coffee mug interface: envisioned...

But is it an interface? And moreover, is it a real intervention in the condition of contact?

Here is my submission, in all it's glory. First, a photo of the proposed object: a wrap placed on a travel coffee mug. The wrap is heat sensitive and changes it's pattern (like a chameleon) as the temperature of the coffee inside the mug changes, giving the user a visual cue to what's happening inside the mug.




I put together a video to illustrate how the patterns would change over time. (This video includes music...adjust your sound settings accordingly).



I built the patterns using typography (the digits of the temperatures of the coffee as it cools) because I wanted to explore the ways in which abstract patterns can be constructed to have a more narrative meaning—in this case, to tell the user the coffee is cooling. All the patterns are built with only the digits for the specified temperature and simple shapes filling in the negative space I created.

To strengthen the (tenuous, I know) narrative quality of the shifting patterns I also introduced scale, color and orientation shifts. The pattern begins with larger digits, a fiery color palette, and a very horizontal orientation. As the patterns signify a cooling of the coffee, the colors become more purple-y, the digits become smaller, and the pattern goes to plaid. The final iterations of the pattern have even smaller digits, an icy blue-gray color palette and have become vertical.

I was given much to think about and reassess during our crit session. Is this "interface" changing the condition of contact? Why did I choose a travel mug and then create an interface that isn't very useful while traveling? Why didn't I account for the pattern showing the amount of liquid inside the mug diminishing as the temperature cooled? Why not create something more concrete and entertaining (instead of just an abstract set of patterns)? Why a wrap? Why not just engineer the surface of an actual mug?

And the doozy, is the surface of a mug, or even the mug itself, an interface?

These are all questions I need to digest a bit longer before I respond.

coffee, tea, or me?

Coffee. Coffee in the morning. The metal travel mug between me and my coffee in the morning. The lack of an interface between me and my coffee in the morning.

These are the things keeping me awake at night lately.

I have a deliciously ritualistic (and let's face it, religious) relationship with my coffee. I can't live without it. Simply cannot function without the precious. And when I say ritualistic, I really do mean it. I make it exactly the same way (with slight variations in brand, and sometimes additives like cinnamon dumped directly into the filter) every.single.morning.

I go to the kitchen, open the pantry door, grab the open bag of coffee (and I always finish one bag before I open the next...no cheating!), open the cupboard next to the pantry and grab the black plastic Gevalia measuring spoon I keep with my spices (why? I don't know, I just do, so there!). Then I turn to the counter where I keep the blessed pot, open her up, pull out the full and spent filter from yesterday morning, throw it in the trash, and replace it with a shiny new one. I rinse the pot out with water, fill to the almost 6 cup mark, and fill up the reservoir. I measure out 5 rounded Gevalia spoons of coffee, dump them into the filter, and let the maker rip. (Sometimes, I use whole bean coffee instead of ground, but I'm sure you understand where that difference would fit in).

It's the same. The same every morning. The same motions, the same positions, the same actions and behaviors. But really, that's just the routine. Just my normal, workaday, slightly OCD routine.

The ritual, the religion, comes in the reverence and the waiting. Once I've added the Splenda to my travel coffee mug, the coffee, and the splash of milk, I twist the top on, and then I wait. During the wait, I will probably drive to school, walk to the studio, and turn my computer on. Maybe I'll chat with a classmate or two. All this time, I've still not had a sip. Not one sip. Because I'm waiting. This is the ritual. And this is why...

I hate hot coffee. There, I said it. My secret is out. It burns my poor little mouth and I hate it. I also hate cold coffee (not iced coffee, of course, because in the summertime, iced coffee is a little slice of heaven, but, it's supposed to be cold then). Cold coffee (completely cooled coffee) is disgusting. And lukewarm coffee is not much better than cold coffee, really.

But warmish-hottish coffee...now there's your gold. When it's not really steaming anymore, but if you look really hard it still is, sorta. That's the best. Then you pick up the mug, inhale the aroma, and take that long delicious sip. Man. And it warms your mouth, your throat, your insides all the way down into your gut. And you can't wait to take that next sip. But you do, you wait so you can prolong the ritual. Because it feels that special, that precious. You want it to go on forever.

And here is the crux of the issue: if you wait too long before you start your sipping, if you miss the cues and don't catch the coffee right as it hits that delightful warmish-hottish stage, then before you can finish your mug, the coffee has gone cold and gross and ick! And then you drink it anyway (don't want to be wasteful, and face it, you need the caffeine), but it's not the same. The ritual has been replaced by gross cold coffee, and you cry inside a little bit.

I am going to fix this. Well, I'm going to attempt to fix it. My studio explorations, for this, our first and warm-up project, will be to alter the interface of the metal travel coffee mug, to change it and thus change the experience someone has with it. I want to create a set of visual (and hopefully delightful, joyful, stimulating and interesting) cues that live on the outside of that mug that will intuitively inform you of how hot your coffee is at any given moment.

For now, I envision this as a heat sensitive wrap, applied on the outside of the mug. The wrap will have the ability to display many different visual images or patterns or some sort of aesthetic cues which will intuitively correspond to different temperatures. I want to do this in a delightful and engaging way. So that the interface will not purely be about the temperature of the coffee, but also about the fun of watching it cool down. Of catching the mug at just the right change in the interface. Of learning at which point in the visual cues that is, and of learning when the people around you enjoy their coffee most. So people will comment on each other's mugs with snappy, clever jokes. "Hurry up, Sarah, your coffee's going plaid!"

I need to do a LOT of exploration of pattern and texture and image to see if the idea has any merit. But at the outset, I feel it really does, and that the process of creating a pattern or image for my beloved warmish-hottish, will, at the very least, be interesting and engaging (and probably at least a little infuriating). I'll keep you posted.

let's face it: we're interfacing...

What a monumental subject to tackle right out of the gate. Interface. What is an interface? What does it encompass? What does it suggest? What does it think about? Who are it's favorite authors? Is it lonely? Is it tired?

What does my first source for definitions (the handy dandy hand-held dictionary, of course) have to say for itself?

Interface: 1) a plane forming the common boundary between two parts of matter or space 2) a point or means of interaction between two systems, groups, etc. vt., vl. faced, facing: to interact with (another system, group, etc.)

This holds true to what I left our last studio session with: interface is what lies between two things. It's the screen/pixels/browser window that lies between you and the inner workings of your computer. It's the pane of glass that lies between your body and the world outside your home. It's the travel coffee mug that lies between you and your precious, precious coffee in the morning.

It's the membrane, the surface, the skin, the (sometimes) intangible that is betwixt and between and often unseen or unknown (sometimes, by design). It is what unites and divides, enables and hinders, delights and confounds: and it seems that the goal for so long has been to make it seamless (and maybe seemless) and nearly invisible and un-noticeable.

But why couldn't designers and developers sometimes strive to make an interface that was in your face? Delightful and unexpected and so lush and interesting that the act of interacting would be full of joy and wonder? That could make for an interface worth writing home to mama about?