figure 29).
• The second strategy is lowering
the barrier of the electronic
development 31 : Some platforms come
with pre-assembled modules that the
user can just plug in to the board
without worrying about resistors
capacitors or breadboard. Examples
of this are the tinker kit for Arduino
(Figure 30) and the Phidgets board 32 .
Because my focus for this project is
analysing tools aimed at the development
of experiential prototypes of connected
products, the different boards were
categorized according to the strategy
used to connect them to the Internet, the
different connection layouts respond to
the different needs of every project.
Figure 29. Lego mindstorm
programming interface.
Figure 30. Arduino Tinkerkit.