The Beginning Search

So the past week I started to develop a beginning search on what spacifically to tackle within my design space: cosplay. It’s fun, and it’s just awesome. So here’s a news report as to what I did this past week – it’s written in note-ish form, so have fun with it!

It started with a conversation…

Here’s the results of a starting of a conversation with the professors at IU’s HCI/d program. There’s a lot to start with! Below is some more musings about what I could be doing and what I have done with the past week. It’s not too pretty, either, but it’s a start…
















Window Shopping on the Web

  • http://www.cosplayhouse.com/

    – This was an interesting place to window shop, as they sell everything, along with having commissions and convention schedules

  • http://www.cosplaymagic.com/
    – they sell costume packages, but also include video game and comic book characters as well
  • http://www.dream-angels.net/
    – they sell everything, commission costumes, auction, wigs, and even contact lenses!
  • http://www.cosaru.com/ This site didn’t appear to have that much to offer, but it also had more costumes of female characters, which doesn’t necessarily mean all of the customers are female.
  • http://www.harajukustyle.net/cosplay.htm I really feel this site knows what it is talking about. After engaging with this site, I want to save up money and go shopping for these clothes – they are bloody awesome! As a side note: in Japan they congregate around harajuku and cosplay for fun, where they mix and match different sets of styles.
  • http://www.qqcosplay.com This site sold many different costumes. I was impressed by the breadth of the selection offered – and it’s also from China as well!
  • http://www.solgoo.com/index.php This site didn’t have too much selection, and it also appears the community that was here has left.
  • http://www.cosplaylab.com/This was a great and awesome site. There’s a real community here, and has lists of cons to go to! One could see how experienced they were!
  • http://www.mooncostumes.com/pcat/Cosplay This site felt rather generic and business-y, and didn’t spend too much time there.



Internet blogs

I also began to start looking for blogs of people who cosplay, and here’s what I found so far: (looks like I lost a couple of them)

http://rayearthblue.wordpress.com/She makes her own costumes and goes to cons, and the pictures up there are superbly-well done. This leads me to wonder if and how cosplayers communicate at all, other than at cons?

Other pieces of awesomeness

  • Japan’s Akihabara district -otaku central, big cosplay area
    – so why and how did this become socially acceptable to do so in this area?
  • Activities done while cosplaying – example, cosplay chess? Can something be designed to help promote fun and more interactions while in costume?



More questions that I have left after this week

so is it the craft that i want to delve into?
so is it the exploration?
is it gender-issues?
is it applying it to IxD?
is it japan or only us kids i want to look at?

A big thought on my mind

For me, and my experiences in my life, I have constantly been reminded of how “the clothes make the man”. From a philosophical standpoint, I would also like to engage in developing peoples’ worth through their clothing and their actions. As a student, I don’t have too many nice clothes, so I don’t look like a scholar or a designer, and so I get treated in that way. What do you think?

Beginning to get inspired through watching YouTube

Whole Body Interaction

One of the topic realms I am thinking about exploring possibly

http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1165754.1165756&coll=Portal&dl=ACM&CFID=51498073&CFTOKEN=58045101

http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1242073.1242209&coll=Portal&dl=ACM&CFID=51498073&CFTOKEN=58045101

http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1459359.1459438&coll=Portal&dl=ACM&CFID=51498073&CFTOKEN=58045101

Wrapping Up Week 1

And so week 1 of the fall semester in IU HCI/d has come to a close. It was quite refreshing to get back to the grind of school again, and to also be able to interact with the people in my classes again. I’m taking 3 classes here: Capstone (a year-long personal project), Interaction Culture (I’ll also be blogging on the class’s blog as well), and HCI Theory. It should be a wonderful semester full of learning and growth. I’m also an Assistant Instructor for an introductory programming class in Python, and that should be interesting as well. I’ve already gotten most of the assignments done, which will be helpful when I get fully fledged into the design space of capstone.

Interaction Culture Snapshot

So what is it that we do in this class? Well, this week, although it was an opening, we first learned how to start thinking about critique and knowing how cultural and critical theory can help a designer not only grow, but be able to critique a design from a much higher-level of thinking. This will help to generate further insights about design, what the designer is designing, and how what is being design affects the system it is in. One example: we took a look at fancy (i.e. awesome) shoes, and we able to critique them. Here’s the shoe I was handed (along with a preview of what I’ll talk about next):





















Some of the thoughts I had about these shoes were: platform, 80s-style, thick shoelaces, amalgamation, combo of shiny and non shiny, entertaining, conversation starter, tread on the bottom goes onto the toes, hippy-like flowers, could see this as a DDR shoe, could be part of a set with a purse/satchel/manpurse, looks homemade, rich – the person hasa lot of money + DIY behaviors, the traditional tounge of a sneaker, some ankle supprt – the medium-high top, comfortable, yet warm, I wanna say disco, tight fit, not too many holes. Please feel free to add your two cents as well.

The goal of this exercise was to not only help open our eyes for critiquing purposes, but to also think the unthought and push this into the unknown.

HCI Theory Wrapup

During our first class with Erik, we were presented with the idea that this course will help us to find the metaphorical furniture of our brains and expose ourselves to these pieces. And by furniture, he means our own design ideas and biases. To first describe this, we did a quick exercise on how we work with other people: first, the goal is to draw a face with a friend, but each of you can only draw one line at a time. The face on the left (above) was the result of this process. The second face (right), was a result of taking the exact opposite approach in our heads to this design problem. It was pretty fun, and most of the class kept laughing while doing it. This was a fun exercise, which will help me keep liking the class, especially due to the high amount of reading involved. Images made with help of Ben

Capstone Fun

So, capstone finally started for our class, and I still have some questions as to how to approach or even get started with this giant project. So I am going to go and talk to some of my professors on this topic. It should be win – after all, the group I want to know more about and design for are cosplayers: these are the people who show their fandom by dressing up as their favorite anime and video game characters. There are few words to describe how excited I am about getting to know about this group, so I’ll save that for a future post. These will be under the category of “cosplay” here in the blog, so keep coming back for more.

Have fun! (^^)V

Becoming More Professional

During the past couple of months, I ended up doing some things that I have never done before, which have helped me to see how much more of an HCI professional I am now than a year ago.

Going to CHI


I went to the conference on Computer-Human Interaction in Boston, USA. The experience there was fantastic. I was able to see how not only how respected our program at IU is, but how the community at large welcomes each other to comment and critique each other’s work. I was also able to meet some wonderful people from the MIT media lab and Cornell, and was very excited to hear about their work and their PhD programs there. It helped to make the possibility of further education even more exciting and tempting. I also got to see the sights of Boston as well. Overall, it was a very exciting and expensive trip, but it was well worth the money and week off from school to go there (even if I had to wake up at 6AM every day to get to all of the festivities).

I will definitely plan on being at next year’s CHI. If you plan on being there, please write a comment here and I would be more than happy to discuss anything on design, technology, HCI, and what is currently going on.

The Capstone

For the past month here at IU, there have been some wonderful capstone presentations. A capstone is a yearlong project that every student gets to complete and then present their work in a public forum. This year, there have been projects on using technology to help the lives of the elderly, to creating new types of interactions, to using technology to help cyclists be seen by motorists. I’ll have to start this journey soon, and if you would like to see a topic, please feel free to suggest something, though I have a couple ideas of where I would like to start.

Keep it tuned here to see the latest in what is going on here!