Jun Sik (Jason) Kim Introduction

Background / Why I’m here

I’m really looking forward to attending Physical Computing 1 and playing around with Arduino. I have a background in industrial design. Until now, I’ve been designing products as an undergrad and participated in projects that collaborated with Samsung, LG, Motorola, etc. in Korea. But there was only so much I could do because I did not have a clear notion towards the engineering part of design. I wanted to study how products worked and what limitations they had. As I studied industrial design, I also became more and more interested in communications and medias of communication. I really wanted to create a new means of communication and take it to the next level between user and device. I believe it critical to increase the role of interactivity in products for the future. I worked for three months in Korea in a design consulting firm that solved problems using design methodologies before coming to MFADT. Because I want to create a new platform for communication, I want to learn the basics of physical computing so that I can later on incorporate it into my thesis. I believe all designers should understand at least the basics of coding and physical computing as these serve as the basics necessary to create products these days. With the open source community ever increasing, coding and physical computing can only get more fun. I’m eager to see what I can learn!

Favorite Toy

My favorite childhood toy – although it is very tempting to say that it is the Lego — is called Granzort. It comes from a Japanese cartoon called Granzort. I used to love this cartoon and figure toy when I was in elementary school. While trying to look for pictures of Granzort in the internet, my heart started to flutter again! I love this toy!

 

 

It is basically a toy that reshapes itself once a person enters the body of the robot (in the cartoon). The robot then kills of the bad robot – just like any other cartoon. But what was so special about this robot was that people would actually enter the robot through a beam of light and the movement of the person would parallel the movement of the robot. The robot moved exactly the same way the controller moved.

The whole transformation of the robot and the relationship between controller and robot made my jaws drop with fascination at a young age. I will never forget this toy. I would bring it with me everywhere I went. I would always reshape the toy and imagine myself being inside the toy controlling the robot.

Here is a Youtube link of the cartoon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqJSf4t8JkY