Calm automaton

Abstract

Today’s current society is inundated with an excessive amount of information and so more people are starting to pay attention to calm technology as a way to protect themselves from the overwhelming number of alarms and notifications. As information became more personalized and localized, various customizable calm displays were introduced in the market. Nonetheless, none of them were successful in providing an integrated system for designing ambient displays and for mapping data from the internet. In this thesis, we introduce Calm Automaton, a tangible programmable DIY toolkit for ambient displays with descriptions of each process taken to implement an easy-to-use system for general public. This thesis demonstrates the concept of Calm Automaton concretized after two consecutive workshops

layering two-dimensional motion modules to create three-dimensional motions, and tangibly mapping data states with motions with an Android application. The toolkit allows users to easily design and make motions of the automaton by attaching their desired images to the motion modules. This design process later revealed more inclination of users to customize personalized data. We envisioned that the characteristics of data should be taken into consideration while designing the user interface not only for the mapping process but also for the way of displaying motions, and this thesis is concluded by listing things to be improved in future works.