Saadia's Blog

Category: Design

  • GPT Time Poems

    In my office I have a Raspberry Pi running a DAKboard dashboard. It shows the time, the temperature, and my calendar.

    Inspired by this Twitter thread, my dashboard now also shows a poem!

    I’m using the GPT-3.5 model via the OpenAI API to create a short poem about the current time. It shows on my dashboard to brighten my day.

    In visions of the evening tide,
    The world takes on a softer side,
    As light begins to fade away,
    And 4:19 bring the end of day.

    ChatGPT 3.5 in the style of William Blake

    In the garden at half past four
    A sparrow chirps, then flies once more.
    The roses bloom, a symphony red,
    As the sun begins to dip its head.

    ChatGPT 3.5 in the style of William Blake

    The sun sets at 5:49,
    A time to end and to unwind.
    The day is done and so are we,
    Until tomorrow, we’ll be free.

    ChatGPT 3.5 in the style of William Blake

    At five to five the sun still sleeps
    The world outside is dark and deep
    The moon shines bright, a silver light
    As stars twinkle in the night.

    ChatGPT 3.5 in the style of William Blake

    It looks something like this:

    Ignore the mismatched times – I took this screenshot while overseas, so one time shows local and one time shows the time in my office. The background is a selection from my favourites album, in Apple Photos.

    How did I make this?

    I’m using this prompt to generate the poem:

    It’s ${currentTime}. Write a 4 line rhyming poem in the style of William Blake. The poem can be about anything except the passing of time, and it MUST include the current time in the format HH:MM.

    If you’d like to do something similar, you can view the code for it in this GitHub gist. It’s pretty straightforward to copy / paste that into a DAKboard HTML widget – you’ll just need to update the paragraph’s style tag to suit your dashboard.

    How much does something like this cost to run?

    • Each prompt / response requires about 100 tokens.
    • We run the request every minute of the day – 1,440 times.
    • That’s 144,000 tokens a day.
    • The Chat gpt-3.5-turbo model costs $0.002 / 1K tokens.
    • That makes $2.88 per day, around $85 / month.

    Careful prompt design would allow you to half this. For example, you could go with a two line poem instead:

    It’s ${currentTime}. Write a 2 line rhyming poem that includes the current time.

  • Phygital

    By day, my Product Design work is purely digital. I work in the limitless realm of Software.

    By night, I’ve been experimenting with Physical Product Design, modelling and 3D printing all sorts of useful widgets.

    The cross-over between Digital and Physical worlds is lots of fun.

    So when Lior, my 8 year old son, presented me with a drawing of a character he imagined, I had the idea to try to bring it to life as a physical object!

    Lior’s Pokémon inspired character, based on a sunken treasure chest.

    I’ve tried modelling on a pancake screen, and for really technical designs with precise tolerances, that works great. But when it comes to quickly bringing to life a unique, messy, interesting character, I jump into VR.

    Using the Valve Index and Microsoft Maquette, I 3D modeled Lior’s flat drawings. Modeling in VR is a game changer. It allows me to design spatially, physically moving around my room and around the character, drawing and shaping in three dimensions.

    Then I export the model, and open it in Blender, to clean up and properly scale.

    The result gets exported as an .stl file, and sliced by UPStudio, before being sent to my Upbox to be made real!

    For the finishing touch, I wanted to paint it. To help me know which colours to use, Lior recreated his original drawing on his iPad.

    I’m not the world’s greatest painter, but I gave it a good go. Here’s how it turned out!

  • Experience Design for the Blind

    When creating VR games and experiences, we should design them so that they can be used by the blind.

    VR for blind people may seem counterintuitive, but if you think it through it makes a lot of sense. The thought occurred to me after visiting the Notes on Blindness VR experience, followed by something Lucas Rizzotto said on the Research VR Podcast.

    I hate buttons, and I hate two-dimensional interfaces… a Like button is exactly not the way to do it.

    Lucas Rizzotto

    It’s often said that VR is a visual medium, but with properly implemented spacial audio, VR can be an auditory medium too. There’s no reason why someone who experiences actual reality without any visual information couldn’t do the same in a virtual environment.

    Thinking about our virtual worlds in this way also helps us to imagine interaction paradigms that fit better in a 3D space. For example, if 2D menus are out – what creative possibilities exist to replace them?

    Some other examples:

    • If the user has no visual information to understand their position in the world, what audio cues can I provide?
    • Maybe there should be a lake rippling to one side, and the wind rustling the leaves in the trees behind?
    • How do I represent locomotion and movement with sound?
    • Are there any sounds reflecting the players status (health, stamina, or effects)?
    • How can I precisely position an obstacle or goal with audio cues?

    Of course, thinking about our virtual worlds in this way will profoundly increase immersion for everyone.

    https://radiopublic.com/research-vr-podcast-the-science-Gy9P3G/ep/s1!bfcc1

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  • More Pixels: My First Computer

    I got my first computer in 1993. It was a Macintosh Color Classic. I’ve always owned a mac since then.

  • Pixel Art

    It’s very important to me to be a creator, not just a consumer.

    It’s very easy for me to consume, and consume, and never stop. It’s hard to let the inspiring inspire.

    Recently I came across a Kickstarter project for an 80’s arcade themed game 198X. This time, I couldn’t help but be inspired by the retro art style. So, I decided to give it a go for myself.

    My kids, pixel art style. @10x

    After a half-day of art history study, tutorials, and practice, this is the result. I’m really happy with it, and I’ve resolved to keep practicing. Maybe animate those little limbs and create a side-scroller?