Month: October 2017

Design for Discomfort / Final Project

| A-M Gallero

Map to an IVF Baby: Slide Presentation

Map to an IVF Baby is a place to start a conversation about the process of In Vitro Fertilization. The map above provides a visual terrain of what it’s like for a person to go through the IVF steps of trying to conceive a baby if they are unable to do it naturally. It’s a roller coaster ride of emotions and physical discomfort and I’m hoping to create an experience for the user going through the IVF process to help them cope with the anxiety and disappointment that comes with the procedure. These journeys can also help the friends and families of a person undergoing the IVF process to understand what goes into the IVF struggle and help them empathize to provide the right kind of support. My intention is to model a visual terrain of the map in a program like Unity and attach videos or interactive scenes to describe pieces of the process, which will be triggered as the user moves through the landscape. Below is a video of one part of the IVF journey:

 

IVF Journey: Injections

This video was taken from 2 instructional videos on YouTube on how to mix the powder and liquids with the syringes and how to give yourself the one of many hormone injections.

 

Documentation: Initial Idea / Progress Report / Final Presentation

 

Reflection: There are lot more steps to building this, but I also want to take my time and plan the journey in a more thoughtful way. I also plan on taking the feedback from the in-class presentation to help shape this. As a tool for people going through the IVF process and using my teacher’s constructive comments, the scenes can be more interactive by providing a sort of ritual or practice that the user can do in each mini journey, and by layering testimonials in combination to the video storytelling to further describe that particular moment. For myself, this practice of taking the discomforts that I’ve experienced in my own IVF failures and designing an experience around that created an outlet for myself to numb the sadness that comes along with IVF. I’m hoping to create that outlet for people experiencing the disappointments to do the same.

AUDIO SOURCE: AudioBlocks  /  IMAGE SOURCE: iStockPhoto  /   VIDEO SOURCE: YouTube

Understanding Networks / Week 8 / Packet Analysis

| A-M Gallero

PACKET ANALYSIS: For this homework assignment, I used both Herbivore and Wireshark to learn about packet analysis to capture and analyze traffic on my home network. This particular capture had 8 devices on the network router one morning while getting myself and the kid ready for school.

NAVIGATING HERBIVORE: When I started playing with the packet analysis programs, Herbivore was the easiest to navigate initially with it’s simple and visual interface. The first thing that I did with Herbivore was to figure out which devices belonged to what IP address on the network. I had 8 devices on the network and since it was the morning, the last IP address that I was trying to match was my partner, who was the last to awake that morning. Once he started using his cell phone to check his email and read his top news articles, I was pretty surprised by all the sites that were popping up on Herbivore. At first I was fixated on a very suspicious web address, so I looked up it’s IP address and checked the message boards to find any info on the site and learned that it was probably some sort of Malware that is blocked on Chrome. Then, I started scrolling more through his feed and saw lots of activity on vogue.com and wondered why on earth was he was reading that when he asked me to cancel my subscription. We figured out that he was reading a Conde Nast article and not only were there tons of random ads, but also links on the web page to other Conde Nast publications like Teen Vogue, Vanity Fair, W Magazine, The New Yorker and Wired, which can also be seen in the packet sniffing. I found that Herbivore was really good at getting detailed capture of what sites you can see at that very moment and I later took all the IP addresses and website data from this capture to start mapping out a list of ad and marketing companies associated with specific content sites and media companies.

DATA COLLECTING FOR POINTS OF REFERENCE: In order to read and analyze the relationships faster, I started collecting IP addresses that were popping up in my packets to create my own personal ‘yellow pages.’  By doing this, I could read the IP address faster and concentrate more on understanding the conversations and actual activity. Below is a snapshot of the companies that I see often.

The packet capture that I saw on Herbivore gave me a quick glance at some of the ads and marketing companies associated with a website or media company. By getting those IP addresses and weblinks, I was able to define some of the major and minor companies for Content Delivery, Data Centers, Internet Providers, Commercial Advertising, Marketing and Technology companies in the digital space. For me knowing the players gives me a better overall view of how everything is related to one another. Through this exercise, I also found some questionable IP addresses that didn’t seem to be reputable companies and by keeping some sort of history or list, I could keep track of or flag certain IP addresses or companies that show up on my network.

PDF / COMPANIES IN GREY WERE SPOTTED IN THE HERBIVORE PACKET ANALYSIS

 

 

NAVIGATING WIRESHARK:  When I first tried to use Wireshark, I wasn’t getting any packet captures, so I watched a couple of YouTube videos and referenced the Wireshark website to understand the interface and utilize the program. Figuring out what everything means and the amount of data captured for 8 devices is very overwhelming. I found myself trying to define all the the different protocols and ports to better my understanding of it’s makeup. Below is a little cheat sheet of PROTOCOLS with it’s varying LENGTHS that I came across in this particular capture as my reference points for analyzing the packets. For PORTS, this wikipedia page has a reference chart for port numbers and a description of the system processes.

What I like about Wireshark in comparison to Herbivore, is the flexibility in filtering and sorting the data to focus on a particular PROTOCOL or conversations between specific IP addresses. To analyze and dissect the protocols and conversations further, I exported this particular capture as a CSV file and opened it in excel so I could sort and group each protocol into individual tabs more freely. By separating the packets by protocols in each tab, I can then sort by length or info to see how a certain characteristics is linked to a certain function or activity. For instance in the snapshot below, I’ve isolated a UDP protocol at the 215 length and see that it’s mostly associated to a IP broadcast address of 255.255.255.255, which I suspect might be the web streaming to the TV. I’m still in the process of exploring and understanding the data, and my next steps are to focus on the activity that goes on in each protocol and understanding payloads and varying lengths of the packets, as well as learning to find the vulnerable spots within a network. With all the references and rulers that I’ve made for myself, I’m finding it easier to read the packets and to better understand my home network to help me zoom in on questionable activity.

EXCEL DOC / SEPARATING CAPTURE BY PROTOCOL ON DIFFERENT TABS

 

 

Design for Discomfort / Progress on Final Project

| A-M Gallero
PROGRESS REPORT:
1. More research on the IVF topic and Unity tutorials for building scenes and creating interactions
2. Roughly mapped out the journey
3. Created storyboards

 

ROUGH STORYBOARDS:
NEXT STEPS:
1. Continue IVF and Unity research
2. Detailing the map to guide the viewers through the journey
3. Build the “Routine of Daily Injections” scene in Unity: tried to build the assets, but decided for the sake of speed and better detail, to use photogrammetry to create the medical assets

Design for Discomfort / Pitch for Final Project

| A-M Gallero

For my final project, I want to start a conversation for the in vitro fertilization community. It’s a roller coaster ride of emotions and physical discomfort when a person or couple begins their IVF journey. The first steps is how do I choose a doctor or practice and how are we going to pay for this? Then, there is the anxiety and stress that comes from the actual procedure of countless injections in the stomach, buttocks and arms for over 10 days with cocktails of hormones and endless blood tests for monitoring appointments. Once the shots and surgery step is over, the waiting game begins for the results and whether or not to go to the next steps. And if it ends in a negative or failed response, it becomes an outpouring of sadness, anger, envy, depression and even self-blame with the eventual decision to make on whether or not to start the whole arduous process over again or take the difficult steps to stop and look for other options to have a baby, like adoption or donor sperm/eggs or to make that painful decision to choose a childless path. I want to figure out a way to create an interactive experience to give people an outlet to exchange advice and talk (or scream and cry). It’s sometimes hard to talk to your partner, or family and friends who have never gone through this because they might not understand what you are going through and sometimes they say the wrong things in the efforts to make you feel better, but it makes you feel worse. Being able to connect the IVF community can put people in touch with others that have or will go through that process. Since the community is spread out, I see this design as something that is web or mobile based or even in a game-like medium. Having seen some Facebook groups and message boards for these communities, I find it hard to sift through all the comments to find something in particular that you are looking for. Because of this, I envision a visual mental map of a person going through the IVF process with the terrain of the actual IVF procedure. In this map, a user can immediately go to the spot on the map that they’re on in the IVF process and be able to to engage immediately with people that are in the same stage of the procedure. And as I try to think this through to the end of the journey, I have the images of lanterns being released into the night sky as a symbolic way to cast away one’s grief and ill-fortunes, like in the Thai tradition of Loy Krathon to help in the grieving process.

ROUGH SKETCH FOR THE END OF JOURNEY:

Design for Discomfort / Journey #2

| A-M Gallero

Journey #2: Visual Discomfort

For this journey, I wanted to explore visual discomfort by focusing on the fear of holes, which is  known as trypophobia. Images of honeycomb, certain plants, cheese grater, inside a chocolate bar, corals or in some skin diseases can trigger this phobia.

What is trypophobia?
Trypophobia is a fear or disgust of closely-packed holes. People who have it feel queasy when looking at surfaces that have small holes gathered close together. For example, the head of a lotus seed pod or the body of a strawberry could trigger discomfort in someone with this phobia. The phobia is not officially recognized. Studies on trypophobia are limited, and the research that is available is split on whether or not it should be considered an official condition.

 

————

▪ Form: Visceral
▪ Goal: To alter the initial thinking patterns through prolonged exposure of the image to help trypophobe people learn to separate their initial thoughts from what’s real and not threatening
▪ Design approach:  Augmented Reality – Create an AR piece that takes the holed patterned and wraps it on a body part or fills in the holes that can be seen on a mobile device.

SOURCES:  Wikipedia, Business Week