Research

Fine Motor Skills : Involve movement of the similar muscle group in children’s hands, fingers and wrists

Fine motor skills are important for kids as they use it to do simple tasks like colouring, writing and other activities that help them succeed in school. Since my target group is age 3-5 years, I went to research on what kids of that age are able to do using fine motor skills

I wanted to be able to teach my target audience (Kids of age 3-5) colours and I want to know if they are able to recognise colours at that age. I came across a website that says that 18 months – 2 and a half years old is the generally accepted age for teaching colours. I then went to find out what are some of the things that kids are able to do using fine motor skills at that age.

Eye Dropper Tests

I looked at some of the things that are able to develop kid’s fine motor development and I came across something called Eye Dropper test. Eye Dropper test helps kids to learn about colours. It allows them to mix and match colours.

So how does this works?

Things that I need :

• Dropper
• Absorbent paper
• Water
• Food Colouring
• Activity Tray
• Cups

Simply add 10 drops of food colouring to a cup and mix in 4 tablespoons of water. This will make your ‘paint’ so that kids can draw up into a plastic dropper and drip onto the paper towelling.

For fine motor skills development, the kid will use a dropper to draw up the liquid and then pinching the dropper to allow the liquid to drop on the absorbent paper.

I also looked at kids vocabulary capacity so that the kids will understand what Itsy is trying to say when it ask them to match certain colours.Based on the chart below, kids of age 3-5 will be able to understand simple english and they can understand what Itsy is trying to say.

Link : https://laughingkidslearn.com/dropper-painting-for-kids/

Things to Do next

• Arduino Tutorials
• Looking at how i can incorporate this with colour sensor technology.

Mid-Semester Progress - Individual Design Direction

So, I was fairly ambituous with how much I wanted to get done on the mid-semester break but I am really happy with how I am going.

The first thing I needed to settle on was my core interaction flow, so I have penciled in a first attempt at an ideal interaction scenario and we will see how far it takes me. Currently, I believe it is fairly intuitive and should hopefully conform to the user's mental model but iteration and retrospect are very useful in design:

As for the prototype development, the first thing I wanted working for my prototype was some way for you to select a colour and get some form of feedback. This seemed relatively easy in practice, so I decided to use Unity to set up a touch and draw interface.

I started with an aim to get a paint line following the users finger, so after a fair bit of research, I stumbled across my first win:

He looks pretty minimalistic, but I had a starting point for my individual concept.

Next, adding colour... I spent the better part of two days thinking of ways to salvage my code. At one point I had colour selection working, but no chance of mixing as I was essentially toggling everything except the colour that was last clicked on. While it was progress, it wasn't particularly helpful in the overall scheme of things.

So, I decided to take a break. I was playing around in illustrator and had an idea about averaging RGB values and wondering if that could work. So, I decided to average my RGB values for yellow and blue in hopes of getting green and I did!!

I then had a chat with my sister about the possible logic that could make this work and by the end of the conversation I was confident that I could make something work. So, after a bit of a break and a fresh perspective, I tried ... again:

I was absolutely stoked that I could get colour mixing to work. Averaging RGB values really does work and, after some more targeted research, I found others who have reached the same conclusion - but way more fun to get there by myself.

Next, I should clean up the interface a little and then onto audio!!

What we did

In the studio classes this week, we were able to work on overcoming restriction hurdles. During our studio session, we were able to play around with miro, learning how to utilize it as a tool to streamline teamwork. We started off by using it studio-wide thinking about methods of discovery.

The activity that was conducted required us to answer a few questions on miro, sharing ideas as a large team. It was interesting for me to read responses from other students as it gave me a better perspective on how to conduct my personal project moving forward. I realized that I am limiting myself by only focusing on "real life" user testing and research when there are many different alternatives that could potentially yield better results.

Team Activity

Following that activity, Team Garfunkle was able to create our own flow chart and workspace on miro. We were able to use the tools provided to answer relevant questions regarding our theme and ideas, having broken down specifics, I personally felt that it was easier to write the proposal report as all team members had a clearer idea of our team audience and main focus areas. We followed the guidelines set by Lorna and completed our mind map by the end of the class. After the studio class, we scheduled a team zoom call to update each other on our progress in writing the team proposal report that was due soon.

Observation

A total of two activities were done in the studio. The first activity is Observation. I chose to find related videos on Youtube for observation and analysis.

After I checked the content written by other students, I found that most people chose the video like me, but there were still a small number of people who chose different ways (text descriptions or reports on trains on other social platforms).

Reason for choosing video: Compared with the other two methods, video is the closest to the naked eye. Because the video is displayed in the form of video, you can collect the corresponding data according to your needs when conducting the observation experiment, and will not be affected by the subjective point of view (text reports are easy to carry personal tendencies, such as increasing, deleting and distorting the intention and behavior of the interviewee, so additional judgment and screening are required when selecting. If the data is analyzed only by audio, because of the absence of images, the occurrence and interpretation of emergencies can only rely on imagination and speculation, this is not conducive to the restoration of truth.) In addition, most of the video contains audio. Therefore, the combination of video and audio is the main observation method, and the text description is used to supplement the details. This is the best observation method I think.

According to the documentation provided by Lorna (alternative method), I found several online survey methods that we can use in the future for user evaluation. Although these methods are not the most ideal (the most ideal is face-to-face interviews), they are currently the most suitable methods for us and can be used. At present, my idea is that during the testing phase, we put our equipment in one place, and then obtain user data through video recording and remote online access. After our discussion, we found that the most suitable way is to record based on the camera. The reason is the points I mentioned earlier.

Break down

The following is the cooperation content of our team

Individual progress

This week my main job is to write individual and group reports. There is no great progress in learning Arduino and familiarizing with kits. But in order to understand the sensors that may be needed in the future, I watched several videos to help me understand.

In addition, I read a few Arduino's official use introductions to understand the specific use method. Although I have been in touch with the Arduino digital prototype before, it was almost 2 years ago, so I am still very new to the use of Arduino.

Work to do

• Collect the material used to make the dropper and try to make it
• Determine the required sensors and place the order
• Learn a few Arduino tutorials (about lighting, sound collection, and storage)
• For the details of my personal direction, I need to further improve the design

On Tuesday, we made feedback and updates on our project according to the individual division of the project. Then during the class, we carried out the activity of discovery methods through Miro. Due to the epidemic situation, the way we make observations is mainly through video to avoid face-to-face contact as much as possible. We try to get some insights and inspiration about the project through observation.

At the studio on Thursday, our groups conducted discussions regarding the project and completed the group proposal report.

Next, what we need to do is to determine the physical parts used in the project and purchase them in advance, and the other members will follow their own schedules.For me, what I have to do recently is to conduct an analysis of user psychological needs and review the games currently designed for the visually impaired. On this basis, I will discuss with other members to determine the details of the project content.

Proposal

This week,i finished the writing work with proposal.I responses about introduce about the project part and relevance to theme part with team proposal and individual proposal.

Arduino

I found some tutorial video in Youtube,which were introduced about the TTS(Text to Speech TTS Converter).This video introduces playing the voice part of the game by controlling the TTS voice synthesis module.This may require the following accessories:

• Arduino development board
• Speaker
• Amplifier circuit
• Regulated power supply
• Connection cable

About Miro

Individual exploration update

Last week, I was thinking about building a turtle toy as my individual prototype, and that aims to teach pre-schoolers to learn some easy math.

This week, our group has decided to let each of us work on one project and everyone focuses on different learning goals. I think it was a great idea to compare with everyone works on individual prototype. Since there will be more communication among us and we can share our research or code. Furthermore, it will be better that our users can learn different topics on one prototype since users may feel bored when they are leaning a single topic for a long time, ITSY allow them to learn color, math and shape at the same time and also improve their motor skills

I aim to create an interactive learning environment for children to learn math. Instead of giving questions and letting children answer it, ITSY will give instructions to kids by using voice output, let them count the number of items with different shapes and colours that they have collected before and ask them easy math questions based on that. For example, users need to count the number of items with round shape and items with red colour, there will be a math question which is related to these two numbers such as ‘shake the bear’s hand if ‘3+4’ equals 7’. The question will be voice output as well. Children can easily answer the question because they can see how many items they have just counted. So that the toy provides visual support for children who start learning math. Users need to do correct responses like shaking the toy bear’s hand, then the bear will give light feedback if users do correct responses.

Meeting

Our team was working on building our Miro board based on our concept. We have explored our concept by finding the strengths and weaknesses of our ideas and analyze different context of use for different users.

we also drawed another mind map to explore the functionality of our prototype, help everyone understand what our prototype will be look like.

Workshop

During workshop session, tutors showed us how to build simple circuit and connect it with Arduino. It was quite useful since I am going to use Arduino to build my prototype such as using the motion sensor to make the shake bear hand function and use speakers to implement the voice output.

Work Done

This week our team mainly just focused on the report. I did find this report quite challenging to write as I had been putting off making any concrete decisions about my focus and form etc. However, I'm really glad I have done this as my direction is a lot more clear now and I am excited to continue researching to flesh out the final details.

On Wednesday we went through conducting user testing externally. I found this task quite difficult initially as I felt weird doing an observation through YouTube but I was really surprised at how much detail you can get in just watching videos others have posted. I was aware that the videos posted would be the extremes in people's behaviour but it was a good start. Before this studio, I was a bit concerned about how I was going to conduct the user testing, and was really limiting myself to just using my family or using zoom to interview my family and friends. However, after reading through the google doc outlining all the other methods we could use, I feel a lot more confident in user testing for my project.

As a team, we then completed a live brainstorming session to outline all the smaller details around our concept to ensure we all understood and had a say in the direction of our concept.

On Thursday, we had the Arduino tutorial. This was actually super fun and I found the activities really interesting.

I feel a lot more confident working with the Arduino and found the light sensor activity particularly useful. I can definitely alter this for my project and think I could get this sensor for my prototype completed in the next few weeks.

Work to do

Over the mid-semester break I want to continue playing around with the Arduino and maybe even try to get the light sensor to have some different outputs that I could use for my prototype. I also bought more silicone (ensuring it was 100% silicone this time…) so I want to have another go with Protoputty so I can finalise what materials I will use to build the prototype.

Related Work

I spent some time this week looking through the literature and read in a paper that parents are more likely to minimise their energy consumption if it is seen as a learning opportunity for their children! I initially just picked my user group as families with school-aged children as I thought it would be interesting to explore the form and interactions in a playful way, as well as being a teaching moment for children so they are more energy conscious when they are older. However, I didn't realise it would have this added benefit of motivating the parents too, which was great to find.

Paper: M. Fell and L. F. Chiu, “Children, parents and home energy use: Exploring motivations and limits to energy demand reduction,” Energy Policy, vol. 65, pp. 351-358, 2014.

In the contact session, we have done a report-back activity, which let everyone present their work that has done, the plan for Easter break and the concerns. It can be seen from this activity that our team’s working progress running a little behind compared with other teams due to the reason that we have been combined with another team and using the extra time to redefine our team topic. We have used the first few days in the week to finalized the assignment, but none of us finish the individual concept design. So, in the Easter break, I will finish the individual concept design and learn Arduino. I have worried about Arduino before because I haven’t learned it before this course, but I will try my best to learn it and can get support from the tutor online. So, I have no concern now.

Another activity in the contact session is that do an observation of passengers on the train. It is an activity that trains our method to do observation and evaluation in this special period. In the activity, I have watched a video on YouTube to do the observation and collecting the insight. Then I have read the shared document to find an evaluation method that can be used in this activity. I think the document is good to be collected which is useful in finding a suitable evaluation method for our individual prototype as well.

In the personal work, I have read some literature and have searched existing works relevant to our team topic. Base on the reading and research, I have summarized some stress types that university students may face, which are catching the deadlines of the assignments, fear of failing the exam, suffering from financial burden, and feeling the stress of the new social environment. I have identified some key elements that should be involved in my individual design as well. For helping university students release their stress, doing exercise, deep breathing, attracting the user’s focus, drinking herbal tea, colorful and bright environment, interact with the animal, management of the study and sleep and listening to the soft or classical music are useful. The design should have the function of personalization, which can make user setting plan or setting its work mode to fit their personal need.

I got an initial concept today base on the finding that from reading above. It is a thing that sits on the desk but can detect student's stress levels. When it detects that the student is stressed, it emits a sound and light to attract the user's attention. The student then has to play with it for a while to work this out. When it detects that the user is less stressed or has played with it for a period of time, it then encourages the user to get back to study. The student can 'snooze' it when it first comes on for avoiding it becomes annoying. It could be like a ball that the student has to bounce or throw for a while to reduce their stress. Or it could be shaped like a pretend animal that holds the ball that is used to do sport, and the cup with juice or herbal tea that may useful in reduce study stress.

Now, I am thinking about whether the concept is novel and fit the domain ‘body as controller’. I worry about whether it easy to be achieved by the Arduino kit as well. I will talk with the tutor in the next week.

Document and evidence individual work done

Project:

I mainly focused on the research and team report before this Thursday. Due to I have two other assignments due the week after the break, so I am going to focus on those works first, and I will keep working on it after they are completed. Based on what I have written in the last week’s journal, I gave up all individual ideas since they do not totally match the requirements from the relative works, and I came up with some ideas about how to make the flower more playful and interactive, for example, installing a movement sensor on the top of the flower to detect user’s movement so that we are able to ask the user to do some exercise and capture his/her movement. Then, we are able to implement some features based on that like unlock the annoying feature by complete the exercise. But based on Arduino research, it is hard to capture user’s movement by sensors, also, due to the size of the flower, if a movement capture sensor is implemented on the top, then the LED light cannot be placed on the top due to the size limitation. I also tried to think about other ideas, but it is not better than the team concept, so I decided to follow the team concept, and improve it based on my design direction.

Contact:

On the other hand, a Miro board experience session was hold during the contact session. The first task is to ‘Methods for Discovery’, where we are required to explore alternative approaches for user discovery. Same as most students, YouTube was selected as my research approach to observe the passengers on the train. I think online resource is an efficient and convenient resource approach under this circumstance because in-person research is now hard to be conducted. The video relates to an old lady have a conflict with a woman who puts her bag on a seat on a crowded train. Everyone is watching their conflict, and some of them are taking videos on their phones without expressions. No one laughs, no one helps, and no one says anything. However, I think YouTube is not a suitable platform to conduct an observation because most people upload uncommon things such as fighting that happened on the train. Since uncommon things can get more like and no one watches things that they can always see in their lives. So, it is hard to observe how people commonly behave on a train on YouTube. I think if an observation session is necessary in a project, then I would review other people’s online notes about passenger’s behaviour, and try to find insights from them or, do academic research.

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Things need to be done

The next step is to further study the target audience in my design direction. For instance, the target audience’s feature. Discover target audience’s requirements and needs in terms of reducing the sedentary behaviour. The relative works in the team report only reveal the key aspects of changing the behaviour; however, what they want and need are not covered in the research, and they are important to the design because it might affect the accessibility and acceptability of the concept and the final product. Also, it might bring us additional insights for this domain and the concept such as the motivation and barriers of solving the problem. So, it is necessary to discover their requirements and needs. On the other hand, as mention before, the target audience’s characteristics can affect them to take actions in offices. However, what kind of characteristics can affect it and how they affect it need to be more specific in order to discover the potentials to improve the domain problems in this direction. Moreover, the team concept is improved based on the analysis of a number of research, such as the implementation of wearable technology, playful elements, and annoying features. However, the target audience’s attitude to the improved concept is unknown. Whether it is interesting, annoying, and flexible needs to be discovered. So, it might be helpful for us to identify the current problems we have, and it might bring insights about our features such as the user’s acceptability of the annoying and playful features and wearable technology, so that we are able to improve them before we go further in this domain.

Moreover, how the concept can be built by the Arduino is unknown. It is frustrated if a creative idea is not able to be made because the related function is not supported by the Arduino. So, Arduino online tutorial and further discussion with tutors are important in order to discover potential ways to build up the concept, or looking for alternatives to some features. Slack can be used to ask questions that relate to the Arduino and the development of the concept. In addition, Arduino online tutorial can be found in YouTube.

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External source

“Idle Stripes Shirt - Ambient Wearable Display for Activity Tracking”.

The wearable technology can be implemented in different things such as watches, glasses and earphones. In this case, it is more unique to combine it with a shirt. Basically, it is similar in appearance to usual shirts but it integrates an ambient display in the neck area. Based on the user’s sitting time, the display gradually illuminates with different colors. There is no lighting on the display in first 15 minutes. After that, every few minutes one stripe will be lighted, and all stripes will be activated if the user sit at the desk for an hour. The strips gradually fade if the user starts walking, and it takes 5 minutes to totally turn off the ambient display. It aims to encourage the user to take a break or even light activities after long-time sitting, and to reduce the total amount of sitting time per day. So, it can improve the user’s health as well as the awareness of the time spending on sitting.

It shows a number of key aspects in this domain. Firstly, easily accessible, visible, and appealing things can be everything on a desk such as pens, books, or even lamps, but it can also be something necessary and important in people’s daily lives such as clothes and shoes. Moreover, compared with office supplies, they are more portable. So, it is easy for users to carry, control and get used to it. In addition, wearable technology fits those things and this domain. Since changing sedentary behaviour might involve light activities such as standing and walking, and as a reminder, it needs to monitor user’s sedentary behaviour. Thus, it is important to ensure the product is flexible and easy to use so that users are able to easily take actions without interrupt them after long-time sitting. On the other hand, there are various ways to notice people. For instance, the change of number, color, shape, brightness, images, temperature, or even vibratory can be used in design. However, we need to consider how it might affect users and the way to implement it. For example, in this case, the change of lighting with fiber optic material is used, and it is light and shape-flexible, which means it can provide the experience of aesthetics, flexibility, and surprise.

Work Done

Basicly, we're working on our proposal report this week. Due to the holiday, we also took the workshop session on Thursday.

At the beginning, we reported back for the teaching team. I read some articles about the relationship and music. One of the articles said that not only the music but also the rhythm and volume of music are related to the movement by changing the user's background music speed and loudness during the treadmill exercise.

Discovery Methods

We did an observation of the passengers in a train and wrote some insights on the Miro board. I found an interesting video in Youtube. There was an argument in a train of New York City. Basd on the insights, I found 3 methods were suitable for the observation.

Next Step

In the next step, we will do some user research about the using of fittness equipments in home. Also, we have to break down our project on Miro.

As for me, it's necessary for me to find some articles about the relationship bewteen images and exercise. Also, I will design the images for our project.

The due date for the project proposal report is this Thursday and the majority of work this week was focused around completing it. Team Twisted had our usual Tuesday meeting where we brought up and queries or issues we were experiencing and discussed them with the team. A small issue I found when writing my individual report was the ordering of the structure. I found that through firstly explaining my change in focus, I had to bring up the reasons why these changes were made. When I then wrote my response to feedback section, I felt I was repeating large portions of the previous section. This was again the same with the discovery and project constraints. I discussed this with Lorna in the Wednesday studio and she approved using phrases such as "as discussed in the previous section" so that I would not have to reiterate certain sections.

In the studio we did a report back where I explained my finalised concept and talked further with my team afterwards. During the studio we worked on two activities. Firstly, we explored new way to conduct observations with the aim of observing passengers on commuter trains. This exercise prompted me to think about novel ways of conducting research and testing in the midst of a pandemic. Methods I highlighted included, using footage on social media, role plays, news footage, live streams, or body camera videos. All of these methods are very effective in place of normal methods and I will consider using them in my own project.

We also completed a mind map for our projects from a team perspective that got us to think about various elements of our concept:

Afterwards, we predominantly worked on finishing our report and preparing it for submission. The most helpful section of the report for me was doing the project plan for completion as it has aided me in planning my progress and required resources for the rest of the project.

Reflection:

Due to the report taking up most of my time this week, I didn’t get too far with my prototype. I did, however, do some investigation into the screen I could use to represent my "interactive wall". I have an iPad at home which would be perfect so I will aim to use that. I did some research into apps that allow users to draw such as Procreate, Sketch and Affinity and drew some inspiration from the methods and techniques that users can employ to create art. https://procreate.art/

On a conceptual level, the studio activities really helped me to flesh out my concepts and consider the various aspects that make up Twisted. When writing on our graph, each member listed information specific to their own concept. This was really interesting as it allowed me to see our different interpretations of the same overarching team domain, and even gain ideas from my fellow team mates.

The other studio exercise was also very useful and topical and allowed me to explore various forms of research to enable a successful background survey, even in a global pandemic. I will definitely be using some of the techniques later in the project when I have to complete user testing.

I am still unsure as to how I could then connect this to Unity to allow users to colour it in through using the Arduino buttons - I'll ask one of the tutors once classes resume after the midsem break.

Over the break I am going to start making buttons for the interactive mat and experiment to see what materials will best work for the buttons. I have previously used copper tape which worked well so hopefully I am able to buy some of that.

Work done

Team and individual report have been submitted this week. During the studio, we explore what are the alternatives methods of doing observations and interviews to gain insights. I have chosen my top 3 methods to be conduct online video interviews, online surveys and online discussion forum with target user group. Reasons being it is still direct contact with the target group and able to retrieve first-person experience and information to gain more accurate insights. I have also confirmed my target audience as lung disease patient who can benefits from the pursed lip exercise to improve their breathing patterns, relieves shortness of breath and promotes relaxation.

Next

One week of Easter break, I will be doing some reading and playing boardgames to relax. For the project, I will need to decide on which sensor will be the most suitable to use for my design and interactions. Currently, I am thinking of using the microphone sensor to detect user's blow but there are alternatives like humidity sensor or motion sensor to detect movements. I will also try to complete the mind map on Miro to brainstorm more on my project.

Work have done

On studio this week, we form our insights on miro.

In addition, we assigned the work of the team project, did some background research on the application, the article submitted the report. The thing I responsible for is to enhance the competitiveness and continuity of the game. I analyze in the direction of motivation and designed points and reward system to solve the problem.

During the teamwork next, I hope I can contribute to the graphic design and programming in our project.

I want to search for some projects which are similar to our project, but it is quite hard. We just got something useful about game design and did some research about the target audience.

Workshop

During the workshop, we reviewed the basic usage of Arduino (Lights flashing). Due to the fact that I have studied DECO7230, it is an easy job for me. The most thing I want to mention is that we solved a big problem which worried us for a long time. Capturing the movement of the visual ball from the projector is not quite practical and we cannot find some projects which are similar to our project. We cannot figure out some way to link projector, bats, and Arduino. At first, I planned to use a mobile phone to substitute the real projector. In detail, we can use the WIFI kit of Arduino and link it to the mobile phone (projector). However, the visual ball still cannot be captured.

So, we ask the problem in the workshop. Steven suggests us to use AR to substitute the projector.

The visual ball shows on the screen of the mobile phone, we need to move it by touching and sliding on the screen. Therefore, we need to transfer the signal of hitting the ball to touching the screen.

But if we do like this, the player needs to notice the small screen of the mobile phones when they [lay the game, which is not convenient for them to observe the surrounding. The ideal situation we think is that the player wears the AR glasses and observe the situation from the screen. In this situation, the player does not need to capture the mobile phone or take the trouble to observe it, but due to the technical problem, we are not able to design such equipment. Therefore, we are possible to make some concessions to realize our project.

Work to do

This table is the general plane for the whole project.

The major problem now is that we don't know how to use the tool to capture the virtual ball projected by the projector, so we prepare to use the method mentioned above. Therefore, we need to figure out how to transfer the signal of hitting the ball to the signal of touching the screen. At first sight, we still need to use the WIFI kit of Arduino to realize it, so the first thing we need to do is trying the WIFI kit. If it doesn’t work, we could make a concession again: wire to substitute wireless.

1. Read some literature, understand the knowledge of music and mood, or the impact on people.

Depression significantly decreased in the peaceful music group compared to the sad music group after the intervention. Further, significant differences in heart rate variability were identified during the intervention among the groups. The change in low frequency (LF) in the joyful music group was lower than the other three groups; the change in high frequency (HF) in the peaceful music group was lower than in the tension and joyful music groups; and the change in LF/HF in the peaceful music group was lower than in the sad and joyful music groups. Additionally, the subsamples with high state anxiety experienced more change in HF while listening to tense music than to peaceful music, reflecting an upward trend after listening for 10 minutes. The findings indicate that listening to different genres of music induces different psycho-physiological responses. In the present study, participants with high-state anxiety registered elevated parasympathetic activity after listening to 10 minutes of tense and sad music. Simultaneous listening effects were detected only in joyful and peaceful music, which reduced subjective anxiety and depression. The results of the present study advocate that music interveners and clinical care providers select joyful, peaceful, and tense music to help alleviate the anxiety and negative emotions of their patients.

2. In addition to the literature, I learned some music-related knowledge and also used many apps related to our subject.

Among many mobile phone applications, we have selected five existing mobile phone applications. They are Pzizz, Relax Melodies, Calm, Stop, Breath, Think, Simple Habit. We used these five mobile phone softwares separately, and the sound types they used are very similar.

Through analysis, it is easy to find that these software use the sound of nature or the sound of everyday scenes as background music. Use these background music to match the sound of reading aloud or piano and other instruments. Users rated these mobile apps after use and gave a high score of 4.7. In the comment section of the APP Store, most of the users said that this music helped them relax their mood, improve their attention, and bring them a better sleep.

3.In addition to Arduino, I learned about other sensors online, some of which can be used in our design

1. Electret Microphone：This can be installed in a test tube or flask
2. https://core-electronics.com.au/sensors.html This is a website that sells various sensors, I will buy some sensors

According to the observation method I learned in the HCI course, I will take the bus, record the observation data according to my own experience, and count the observation results. I will do some preparations before observing. First, I will prepare a pen, a form, and even interview passengers and make recordings. I will also try to take pictures.

The form will have the following content

Date&Time Location How many people in bus GET ON Get off

I will also record the age and characteristics of the passengers, what they are doing on the bus, what they did when they got on the bus, and what they did when they got off the bus.

Because of the special circumstances, we cannot go out now, so Lorna taught us some other observation methods. For example: Using YouTube (and Online Video) for (Teaching) Observational Studies (added by Robin Smith). I think this method is to find a video and then record your observation notes by watching the video. But I am more puzzled about how to choose the right video among many videos.

Watching a video has some advantages than going to the field. For example, during a field trip, if there were many people at the time, we could not observe the behavior of each person, and the video can be watched repeatedly, so we can observe and record the behavior of each person. The advantage of watching a video over a document is that the document is susceptible to the subjective views of the author.

Work done

This week is relatively short. Because of the public holiday, Friday's workshop was not available. So the major work of this week is about proposal writing. I read several works of literature for proposal. I found that there is already a mature product on the market for home breathing training, which costs USD 99. But it uses a belt on the abdomen as a sensor, which can be very hard to adapt to my direction, but maybe good for my teammates to look up to. The other more portable sensor is an innovative design, but the technology is too complicated.

I also used the sensors from Arduino Kit to do some exploration. I tried using a temperature sensor because I guessed that the temperature near the sensor would change during breathing, but it was too weak to show any effect at all. I also reported this in a weekly report. In the end, I got the feedback of trying to use microphones to analyses breathing sounds, which I think is cool and can also reduce my costs. But I still don't know whether this can distinguish normal breathing from abdominal breathing, which requires further research.

During the Tuesday session, we tried to use Miro as our collaboration tool. I like this tool for its outlook. Also, from this week we finally have some online teaching activities, which works better for me than in previous weeks. This week we have practised observations on the status quo of self-isolation, which is very interesting and may also be very helpful to us. We also have our board on Miro now. But the board is not yet complete, which also requires further user research to provide detailed design principles.

Work to do

As mentioned earlier, the work for the next week includes conducting more user research. One is to investigate the availability of outdoor breathing training from users, for now, I’ve only got second research material to support. And the other is to understand the habits of outdoor sports users. At the same time, the possibility of abdominal breathing through the microphone will be further investigated. But I will also continue to look for more suitable sensors.

After that, I will try the finalizing concept and also complete my concept map on Miro.

Aside

This weekend I cleared the browser cache, so my Miro account was also cleaned up. The result is I really can't remember the account I used to edit Miro of DECO7385 before, but now the system keeps telling me I've got no access. Hope I'd remember to take screenshot earlier next time.

In-class activity

In the Tuesday studio, we conducted a regular report-back session. In this week, I take most of my time on the team report and some individual related work, I will have a detailed description of this part in the personal progress part of this journal. My major questions in this phase are more related to technology:

How to complete the sound transaction (transfer the recording in the dropper to the test tube), and how to delete the sound in the dropper.

After the session, we use Miro as the sharing platform to conduct the activities related to Methods for discovery.

I think Miro is a very suitable platform for teamwork. Due to the particularity of the period, we cannot carry out face-to-face group activities to discuss the direction of future work. In the previous time, we have doubts about how to share ideas effectively and timely, but with the help of this platform, our various team members can post their own data points on our own channels in time, and it is also very convenient to integrate ideas.

The activity we took in class is the observation task. This activity helps me in terms of finding a new way to collect various data. The method I chose for the task (conduct the observation on the train) is finding the relevant video on youtube. Hereunder are my findings during this activity.

The second in-class activity is the break down of the progress, this activity helps us got more inspirations and have an in-depth consideration of our group project. The picture below is the procedure of completing this activity, followed by this we have created our own project.

In the Thursday studio, it focused more on the Arduino things. Through this session, I have a general concept of what is Arduino and what ability I need to equipped with in order to use the kit. At this stage, I also have a general understanding of the various parts of Arduino and their selling prices. Through the sharing of tutors, I have a general understanding of the direction of future learning and the budget for completing the project.

Personal Progress

This week we will focus more on writing group reports. Apart from this, our group have also divided everyone's work and have a discussion on how we could work as a team to finish the final product.

I am responsible for the sound capture & record aspect of the sound lab and will be looking at the aspects of visual design, physical interaction, technical involved, playful concerns, user-centered design to complete my part. For my part, I designed an online questionnaire to investigate user needs. Questions are around people's attitude towards DIY music and how they would like to interact with music. Originally I planned to launch a workshop to collect more opinions, but due to the particularity of the current period, I can only use the form of online questionnaires, so the conclusions I may get are somewhat limited. But through this form, I still extracted a lot of useful data points and sorted out a lot of insights for the subsequent improvement of my part.

(The link for the questionnaire: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdqE2l268cdMDaGNhXsWAlsf57Y43RBeRFauACt8yA1Kg/viewform?usp=sf_link)

In this activity, I have received 30 participants and the results of the questionnaire are as follow:

Key Insights gained

• Most people are interested in DIY music, however, most of their music creation only stays on the surface stage(e.g humming some random melodies come into their minds.) A small number of people will be exposed to professional equipment or musical instruments to perform a complete DIY music process. Music creation is relatively unfriendly to non-professionals

Inspiration: In order to facilitate people's music creation, we must find a kind of music that people can touch at any time. (Everyday Sound)

• Musical disharmony will affect users‘ creative passion.

Inspiration: Control the quality of the collected sound. (Possible solution: Install a decibel detector in the radio equipment(the dropper). When the collected sound exceeds the decibel of the noise, it will not be recorded.)

Inspired by 10 top sensors in Arduino, I will be working on deciding what sensor I am going to use in my project.

Future plan

Next week is the Easter break and there are no classes. In order to promote the progress of the project, I decided to use the holiday to do some research on the technology aspect of our project.

• Conduct more background research into the relationship between music and pressure.
• Research on possible techniques involved.

Because I am new to Arduino, for the completion of the final work I have to watch some online tutorials to get some technical support kit.

• Research on recording and radio equipment, Find the right component and buy components that are not provided in the kit.
• Decide on the task flow of the prototype and start prototyping

In this week's class, we had an exercise to practice how to conduct an observation using different methods or sources while we were staying at home. During the exercise, I didn't know that we were told to do an observation on the train. However, at first, I just wrote down whatever that came to my mind; I picked a random observation to observe people walking by the house. Then later, I realized I did it wrong, and which it didn't make sense to me cause during this time, there were fewer people on the street. I missed out on the keyword to do an observation on the "train" after I read other students' work. I quickly changed mine.

I later read some of the other classmates' observation results. Everyone had come up with somewhat different contents, insights, methods of approaching the observation; it was good to read and to learn from them. After reading/picking methods from a google docs Lorna shared with us, I picked two methods to use in my individual project. Those are using the phone as their probe to record video/take pictures to record time and the date and their daily habits; Online/phone interview to ask them some questions before and after they participate with the exercises/tasks using the probes. These are what I can think of right now, and it's not fixed methods and might be changed later. At this stage, it's still vague to me of how I am going to contact user testing. I will also ask my team members or other classmates to see how they are planning to do.

After writing the proposal, my biggest concern was how am I going to find target users since ours are elementary students. I have no access to this user group. Can we use adult instead? But the experience, reaction, excitement, understanding, and knowledge are all different. The experiment and testing would not be as accurate if it were testing it from the actual elementary students.

Breaking down a project

The second in-class exercise we did on Tuesday was trying to breakdown the whole project into small sections. It was beneficial before we could clearly see what we need to do from step by step. It not only provides an overview (location, people, and time) of the project but also let us give more thoughts in each section and how we would want to plan for the future works. On the other hand, our team is still working as two instead of four members. We only have two people working on this mapping, which others were still not active and absent most of the time.

The second map, I haven't completed since it hasn't fully figured it out all the modules or components that I would need for my prototype. The function section I felt I need to think through more about it before the answer to the questions. This is something that I want to do during the break.

Work is done for this week

The key achievement this week was that we turned in our team and individual proposal report. We also shared in the class on what we had done since last week, and what we were planning to do during the break. For the workshop section, I attended the first part of the section and went back to organize our team report.

This week I didn't do more new research, but I did a bit finding on YouTube to see more methods of how others did on making smoke. I also looked at the website to find out what parts/sensors I would need in my project. I also ordered wooden craft sticks that I planned to use to build the house or room.

In our team-based report, I am getting tired of waiting and keeping reminding people of the work that they were assigned to do. The whole experience was bad and unpleasant. It becomes annoying that people are absent from the team. I was a force to do last-minute work, which I don't like. Moreover, I was not satisfied with our team report because our members did not care to look over it to make the paper more consistent. I don't know maybe I am glad that we would do individual work project rather than a team project because I can't imagine how that would be like. It's hard to put more team effort when some of them don't even bother to ride on the same bus.

What's next/During the break

• Some rough of sketching of the house/room that I am going to build
• Need to figure out what sensors I would need? If I would need to buy more parts-battery, wires, and motors.
• I already borrow some tools from my friends, and I would need to find out what other tools I might use.
• Refresh my memories on Arduino
• Have some fun, relax, and read some books

Week 6 – Proposal and Before the Break

This week, we try Miro. In that application, we did the method for discovery. In this pandemic situation, it is hard to do the work field tasks, something like observation. But there is a lot of other methods, even for interview things. For observation alternatives, I found three things that can be done: Photo/Video/Voice Elicitation, using the wearable camera, re-enactment video. I can do that to my project testing. But the issue that is in my mind is how to bring the prototype to the testing participants. So, I plan to do the testing to my roommates or someone in the same building with me and keep social distancing.

The other thing we do with Miro is mind mapping for the project with team members. I found that mind mapping is easier to use to find the idea for the project, as all of us think about what we need to extend. And what else we can add in the specific branch, like the target audience and the form. My friends gave the idea about the robot and book, and I can add mine: projected AR game.

My idea for the project is about AR game without a screen to teach programming to the users. And I will create the fill the blank game by capturing the words with the capturer. The enemy for this game is the computer virus that likes to eat the words. As I don’t know how to create it, this idea may change during the semester.

Plan for the break week: keep sane by doing fun activities inside the house. Happy Easter holiday.

Concept Decelopment

With the project proposal report due this week, it was really time to finalize our concept.

We spent Wednesday collating our ideas to come up with a final concept. Continuing on from last week's progress, we had identified some core concepts and goals.

• The tech is in power
• There are decision points
• The user is forced to trust or not trust the tech

In designing for everyday use, I came up with the cooking, origami, and driving teacher ideas. While they were good ideas, they posed some obvious problems. The main one being that the nature of an untrustworthy teacher is simply annoying and impractical. So, to eliminate the the teacher and guide aspect of these ideas, we thought about how the tech could be a more passive character. Thus, Anshuman thought of a self aware robot that tries to reduce your screen time. The way it worked initially was that the sassy robot would hassle you to turn off the TV by yelling at you. It would sympathise with household technology and become annoyed when you 'abuse' technology such as by overusing it.

We brought this idea to Clay and Steve who helped us improve the design. Clay informed us that the arduino has the ability to hack TVs by sending remote signals. Perfect. Eventually the idea evolved to be an adruino that roams around the house on a roomba hacking into TVs and other screens. It could hijack the tv and start playing advertisements, turn up the volume or change the language. It would be able to communicate with the user by speaking through TV speakers or putting subtitles on the screen. The idea became pretty creepy as we tried to make it seem like the robot was self aware.

Studio

In the studio we started using Miro which was a success. It's really cool seeing everyone in the class working at the same time on a board. For the activity we looked at methods for collecting data during a pandemic (not going outside). I thought that facebook groups could provide some great data. From my experience, posts and comment sections in facebook groups bring about some quality content. I also thought that podcasts could be a good source since podcasts are generally very informative and easy to understand.

Reflection

I'm glad team Bat Skwad was able to refine our ideas and come up with a great concept. I was honestly struggling to think of an effective application of sassy tech in a novel, household environment - lucky we have Anshuman <3 The Screen Time Reducing Robot is a perfect way to explore how humans respond to a 'sentient' household robot. It's sassy attitude will be an effective way to get through to people watching TV since it's such an unconventional thing to have your roomba yell at you. Furthermore, we'll be able to explore how users tend to treat a robot that is generally pretty unlikeable and annoying. It will be interesting to see how long it takes for people to become violent and whether that bothers them at all. Alas, the underlying experiment is about how people interact with a robot that has emotions and whether this makes them see technology in a different light.