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.
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