Response Questions

What is my concept / individual focus / individual responsibility for the project?

The concept is an interactive elevator which aims to provide a fun and engaging way for people to travel in the elevator to their floor. My individual component of this idea is to develop the technology for the specific audience of elderly and disabled users.

Key Functionalities

• Voice recognition/answer acknowledgement
• Interaction for a single or multiple users

I aim to replicate the elevator experience as close to the real thing as possible.

Firstly, I will build the general shell of the elevator using a square shower in one of my bathrooms.

From these images you can see the glass around the shower so in order to make it more like an elevator I need to make the glass dark or black. I could always put cardboard on the glass but I think this will take a long time and will provide the same results as using 4 sheets for each side of the glass. This will ensure all the glass is covered.

After this I will add in the aesthetic features that resemble an elevator such as the buttons for different floors and the US level light system above the door (this bit will be simulated as the the elevator isn't actually moving).

As it will be very dark inside I will most likely need a light or torch over the top because some of the software for poses need a lot of light to be able to recognise you.

What is the ideal finished product? (All technical and physical obstacles ignored!)

The ideal finished product is an interactive elevator that does not annoyingly disturb people but instead helps them become alert and ready for the day. It should also be fun and enjoyable and shouldn't feel too repetitive even after using the system many times.

Initial Defined Concept

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I worked on the prototype documentation first just to have a guide of what to include in the prototype build, a sort of most viable product defined. As I got to the interaction section however I found that in response to the brief it is playful but the interaction could improve in novelty. The images below represent the current plan that is being modified in terms of interactions to be improved.

Continued Research

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With this concept I am hoping to design for an experience that is collaborative, playful/ fun, creative through exploring colours, and somewhat immersive. As the images above really didn’t depict this intention I set out to conduct interviews and observations. In these times it was quite interesting how it was done but I was able to gain really insightful and surprising data. Where the research did say children should have room to freely create or express through creating this was limited in reflection from observations done (conducted over zoom).

For observations I asked three parents to present their child with a blank paper, a paper with an image to colour in, and lots of colours (could have been crayons or markers or both). Of the three observations conducted all the children preferred having an image to colour in than blank paper. This also coincides with interview responses where parents expressed their child prefers to colour in something they interest in for example favourite cartoon characters. This indicated that they had creative freedom to colour in how they choose or according to their imagination but it is somewhat guided by an existing interest of the child. This information I will now use to guide the contents of what is to be coloured in but I was still missing aspects of defining the interaction paradigm that this concept would follow.

Was particularly intrigued by this train concept. It is colourful, collaborative and helped children explore colours. Not particularly physical interaction beyond moving around building blocks but it was enough to inspire changes to the initial concept.

Connecting Train Block

http://projection-mapping.org/connecting/

Other concepts also inspired other forms on interaction to be incorporated as well. The images below best illustrate this.

Interactive funky forest

https://lrbizarrebazaar.wordpress.com/2012/03/27/1679/amp/

Wisdom well

http://www.tuvie.com/wisdom-well-interactive-floor-offers-a-fun-way-to-learn/

Grafitti Nature

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/dec/14/magic-touch-when-museums-get-family-exhibitions-right#img-1

For next week I will look at technologies to be used in the physical build of the concept.

This week I worked some more on the related work section of team project and defined aspects of individual project direction.

Related Work (group project):

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I specifically created this is a key for identifying subtopics within the overall topic. It was actually interesting to learn of the recognition and significance now of integrating creative learning to improve learning outcomes of schools. It is not just for our young target audience but for older students as well. Research work has found that it makes a child more confident with subject area being explored and this is derived from a freedom to express their own understandings. It is also found to encourage children to direct their own growth as far as academic explorations outside the classroom. There were a few aspects that were outstanding in exploring the creative learning domain: every child is creative, teachers nurturing children’s creativity, problem solving and critical thinking skills being homed, a fun environment boosts creativity.

There was particularly an interactive installation by TeamLab in Japan. There children would colour in (a fish for example) then it would be scanned and they can watch it (their coloured-in creation) swimming in the large aquarium with other fishes in the ocean. The image below represents this information.

Individual Section idea

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Work/ Focus on the unstructured creativity elements.

A big part of creative learning is freedom to express own understanding of something. I want my concept to allow users to freely create form their own imagination. Sort of like a blank canvas and they can put anything they want on; draw, paint, colour. All virtual/ augmented of course, but still open enough to unleash their imagination. The concept should foster collaboration as well as individual work where the users have the agency of the type of experience they choose to have. The interaction will be with a large display carpet. It will initially be presented as a blank canvas in the form of display similar to a touch screen. The children can sit, walk, stand, or lay on it while it is being used. To interact with the display surface they will need interactive and colour representational gloves. The gloves will be in accordance with the standard additive primary colours red, green, and blue (RGB) and will have touch capacity to interact with the surface. By using the red glove only on the surface then only red will be drawn/ coloured unto the screen to reflect the movement of the child. However, if the child collaborates with someone wearing a pair of green gloves then together they produce yellow colour on the canvas. If the child wants to colour alone, they can still mix colour by using one red glove and one green on separate hands to produce a yellow colour or drawing in.

The images below represent the above explanation.

Initial thoughts on how to create this concept is:

• Epoxy resin solution for carpet writing surface
• Ways to project ultra short throw images from behind for structured learning
• Ways to project an interactive/ responsive writing surface on the carpet/ resin solution
• Ways to detect difference in pressure applied to write on the carpet for example if someone is writing on the surface with their hands or feet versus walking on the carpet.

* walking would be represented by footprints moving around but disappears once the student stops walking

* or further disappears when a different input is detected such as drawing/writing with their hands.

* It detects walking pressure and removes it once walking stops

* It detects drawing input and needs an eraser glove to remove it

I am still researching possible ways to build the physical installation for testing but so far this is how it is looking.

Presentations and feedback using zoom, slack and watch together

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Some really interesting ideas were presented and I could see how some have developed from some Pitch inspirations done in Week 2.

Two concepts did stick out to me namely, Botherhood Technology and Team Hedgehog Speakers.

• “Botherhood Technology’s Cushion. Set to help users curb long sitting habits, motivate them to get up and be active. It is good use of audio feedback to get the user’s attention to what they are being encouraged to do. I can see how this responds to the brief by incorporating physical type of interaction.” I can also really see this being a concept that annoys the user who would really not want to get up and walk around or get some exercise in. Either way, it is on a good path to helping person change to a healthy habit by not remaining seated for too long.
• “Team Hedgehog Speakers really designed specifically for the visually impaired audience. It would be real interesting if the audio was moving instead of static sound at each speaker. To help the user determine depth of distance. Like the sound of walking or running in a direction towards or away from the player. That could possibly enhance user experience.” In response to the brief I could see how this is being designed with a playful interactive experience in mind. Interesting to see this kind of play for a visually impaired audience and to be honest even those who aren’t high find it intriguing and challenging.

Team Twisted Feedback

Our team’s concept critique was insightful as well. We gained insights on how to make the concept appeal to a specific audience such as those who are colour blind. Some critiques also pointed to being more playful and unstructured creativity. The main considerations pointed out were:

• Collaborative or Individual user modes.

• Colours in correspondence with emotional triggers (a sort emotional intelligence to be incorporated in learning about colour mixing).

• Movement of the alien being camouflaged (instead of a fixed position on screen.

• Realign curriculum research to coincide with specific target audience in Australia

• Include different types of interactions not just applying pressure to the mat to get and mix colours (interactions like sliding, jumping, etc.).

• “Make it a memory/word-learning game” (this one could be overwhelming for young target audience being introduced to colour theory and learning other concepts as well).

• Use standard primary colours to first create new colour and store them to a colour library. 

• Include sounds and vibration effects when playing the game for enhanced user experience.

• Accessibility considerations like physical/vision impairment

• Showing HSL/RGB at the same time for persons who are colour blind


Of the feedback received peered with exisiting work in the Creative Learning domain, I have decided to focus my individual project direction on unstructured movement activity still wishing the team concept of introducing Pre-Primary and Year 1 Primary students to colour theory. The related work has indicated that a big part of creative learning stems from first having a guided/structured movement activity exercise followed by one that is unstructured where children are free to express their own interpretation of an image, story, or concept. I have taken into considerations forms of interaction in addition to applying pressure to the mat to produce colour mixing. It is still not quite clear what interaction paradigm or the forms of interaction and the content that target audience will be interacting with for this concept. The project however remains in the team domain of exploring creative learning through introducing colour theory concept to children ages 4-6.

For the following weeks I will look at exisiting solutions or designs that are similar to the direction I am taking for inspiration and some design guidelines as well.

Concept

My individual focus is a fluffy toy that allows children to identify colours and shapes by exploring the objects. The ideal finished product is that the toy is able to communicate normally with the children with the goal of assisting the kids to learn and explore different objects. The toy will be able to voice output the questions, identify the objects the children are holding in terms of the colours and shapes precisely and send feedback such as voice encouragement and light glowing.

Technology

With the research and consulting with tutors, I have defined the method to implement the prototype. I planned to build an object with various functions:

• Colour and shape processing

This will be achieved by open cv with python, because there is little available Arduino material for shape recognition. Thus, I will use open cv and connect with the camera to do image processing, and then send the results to Arduino to send the output.

• Outputs

The outputs will include colours that show the correctness of the answer and different feedback that will be defined after researching and interviewing.

• Speech input and output

Arduino component, Elechouse V3 Voice Recognition Module will be used to complete the function. However, research will be done to figure out how to implement it and to define better alternatives.

I did some research work around creative learning from the perspective of educators and found the following to be key elements :

• Critical thinking
• Problem Solving
• Collaboration
• Communication
• Reliving the adventure after it has happened
• Student-centred classroom

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCFg9bcW7Bk

Based on our team discussion I drew up a concept to see if our understanding was all at the same place. The image below represents this initial drawing.

From further discussion another idea was put forward for the team instead.

From the new idea proposed I researched the problem area and then formulated an understanding of creative learning for our context. In this research I created a mind map to further explore key elements of creative learning such as collaboration. The images below represent the mind map and the mind map’s outline for clearer visual/ detail that informed our concept.

Due to the lack of Arduino components, I haven’t started using Arduino. I have done some researches for different functions of my prototype:

Colour Sensor

TCS230/TCS3200

https://howtomechatronics.com/tutorials/arduino/arduino-color-sensing-tutorial-tcs230-tcs3200-color-sensor/

General resources for colour sensor

https://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=291882.0

PhotoResistor

https://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Use-RGB-LEDs-to-Identify-Colours-DIY-Colour/?fbclid=IwAR368c9lzzcnEUoqFF4Q6LHPPe0zjYI3gtUp8D0Jl0oNnFX8dRDNX_61I

There are different approaches to achieve the function, and I will be focusing on using TCS230 to accomplish it.

Shape sensor

Pixy2 Camera

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=391dXDjqzXA

The material is quite expensive and complex. However, with the Pixy2 Camera, colour recognition can also be achieved.

There are little arduino components that can identify shapes, and the suggestions from the tutor is to do image recognition through a software and send the data to the Arduino.

Voice Recognition

The simplest way to recognise voice

https://create.arduino.cc/projecthub/Jalal_Mansoori/simplest-way-for-voice-recognition-project-using-c-toarduino-105138

This method uses the software on the laptop to process the voice, instead of the material itself.

FTDI convertor (200inr) , arduino uno(400 inr) , Geetech voice recognition module (1800inr)

https://www.instructables.com/id/TukuTuku-Voice-Recognition/

This approach is complex and requires many materials.

Elechouse V3 Voice Recognition Module

https://create.arduino.cc/projecthub/kksjunior/voice-recognition-with-elechouse-v3-and-arduino-5b8af2

Bitvoicer

https://www.instructables.com/id/Speech-Recognition-with-Arduino/

I will be focusing on this approach since it is relatively straightforward.

Carrying over from Week 2's Journal

We did World Cafe exercise where I learned more about each theme identified from the previous week as well as more about my classmates and their topics of interest. The best part about this activity outside of learning and building on concepts was the music in between discussions. That made it really fun. The images below represent some of the discussions had.

Following the identifying themes from Individual Pitch Presentations, as a collective effort we went around on whiteboards writing what sub topics of over arching themes and concepts that would fit in each. There were some concepts being in more than one category. The images below represent this class activity.

With Bash:

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• Get to know recruiters
• Form professional relationships with ppl in the industry
• Be aware that the recruiter is already 50% over the workload
• When meeting with recruiters or potential employer consider 50% resume and 50% they like your personality

In class activity

My name is Chuike Lee

I am a VR Developer for Creative Learning

I am unique because I am and stay committed to find new ways of making learning fun for children. I am unique because my experiences are shaped by both adversity and abundance attributing to characteristics suitable for success in any work environment.

My name is Chuike Lee

I am a VR Developer for Creative Learning

I am unique because my experiences are shaped adversity and abundance attributing to characteristics suitable for success in any work environment.

I am Chuike Lee, a VR Developer for Creative Learning. My experiences are shaped by adversity and abundance for success in any work environment.

Chuike Lee, VR Developer for Creative Learning for success in any work environment.

Chuike Lee, success.

Chuike

• What does Chuike mean to me. There are many developers, designers, lots of characteristics. There is one one me and the value attached to that is who I am.

Portfolio:

Document the work of what you have been doing this whole entire time.

Think of Portfolio as “Telling a story”

Figure out how much you cost Including rent, go card, living expenses, saving (as an expense). Then go in and tell them what you want.

It was an interesting talk with Bash, and very insightful into how we should approach the job market as well as market our brand which is ourselves.

After BREAK

After the break we got to know our team mates by answering the questions below:

What is your biggest pet peeve in general

Tell about the worst haircut

I work best when

My favourite time of day is

I find it hard to work in a team when

I get the best results when

From then we developed a project charter and discussed the below Audience and Environment for prospective project concepts.

Audience: Primary school Children

Environment: Classroom

Presentations were interesting and afterwards it was also helpful to group ideas pitched into certain themes. The activity of identifying themes and grouping pitched ideas of the day sort of brought home the idea of collective work. It was still individual but some how reminds me of business meetings where potential investors inspect an idea and make notes of what they think about it. That aside, based on the ideas pitched some main themes such as fitness, creative learning, music, and bothersome technology were outstanding.

The images below represent this detail.

Peer critique was also helpful because they gave feedback on what works and what could be improved on if the concept were to further be developed. They were also helpful to point out how the concept responds to the task brief. At the end of presentation on each day we group wrote down themes on sticky notes. This was helpful to identify topics that were outstanding as well as to kind of group concepts.

Images below are of the critiques given.

This week I was also able to get the soldering induction done. It was a breeze and really fun. Images below of this activity.

7HCI Grand Challenges

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First a few words and terms that stuck out to me from the beginning of the lecture were:

Inadvertent algorithmic cruelty (Facebook post for dad’s daughter’s death example)

Automating Inequality (Virginia Eubanks) Algorithm that decides whether a child was at risk or not seems like it would be a good read.

• symbiotic- a sort of mutually beneficial relationship
• eudaemonia (a holistic view about our health)

I was apart of group 2 and explored the challenges such as privacy, research issues, interaction in public spaces, implicit interactions, novel and escalated interactions, interactions in virtual and augmented reality.

By looking at these challenges and how they may impact the human-centred approach to designing. Currently interactions with technologies may be subconscious and unintentional as well as the technology itself may be either visible or invisible. One thing for certain is the ubiquity of technology in today’s society but not without its challenges, some namely in the section above.

From the reading the overall challenge here is that with the increased and diverse integration of technologies and diversified interactions, it brings into question “what interactive affordances can be made?” and “what are the right approaches to getting there?”.

Interpretation of the Challenge

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Are there differences in how the challenge is interpreted

Why do you consider this challenge for the future

Our individual interpretations of this challenge looked at :

• The VR and AR interactions - the challenge here is making these platforms experience more realistic
• Implicit interactions - the main challenge here is privacy concerns
• Interactions in public spaces - the challenge here is how does technology attract passers by and motivate them to engage with it
• Novel and Escalated Interactions - the challenge here is to consider new opportunities for combinations of technologies to be used together.

Short description of challenge capturing key elements/ considerations of the challenge.

Challenge 2 addresses the interactivity between human and technological/ smart environment, giving consideration to how interactivity with technology is perceived.

The images below represent the group discussion around this challenge.

Round 1

Group Activity

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Initially this activity was a tad bit confusing just because I didn’t understand the instructions. Essentially we used cards to randomly select words that would then form a sentence. We use this sentence as an inspiration/ guide to come up with an idea. I found this a healthy way to generate ideas especially in a group where you are just being introduced to others. It gave everyone the opportunity to effectively participate and a great way to spur on ideation through collaboration. The photos below illustrates progress through this activity.

Round 2

Individual

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Design to Obscure/Obscuring in the Kitchen using Point interaction that is Tribal

What would I want to obscure in the kitchen?

Garbage

Seasoning Rack

• A season rack that hides its contents when it detects no movement but comes clear when user opens recipe app in their phone and points it to the rack
• A garbage can that opens when the user points their foot at it
• The kitchen drawers that shut by pointing foot at it
• The kitchen cabinet that opens when its content is pointed at it example the wine glass cabinet.

Design for Debate/ Debating in a Shopping Centre using Whisper/ Speak interaction that is Unobstructed

• A crystal/ globe. A ball that is clear but becomes opaque when it is whispered to.
• A mannequin in the shopping store that reflects face expressions when it is whispered to something about its attire. For example when give a compliment about its outfit it smiles or nods in agreement. If someone disagrees it frowns.

Design for Debate/ Debating in a Shopping Centre using Whisper/ Speak interaction that is Disgust

• A chair in the nail polish store that knows foreign languages, It listens in to the conversation between other chairs activated and the nail artist. When the person in the chair doesn’t know how to respond in the artist’s language the chair whispers the witty response for the client to say.
• When there is a heated debate at the cash register in a store the machine whispers “its time to listen to each other or call the store manager”
• When the bins at the shopping centre are full passers-by can speak to it to alert the caretaker that it is full

Round 3

Multi

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Design for Train/Training in a Kitchen using sound that is Forever

Changed to : Design for Train/Training in a Kitchen using sound that is Playful

We shared ideas with different sound effects to make it more playful like “a throw up sound when compost waste is thrown in”

If the bin tracks the user’s usage and then when it is full it says the user’s name who deposited in it the most that day to empty it

A technology where the knife talks to you. If it is being used to cut something it responds with verbal to comment on how well or wrong it is being used.

To summarize this was a fun way of generation new ideas from random topics presented or guided by the cards.

7HCI Grand Challenges

---

First a few words and terms that stuck out to me from the beginning of the lecture were:

Inadvertent algorithmic cruelty (Facebook post for dad’s daughter’s death example)

Automating Inequality (Virginia Eubanks) Algorithm that decides whether a child was at risk or not seems like it would be a good read.

• symbiotic- a sort of mutually beneficial relationship
• eudaemonia (a holistic view about our health)

I was apart of group 2 and explored the challenges such as privacy, research issues, interaction in public spaces, implicit interactions, novel and escalated interactions, interactions in virtual and augmented reality.

By looking at these challenges and how they may impact the human-centred approach to designing. Currently interactions with technologies may be subconscious and unintentional as well as the technology itself may be either visible or invisible. One thing for certain is the ubiquity of technology in today’s society but not without its challenges, some namely in the section above.

From the reading the overall challenge here is that with the increased and diverse integration of technologies and diversified interactions, it brings into question “what interactive affordances can be made?” and “what are the right approaches to getting there?”.

Interpretation of the Challenge

---

Are there differences in how the challenge is interpreted

Why do you consider this challenge for the future

Our individual interpretations of this challenge looked at :

• The VR and AR interactions - the challenge here is making these platforms experience more realistic
• Implicit interactions - the main challenge here is privacy concerns
• Interactions in public spaces - the challenge here is how does technology attract passers by and motivate them to engage with it
• Novel and Escalated Interactions - the challenge here is to consider new opportunities for combinations of technologies to be used together.

Short description of challenge capturing key elements/ considerations of the challenge.

Challenge 2 addresses the interactivity between human and technological/ smart environment, giving consideration to how interactivity with technology is perceived.

The images below represent the group discussion around this challenge.

Round 1

Group Activity

---

Initially this activity was a tad bit confusing just because I didn’t understand the instructions. Essentially we used cards to randomly select words that would then form a sentence. We use this sentence as an inspiration/ guide to come up with an idea. I found this a healthy way to generate ideas especially in a group where you are just being introduced to others. It gave everyone the opportunity to effectively participate and a great way to spur on ideation through collaboration. The photos below illustrates progress through this activity.

Round 2

Individual

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Design to Obscure/Obscuring in the Kitchen using Point interaction that is Tribal

What would I want to obscure in the kitchen?

Garbage

Seasoning Rack

• A season rack that hides its contents when it detects no movement but comes clear when user opens recipe app in their phone and points it to the rack
• A garbage can that opens when the user points their foot at it
• The kitchen drawers that shut by pointing foot at it
• The kitchen cabinet that opens when its content is pointed at it example the wine glass cabinet.

Design for Debate/ Debating in a Shopping Centre using Whisper/ Speak interaction that is Unobstructed

• A crystal/ globe. A ball that is clear but becomes opaque when it is whispered to.
• A mannequin in the shopping store that reflects face expressions when it is whispered to something about its attire. For example when give a compliment about its outfit it smiles or nods in agreement. If someone disagrees it frowns.

Design for Debate/ Debating in a Shopping Centre using Whisper/ Speak interaction that is Disgust

• A chair in the nail polish store that knows foreign languages, It listens in to the conversation between other chairs activated and the nail artist. When the person in the chair doesn’t know how to respond in the artist’s language the chair whispers the witty response for the client to say.
• When there is a heated debate at the cash register in a store the machine whispers “its time to listen to each other or call the store manager”
• When the bins at the shopping centre are full passers-by can speak to it to alert the caretaker that it is full

Round 3

Multi

---

Design for Train/Training in a Kitchen using sound that is Forever

Changed to : Design for Train/Training in a Kitchen using sound that is Playful

We shared ideas with different sound effects to make it more playful like “a throw up sound when compost waste is thrown in”

If the bin tracks the user’s usage and then when it is full it says the user’s name who deposited in it the most that day to empty it

A technology where the knife talks to you. If it is being used to cut something it responds with verbal to comment on how well or wrong it is being used.

To summarize this was a fun way of generation new ideas from random topics presented or guided by the cards.

Meet the group

This week we formed our group, and I'm delighted to be part of that group, which includes Vicky, Sylvia, Snow, and Edward, and our theme is the body as the controller. After a brief discussion, our group decided to call it 'Hi Distinction'.

concept

Revolving around the main theme of our group, the concept of our group is first established through research and analysis of the problem domain. We decided to focus our concept on reducing people's pressure. Before determining our problem area, we had many discussions. At the beginning, our group had a lot of differences in the choice of concepts. Some said that they hoped to design the existing concepts, and some hoped that the concepts would be more With new ideas, there are other hope concepts that are more targeted. Due to the many differences, we have conducted many rounds of discussion on our concept. In the beginning, our concept was relatively broad, because we started from our subject body as a controller and conducted a divergent brainstorming. We discussed a lot of concepts that are not applicable, but after such discussions, we have a very broad scope. Finally, we lock our concept to a concept that is aimed at people's daily decompression and a concept that is aimed at people's daily climbing and climbing. We have some differences on these two concepts, and then we have a detailed discussion, and then we think that although the interactive methods of climbing-related concepts are very good, they are not enough for users to produce a long-term use. It ’s attractive and it ’s too big, so we decided to abandon this concept.

Therefore, our final concept is decided to help people to decompress this concept every day.

This week was a bit more hectic than expected, because we ended up losing two team members and gaining a new one. I completely understand people's reasons for choosing to drop the course at this time, and it was nice that we had some time this week to sort out the new directions we would take as a result of feedback from last week's presentation, as well as new team formation.

Following meetings across the studio and workshop sessions this week, we decided that individual concepts would work best for our team set up, as none of us live together, and it would be difficult to collaborate on a single design. We decided to focus on using music and sound in a primary school classroom setting to help learn in other non-musical areas, such as maths and art. We then helped each other flesh out our individual concepts through discussion and brainstorming.

At the beginning of this week, I was undecided on what my concept would be, other than a vague idea of somehow using music to help students learn braille. I did some research into this during the week, as well as spoke to tutors during studio time, and ultimately came to the conclusion that there is very little consensus on the 'correct' associations between sounds and letters, and it would be very difficult to justify any design decisions I made because of this.

Therefore, after being inspired by my team mate Maria and her focus on using sound to learn multiplication, I decided to create a concept around another mathematical concept, as it is much easier to find research about links between maths and music. I came up with the idea of using weights and musical rhythm to help students conceptualise ratios and fractions in a new way. At this stage, I'm thinking that users will place weights on a sensor, and the amount of weight will correspond to how long the note will play for. So a note with 200g of weight will play for twice as long as a note with 100g of weight. I will need to spend some time developing this further, and come up with an idea of what this device might look like.

• A detailed explanation of my individual concept can be found in my Week 5 journal entry.

This week I continued on from my work done over the mid-sem break. Over the break, I started working on my prototype by firstly conducting casual interviews, looking into research and beginning to build my prototype.

As my concept is aimed towards Grade 1 students, I aimed to interview both students in this age group and teachers or educational workers that have experience in this cohort. I have two cousins aged four and six that roughly fall into this target age group. Optimally, I would have hoped to gain insight into many students specifically in grade 1 however current Covid-19 restrictions have made this difficult. I began by getting my cousin's parents to ask them simple questions similar to a cultural probe to determine how potential users react to the concept and interaction. I showed them my current mock-up of the intended design and recorded their thoughts when shown the design. Their responses were positive and supported that the concept was appropriate for their age group, noting that it looked fun and even started listing things they would want to draw and favourite colours they would create. These responses were amazing to receive in that they supported my current concept design and allowed me to see links between concept and the broader studio domains. It was observed that objectives such as learning colour theory, collaboration, communication and playful and open-ended interaction were all being facilitated.

I also have access to gaining information from two primary school workers. I am currently writing up an interview testing plan so that I can affectively interview these people to gain information and inform my project design.I was eventually able to run the interview over Facetime and gained some really helpful information that supports all the research I have undertaken into related literature. The main points I was able to take away from the interview, was that creative learning is not focused on in schools much at all, and that very structured pedagogical practices are currently being used. The full transcript of the interview can be seen in my prototype documentation.

I have also spent a considerable amount of time researching online sources and examples for Arduino and Unity elements I expect to implement in my design. This includes elements such as capacitive touch sensors for pressure mats, colour mixing, touch screen drawing on Unity and building Unity on an iOS device.

- Arduino outputs to Unity (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=of_oLAvWfSI)

-Drawing on Unity (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40ylWWrCpkA)

I have begun to implement these core functionalities of my design and will continue to do so after receiving assistance and resources from my teammates and tutors. In this week's studio my team discussed our progress in our breakout room and were able to share helpful resources and research findings with each other. Michelle and I are both using touchscreen drawing in our concepts and she was able to share a helpful tutorial on how to implement this feature: youtube.com/watch?v=40ylWWrCpkA

Build Progress:

I have begun building my Arduino element using multiple capacitive touch sensors that will be connected to my interactive mat. I am now currently working on making the sensor outputs determine the colour displayed on my unity seen. As seen below, I have connected each sensor to a specific pin using resistors:

Reflection:

For the prototype demonstration deliverable, I am aware that it is unlikely I will have a fully functioning prototype because of various restrictions. Due to this I am going to create a functional prototype that includes core functionalities and create a separate prototype that represents the intended visual design and can be used to demonstrate the intended interaction. This visual prototype will be a full sized prototype of the concept while my functional prototype will be significantly scaled-down in order to effectively display the core functionalities of my concept.

Whilst I haven't made much progress on the functional prototype yet, the research I conducted over the break has definitely given me clarity on both the conceptual and technical elements of my concept. The feedback from the teaching staff interview highlighted the lack of open-ended learning experiences in primary schools which was solidified my decision to pursue the focus avenue of creating open-ended experiences. The technical research has also helped me enormously in managing my time and being able to create a plan for implementation. Coding is one of my weaknesses and being so prepared before implementation has enhanced my confidence now that I am approaching the prototype build.

My main aim for the next week is to start the Arduino and Unity code, and hopefully get the Unity-serial communication working so that I can view the colour selections on my digital interface.

Bonjour

Individual Recap:

Our team concept is a sassy robot who stops the user from watching screens too much (like TV) using sass as its weapon. In our team, every member works at different aspects of same concept. My individual direction focusses on "stopping sass of the robot temporarily". In particular, my focus looks at interactions that aims at stopping robot from performing sassy activities for short period of time. To user it may look like a short relief from sassiness of robot but there is hidden purpose for this.

The hidden purpose is to highlight people's choice to ignore good decision for temporary pleasure (watching TV). So, the idea is whenever the user ignores robot's sass and stick to watching screen, the robot develops and makes it harder to ignore advice the next time. Repetitive stopping would help robot become more powerful and eventually user wont be able to stop it until screen usage is stopped.

With this purpose in mind, I developed some interactions that mimics scolding. Scolding is selected as it allows user to self reflect. All the interactions are also meant to disorient the robot so that robot's personality is reflected.

The short term effects are temporary relief methods while long term effects are gained through repetive usage of interactions. Long term effects are used to help users realise - the longer you ignore, the harder it gets.

Ideal Finished Product:

My ideal finished product would be the robot with all the interactions above. The robot would zoom around the house and whenever it detects someone use screen for too long, it will start sassing. To make the sass go away, user would either have to turn off the TV or use the interactions above. The ideal product is similar to what I'm developing but since due to social distancing, the form of protype is not fully developed and we can't use the roomba cleaning robot that was supposed to be the robot's chariot. Except for that the prototype is close to the ideal product.

Current Progress & Ahead:

Currently I'm looking to understanding and testing individual sensors used in interactions -

• Cloth over face- Photocell resitor
• Shaking - Piezo element
• Ear pull- Pressure sensor
• Volume Slider - Potentiometer

I am not worried about how to use sensors but what I'm unsure about is how I will develop the form of prototype. This something I'm going to work on over the weekend.

Also, I'm preparing a test which helps me understand more about how the user views the interactions I have chosen. This in the form of a survey that would be indicative about the roles of interactions.

We met as a group at the start of this week to discuss two major topics, what option we wanted to proceed with for the rest of this semester and secondly how we wanted to go about the completion of the proposal report. We decided as a team that the second option, all group members focusing on the same domain however individually looking at the solution from a slightly different perspective. If time allows, I intend to look at recycling within schools, focusing on the sensations of sight, smell and possibly sound. Secondly, we met about the proposal report. The report took up most of my week. My main focuses were on the target audience, their intended experience and the relevance to our theme. I feel like we all could’ve managed our time better and we will keep that in consideration going forward.

Week 5 consisted primarily on report writing for both the team based and individual reports. We initially met as a group and discussed the feedback given from the lecturers regarding our initial design concept. We then each had to bring up two different input methods as we agreed the binary method wouldn’t work along with finding two different peer review articles on the domain. My research focused on how children reacted to different ways of teaching about sustainability and what methods are more effective than others. In the next week I must narrow down my scope and choose which physical senses I would like to focus on towards our group project.

This week we made the transition to online study, I was unable to attend the first class for the week due to network connection problems however did meet with the group and was given a recap of what went on. We also had the 3.1 Proposal Pitch video due this week that was completed before our session on the Wednesday. This project went quite smoothly with the only problems occurring with the sound on the video. My contribution towards the video was a Skit that demonstrated the base idea of our project.

We also had to continue developing our concept idea and met frequently as a group to discuss options and how we plan to move forward with our design concept.

Prototype Developement

On wednesday Batt Skwad had another great discussion about how we would go about building our individual protoypes.

• Tim is working on hacking into a tv by sending remote signals. He's doing this by working with infrared LEDs.
• Anshuman is focusing on how the user can interact directly with the robot to send it away and essentially shut it up. He's playing around with various sensors.
• I am dealing with how the robot will communicate with the user. Initially I thought I could do this by hacking into a TV (with IR LED) and put subtitles on the screen. But I ruled this out since remote signals can't add subtitles. We joked that the robot would be able to quickly switch between channels and put together a message from the various channel audios - this was inspired by Transformers when Bumblebee does this with radio. So we talked about the potential of hacking a radio or speaker and trying to do something like this, but the problem was that a radio doesn't have a screen and so it'd be awkward for the robot to have to go off and find a radio to speak through. We discussed attaching a speaker to the arduino, but after doing some research this is apparently very difficult. Running out ideas, we consulted Clay who suggested the use of a DF mini player. The DF player takes an SD card filled with separate audio tracks. The programming involved will look at making a certain message play at a certain time. If the DF player proves to have problems, the fallback option is to simply hide a phone in the robot to play messages.

Combining each part

Another topic of discussion was about how we would combine our separate components. Since we can't physically meet each other it's going to be impossible to physically combine each component. The problem stands that how would the robot know when to say "haha I turned off the tv" if the TV hacking IR remote is 10kms away in Tim's bedroom. Clay cleared up this confusion by suggesting that we simulate component interactions by implementing buttons to act as the trigger of when to do what.

Reflection

I'm happy with the progress we've made this week. It took a good couple of hours of discussion to work out what approach we wanted to take in separating and building the prototype. The result being that we went with option 1 of separating the prototype into components where I am dealing with communication, Anshuman with physical interaction and Tim with screen hacking. Not only does this option allow us to efficiently build the prototype, it allows is to focus and refine our own aspect of the concept. I'm especially satisfied with this outcome because communication allows me to further explore the human and computer emotional interaction aspect that I've been interested in since the start. Moreover, I have some experience with audio technology and sound design so I'd be interested to see how I can apply these skills.