The Art of the Interactive Tattoo Part 4 – Post-mortem

I have already written too much about my tattoo experience, but I have a handful of final notes on things I learned along the way.  Thankfully nothing went wrong, but I know how I could have made things better.

What Worked:

• Design:  I am really happy with how the design as a whole turned out
• Domain redirect: I can change the target of my tattoo in a matter of minutes from my cell phone, which is just damn cool.  It also leaves tons of possibilities for the future by linking to videos, audio, even custom apps that can do things like augmented reality with the design itself.  The design can change with my mood.
• Artist: Conor did an incredible job getting a pain in the ass design on to my skin

What I would change:

• Investigate more domain names: My approach to my URL was practically to close my eyes and point.  I should have spent more time generating data matrix codes of a large collection of domains from eBay and deciding on the least complex code I could find.  My final code has a few areas that are asking to be a problem.
• Increase the code size: While I like the size of the code within the overall design, the bigger the better.  The code does scan today, but it is not as sensitive as I had hoped (it can take a few seconds of waving the camera around, and older devices with poor cameras do not like it).  I know that with age the code will likely stop working some day and will have to be revisited at that time to see if there is a way of bringing it back from the dead.

And that’s it!  Hopefully you found the process interesting or find this helpful in generating your own interactive tattoos!

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~ by Lifespan on August 22, 2011.