The Tech-tastic Team

The technology is of course one aspect of Money No Object that is fundamental to the success of my payment prototypes, their wearability and the ease of the social interaction which they will enable. This is just one of the reasons I am so lucky to be working with Seb Madgwick and Phill Tew in order to develop the electronic devices and visual info graphics that underpin my concept and turn it into a fully functional reality.

By this stage, Seb has now set up four different wearable systems for the four different gestures by which people will be able to make a donation (the four gestures are handshakes, high-fives, hugs or tap-dances). Here’s a quick demonstration:  Quick Demo of Wireless RFID readers 

Seb has also 3D-printed a rig for winding the RFID reader’s antennae – these have to be specifically 71 revolutions of a 12cm diameter circle, in order to achieve the required resonance, to work with the 125Khz frequency tags:

3D printed antennae rig

At the same time, Phill is developing an interactive info graphic, so that there is a visual representation of each transaction and gesture as it takes place. We decided that bubbles, as well as a more traditional wave graph, would be a good indication of the popularity of each gesture, particularly considering the metaphor of stock market bubbles, prone to bursting! Here’s Phill programming the code:

Phill visual programming

The four different gestures on screen will be colour-coded to relate to the colours of each of the different wearables and gestures. So after experimenting with some hand dyes and prototype gloves….

Blue glove dyeing

…we have decided that a handshake will be ‘Bahama Blue’, the high-five will be shades of ‘Tropical Green’, while the hug takes its colour from the bright pink V&A volunteer badges to which the RFID tags will be attached. Lastly, the Tap & Pay tap-dance will be coded to a soft purpley hue, also sampled from some of the museum’s volunteer badges:

Colour samples

And here’s a preview of the info graphic:

HINDER_DIGITAL_DESIGN_WEEKEND_10

All this is to be tried and tested soon, at the forthcoming Digital Design Drop-in on Saturday 30th August in the V&A’s Sculpture Gallery. Come along and shake hands!