Media Design Program | Art Center College of Design

Sherlock Holmes & Dr. Watson

Good Living

In this assignment, the purpose is to design a text based hypothetical, emotionally complex conversation between a person and a computer or two computers. My initial starting research is in the topic of Binary Decision Trees. The intention is to let the technology-centered research to inspire the context. Therefore, by investigating the field and its logic and strength, I use the research outcome as the framework to build a non-linear interactive story with Processing.

The characteristic of Binary Decision Trees is, by interacting with the system, every time you answer a YES or a NO, it leads you to a different trajectory and eventually a different result. Its congenital ideology is similar to detective novels which usually contain logical reasoning steps. The narrative is mainly about the conversation between Sherlock Holmes and its computer partner Dr. Watson. Participants will have to anticipate with the conversation in order to find out who kill the victim.

Content oriented design usually grounds itself with an idea which follows by a means and technique for project execution. The valuable lesson to this exercise is the unconventional design process. It starts with an existing technology which leads the project to a logical and complete result. It offers a different way of design process and thinking.