We started off the week early on Monday with multiple reservations for the laser cutter at the Makers Lab. Lama and Sascha had the files ready and started off on the outer box then onto smaller details. Neel was at the studio working on Unity and coordinating its sequence in accordance with pressing the buttons. Ola was busy with editing the video and adding some special effects. By the end of the day, we had the box ready with some of the parts already waiting to be integrated. Also, we used some of the paper we got the week before to cover up the box instead of painting it. Sascha received the pins that day and brought them to the studio; everyone there wanted one!
On Tuesday, we completed decorating all of them and glued the box’s sides together adding some final touches with the help of Ola, Neel and Mick. Sascha decided to re-do the the box for the buttons and covered it with Aluminum like paper. Later that day, we connected everything together: put the box over the TV and connected the cables to check if everything works.
Wednesday was for last minute adjustments and extras. Lama printed business cards for the team and rented the laptop that we were to use during the conference. Sascha decided to add some funny labels under and above some of the integrated parts on the front of the time machine. Halfway through the day, we started trying out the prototype on people from the DSS community and got good feedback! At 16:00, we started to pack and headed to NDSM in Noord where TNW was gonna take place to set up. We also got our name tags on the way.
Thursday, the first day of TNW, we met there straight at 9:00 and already, people were starting to come. The first person to try our prototype–to our luck–was the chief of the current police. He liked it and even wore the badge for the whole day! Eveline was with us for the first half of the day and was constantly encouraging us; on the second day, Illona joined as well and was very helpful. All throughout the day, we took turns standing beside the prototype to give people who would agree to take the survey a quick explanation of what our research is about and how we’re using the prototype in it. We also tried to look around and go to some of the talks and the workshops that were ongoing in parallel. We noticed that some people got a bit bored during the the streaming of the scenes in-between the questions and decided to add a skip button for those who wouldn’t want to spend the whole of the five minutes at the stand. Neel worked on adding this feature after the first day of the conference. All in all, it was a successful day!
The second day of the conference was even better than the first, now that we had the skipping feature, people were more okay to try it out. We rotated, taking turns standing with the prototype, explaining and giving people who finish the survey the pins afterwards. The conference was very well organized and set up; and it was nice to get feedback on the prototype and let people know about what we were currently doing at DSS. An experience that will be remembered for sure!