As a short summary, I didn’t blow up anything this time, yay! I also submitted a self-grading test on electricity and past materials which wasn’t too difficult (I think so now, but I might be overestimating my knowledge…). And it felt quite normal when I was working with the wires and the breadboard. The only problem I had was related to Arduino software. Obviously, I spent an hour trying to figure it out and only then I gave up and asked for my teacher’s help. As I thought, my schemas were alright and the disconnected port was the issue. After I fixed the software, everything was working! I wonder, whether my neighbors can hear me screaming “It works, it works”!
The first lab was focused on using Arduino software to code the LEDs or buzzer to work when you use the switch. In another lab, we implemented the potentiometer to gradually change the light of the LED. Unfortunately, the potentiometer I got from Russia wasn’t really convenient, as it had short and thick legs, so the connection was easy to break. I tried to use the buzzer in the first lab but it looks weird – it has only 3 legs, so I’m still confused about the way I can connect it. I hope to ask this question in the class tomorrow. But right now I’m going to enjoy this romantic atmosphere created by the LEDs.
The schemas for the first and the second labs
Playing around with the working circuit
Trying not to break the potentiometer while troubleshooting the circuit
One of the readings that I found controversial was a chapter from Norman’s Emotional Design. The chapter was called “Attractive Things Work Better” that in my perspective doesn’t fully correlate with the chapter’s main theme. I believed the author wanted readers to know how important emotions and affect are when one is using an object. Norman used broad terms like “being happy” or “feeling good” without defining them. However, they’re quite subjective. What one person calls satisfaction, another person calls happiness. I also noticed that most of his arguments were one-sided. Norman didn’t provide any criticism to the studies he mentioned or didn’t review studies with different results. And after 4 years of studying Psychology, I’m certain that there were studies with various findings. Hence, I didn’t trust his overall argument because it wasn’t elaborated enough.
But there were some points that I agreed on. For instance, when Norman explained top-down and bottom-up processing and three levels of processing. I still don’t believe that we ever will be able to develop a theory that would encompass thought processing of every single human. And that’s what designers are trying to do: create the design that will be used by everyone even though everyone is so unique that it seems rather impossible to do. But I guess if there is a problem there will be a following progress to solve it.
Summary: This week labs were definitely easier compared to the ones last week. The coding part was a bit of a struggle but once you understand its logic it becomes less frustrating. Hence, I’m quite happy with my small progress and I hope I will become even better at it.
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