This week, we do the report back as we finish our presentation and got feedback from last week. In here, our idea is getting more confusing. We want to teach the users about programming. But because one of our feedback is about the gap between learning coding and real programming. It is fun to play the coding play. It is easy because it uses simple language. But, the problem is when they want to apply in in programming language, they don’t know what to do.

So, I reminded that I taught programming before. Before students learn about the programming language, they need to learn about the algorithm. There are so many kinds of the algorithm. One of them is called Pseudocode. Pseudocode is algorithm with the same style as the real programming language, but using English so it can be understood by anyone, even for someone who never learn to program.

Usually, pseudocode is made only as an initial sketch before going to the programming language, so students cannot see what are they doing. It always made in a piece of paper. So, I am thinking to make this as our team idea. So, I brought it to the team meeting.

Our team has two sides. There are two opinions: Teach basic common programming or even robot programming. I didn’t know the concept of robot and programming at all. I prefer to do something that I know first before I teach someone else. About creating the idea into the product, we always have many ways to make it.

So, I decided to focus on my idea, teach the basic programming. For now, I am thinking to create something similar to my first individual inspiration, using something similar to AR, but without the screen. But, there still no fixed concept until now.

Teamwork Progress

On Tuesday, we had the session about how our team is going to work for the prototype. Finally, we decided to go for the option two, which is team concept will keep developing collaboratively while we were working on the team proposal report. At the same time each of us will consider our own specialist/particular interesting point from different aspects.

During the Report Back session, we summary what we have done in the past week and talk about the concerns and plans for the future plan. This session really help me keep motivated because I can see all other peers are working hard on the course and we can also have emotional support from each other.

On Friday's technical support session, we keep exploring the possibility to use some unusual interactive way to express our concept. And as a team we decided go for option 2 to carry on our team concept and individual prototype building part.

In this week, I also started to working on team proposal report. Since I'm in charge to the part how we deal and respond to the feedback in the pitch. I chose to use affinity diagram creating by new team collaborative tool Miro to organize them. It went pretty good; it gave us a clearer view for all the different focus advice and suggestion for our concept. I also tried to read more peer-reviewed paper regarding smell-based interaction to fulfil the theoretical aspect of our proposed concept. I believe the team proposal should be completed in a few days.

Individual Exploration

In this week, I keep searching for an interesting project applying smell as the key interaction way between human and object. One of the Japanese project uses a special smell QR code to distinguish/organize different smell of food and wine draw my attention. I'm thinking of using different smell code to represent different human behaviours affect the globe. Further research to support my personal proposal report will be carried on in the next week.

Since Lorna gave us a new direction to look at how current Australia primary school educate children on sustainability and protect environment. I went through some curriculum materials and introduction in that area and found an interesting project report focusing on such theme we're looking at. I went through it and got some interesting data to support my idea. From next Monday I'll start to writing my individual proposed idea part of the report. (Arduino auxiliary kit exploration is still keeping going, but I will need for some support in the next coming workshop session.)

This week is the second week for online course. We discussed our concept during the contact. Indeed, many friends have provided us with a lot of feedback. Some of them pointed out a new direction for our concept. Regarding the concept our team, we still decided to put the domain in the direction of blind games (or simulated blind games), because we think this starting point is very good and novel, which is in line with our team theme-Ability-centric interactions.

Team project

After unifying our domain, we discussed the content of the our project. We want to add some new interactive experiences to the original concept, such as through the plot of the game, feedback of multiple voices, multiple The choice of game mode, etc. At the same time, we also consider the user's safety issues again.

During this week's team meeting, we divided the work according to the content of the project, and each team member has his own direction and content to focus. Therefore, in the next week, each member of our group will also conduct their own part of the research and exploration.

What to do next

Since our team has already clarified the concept and carried out a clear division of project, I will focus on the target audience and the overall content design of the game in the next week, including the storyline, interactive experience and game mode. I will continue to pay attention to these aspects of research and carefully review some of the previous related work and cases in order to improve our concept.

Here is a YouTube video that introduces how a blind user in the video played the ps4 battle game. I think this video can bring great inspiration to our design, about voice interaction and voice prompts, and the blind game control methods, etc. Anyway, I will continue to explore in related areas. . .

The New Concept

Based on the feedbacks received from presentation, there are some iterations regarding the concept. Lowe is an interactive tool designed for stress relief. The initial state of Lome has five pieces of petals in green and red. The green reflects the positive emotions expressed and the red reflects negative emotions such as anger, sadness, anxiety and frustration. Lome is able to record user's speech and repeat it in an interesting animation tone. If there are more than ten negative key words recorded, one piece of petal will change the colour from green to red. Complaining might get a bad rap, but it's not always a bad thing to vent the feelings out — especially if user feel stressed. If there are lots of negative feelings recorded to turn all petals red, user can choose to take out one red petal to the bud which can hold one extra petal. Then, the red petal can change to green while it's placed back to the flower.

Domain Explore

These days, the majority of social productivity is contributed by workers who have a family. Difficulty of balancing work and family and personal life is becoming the stress worth to concern. The stress from family and work is mutual. Work stress can affect the family intimacy and family stress can affect job performance and satisfaction. To balance the personal life and family, an interactive tool to help user releasing stress before entering home can let everyone in the home realise user's low mood. Lome can act as a reminder to tell others if user is in a good mood or not so that family support can work on negative emotions.

We are busy writing our project proposal. In writing a proposal, there is a lot of work to be done. In the Presentation, which ended last week, we received a lot of feedback. It can be seen that many people are interested in our project and made some suggestions. The first thing we need to do is to filter these feedbacks. We need to find useful (and within our ability) feedback. Then you need to search for related content and determine the difficulty. Although this course does not require us to make all the plans in the proposal, but I still hope we can make a complete one, and will not affect our user experience because of any technical problems.

Team task

The Team Domain (Concept/Context/Problem Space): Cindy

Response to Feedback:Yanhao

Related Work: Shawn

Audience & Intended Experience: Bonnie

Relevance to Theme: Cindy

PROJECT PLAN: Bonnie

For Individual task

My current work to think about some of the hardware or sensors that our project needs. And we have tried to sum up some of the feedback we got from last week's presentation through an afternoon discussion. The feedback is roughly divided into 4 categories. In the proposal to be completed next, we will further analyze these four types of feedback and find out those suggestions that can improve our project based on our capabilities.!

About online coures

During the meeting on Tuesday and Thursday, the team and I organized a team report and individual report to tutor. We also discussed the content of the project proposal.

Team meeting

This week, our team finished the group meeting. We separated each team member's task and discussed the response to feedback.

The response to feedback gave us more inspiration for the project. For example, using 3D- headphones in this game, the target audience expanded to ordinary people. It will be useful in the next process that we transform ours' project.

Individual works

I finished about the team work's project proposal part about relevance to theme and i will finished the individual proposal as soon as possible in the next Monday and Tuesday

Contact & Workshop

In this week, we talked about the prograss of last week. We used Zoom and Wechat to take our group meeting. We worked smoothly by using these applications.

All of us reading the feedback and we thought that some of suggestions were really helpful. For example, we were considering that we could do both on the generating music and using music to lead the movement. So, in the last week meeting, we talked about how to continue our project. We still want to do our project together. And each of us will focus on the different part. As for me, I will design all the visual parts on this project. Such as design the frame of the device and the images which come from the projector.

About our plan for next week, the most important thing is writing the proposal report. We have already written the frame in google doc. We will finish that in this week. Also, we talked about the tools. Now, we just have an Arduino Kit. However, we still need a pressure sensor and a vibration sensor.All of our concerns are about the tools and materials. And how to really do this project.

In workshop session, we asked tutors about how to write the Fous part in our individual section report and when the Arduino practical session begin. They told us we should write what each of us need to do in this project specificly. Also, Arduino practical will start in next week. We really appreciate for their answering.

Individual Work

Firstly, I bought a projector for our project in online shop. Now, I'm thinking about whai kind of images should be designed for this project and how to turn them into flash.

Besides, I still working on our proposal report. In order to d.escribe our target users in more detail, I made another persona and a storyboard.

Tuesday

In the meeting after the studio, my team mate and I decided that we are going to work on the project individually and focus on separate concepts. He is going to continue work on hand gestures and I will work on facial expressions and body language. We talked about how these separate concepts would work together and how it would still relate to the domain and problem space.

My Concept

For body language, I researched on different cartoon characters that are very expressive. I noticed a few recurring themes with these characters: Eyebrows, ears/antenna, body posture and glow/fire.

I also found a video that shows the eyebrows on a robot

With the feedback from the critiques and these cartoon characters as inspiration, I drew a few sketches for my concept.

Wednesday

In this workshop, we talked to the tutors about our concept. I showed my sketches and expressed that I was worried that my concept would be too cute to make people maintain a distance. However, they said it can be cute and scary at the same time and gave suggestions on how to do that. For example, scaring people when they least expect it or making the form be something that people normally avoid such as spiders.

Plan

• Choose a design from my sketches (Do testing to get feedback and opinions)
• Decide on a scare/shock tactic when people get too close. Ideas:
• Scary: Something like the Fiesty Pets toy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLQmnRWgjZc
• Shock: Jack in the box method, use springs, throw something towards people, spray water.
• Look at professional papers on the topic to do some background research.
• Complete proposal

Team Section

In this week's event, our team focused on modifying the team area. From the feedback from last week, we realized that there are still many defects in our current team area that need to be revised.

Problem 1: The ethical principles that should be followed when designing.

When designing a product, we should try to avoid using emotional voice to communicate with users. This form is easy cause the user to resist, thereby greatly reducing the user's intention to use the product.

Based on this idea, the change we made to the design was to convert the voice into a single prompt tone.(Even cancelled) At the same time, we should also consider accessibility and problems 2

Problem 2: The user lacks interaction with the current design

In the cushion design we proposed last week, the cushion will only respond to the user's actions, but the user cannot directly interact with the product. Therefore, in order to add more interactive functions to the product, we decided to give up the cushion and design a new product.

In the process of redesign, we started from the interactive mode, interactive objects, interactive environment. The members of the group proposed new proposals, and then filtered and updated the proposals through discussion and voting.

In the discussion last week, we decided to interact mainly with voice and touch. Considering that voice is difficult to achieve and the efficiency is too low, we finally decided to use touch to interact. The next step is the purpose of interaction, The purpose of our design is to help the user to leave the computer and the desk after sitting for a long time. I initially considered using items that may appear on the user's desk to interact, such as a keyboard that can be shock people, a vase that can be noisy, etc., but in our further discussion, we found these interactions may not achieve the effect of letting the user leave the computer desk. All the interactive methods we can think of can be completed while sitting:(. At the end we gradually shift our attention to the Wearables. As a wearable, he can always monitor the user's physical condition, and will warn the user once the user has not moved for a long time.

The revised team concept

Four white LED patches (8cm * 2.5cm each) have sticky back surfaces and the user can paste and remove the patches on clothes such as jackets and trousers at will. The purpose is to provide more flexibility in wearing and personalized fit, while they are also easy to carry because which has access to tables and can be used in different scenes.

When the user places the patch on his clothes and sits down, the patch starts timing, and the percentage of the current time and total time is displayed on the LED, such as 0% at the beginning. This percentage is also displayed on the LED patch as a colour progress bar in order to provide a more intuitive way to prompt. When he reaches 100%, the patch will start making a beep sound with maximum brightness to remind users that they have been sitting for 55 minutes.

There are two interactive games based on the location of the patch on your clothes.

Case1: When the patch position is close

Similar to a hamster game, the displaying of four LED patches is turned off. Then a random patch lights up for 0.2 seconds and disappears, then another patch lights up and disappears. And so on. Users can shoot up to a certain number of patches (for example, 20 times) that light up. The game will end.

Case2: When the patch location is far away

Users need to shake patched body parts, such as legs and arms. The number of tiles decreases with the shaking time, and the user can stop him when 0 is reached. When the game is over, the beep stops and the time is reset. The goal of these games is to provide a more diverse and playable interaction to reduce sitting time for users, compared to warfare and walking.

Individual section

In this week's studio, I tried to ask tutor for personal design suggestions. I will try to re-establish my personal design from another angle. (The previous electric shock keyboard has become obsolete)

The first understanding I got was: When generating a design idea, you must first clarify what problem the design is based on, and whether it can effectively solve this problem.

Based on the first understanding, I realized that it is wrong to casually think of a design. Instead of thinking about whether there is a better design than an existing idea, it is better to start from the problem and think its optimal solution.

However, this way of thinking will make the work progress very slow, and it is difficult for me to decide where to start solving the problem.

Things to do next week:

We plan to complete the report team part next Monday. I will continue to ask tutor for new inspirations using the studio time next Tuesday.

Reflections

During this week contact session, our team has discussed and reviewed on the feedbacks from our last presentation. We agreed that we will have education as our problem space but later we found it was too broad and we need to narrow the problem space down to perhaps targeting at specific audience. Hence, we decided to make our problem space as educating university students. Our team has also decided to work under the same domain and problem space but develop our own concepts. I decided to use my original pitch idea which was the BIBO light, a light that teach people the 478 breathing method to reduce anxiety and improve sleeping quality.

From my pitch feedback, I was told that some people think 478 breathing technique is not very useful and suggested me to change to another breathing method that can help people with respiratory problem. Currently, I am also exploring at different breathing techniques that are used to treat people with Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). COPD is a health condition that affects an individual’s ability to breathe well.

However, my team mates have some difficulty thinking of an idea with the domain and problem space we set earlier on, therefore we changed our problem space again to improving people's wellness through breathing which was the problem space that my BIBO light was exploring, with target audience set at university students and working adults. So now, we will all be working on ideas that use breathing (domain: body as controller) to create interactions between the users and our products. Each of our team members will implement different breathing methods on our individual concept to suit our target audience and intended experience.

Next...

The proposal is almost completed. I have received my Arduino kit this week and will be looking forward to the next workshop session to learn Arduino. In the meantime, I will need to do further research on how to develop my BIBO light and which sensors to use. I will I am new to Arduino as I made a VR game using oculus quest for my digital prototyping course. I need to master on how to use Arduino to be able to make my BIBO light works well.

Based on the previous task framework, I keep doing my background research and try to sum up something from online resources.

1.Housework games

Inspirations:

1) There should be a referee to decide when to start the game

2）Due to the different ages of children, different difficulty levels should be set.

Sorted by age, the difficulty of the task is from low to high:

wipe table - mopping / sweeping - washing dishes - washing clothes

The article mentions that iRewardChart is similar to a traditional chart and completed

chores are rewarded with stars that can be subsequently redeemed for another reward. (1)

I think the punishment mechanism is more like forcing children to do housework, which could not help promoting family relations. It is a conflict with our project, so we do not want to build such a punishment system.

2.parent-child relationship

1)All the family members could be players and administrators. All players have the same rights, which is not only conducive to fair play but also enhances the relationship between parents and children.

Our project is more collaborative, so all players have equal status, and the referee only plays the role of starting suspending the game. Of course, if the final reward distribution involves physical things such as candy, it needs to be distributed by the parents.

In addition, the participators of the game could be a group of friends, the relatively equal game identity is also important in this dimension.

2)three principles: Competence, autonomy and relatedness.(1)

Explore how hybrid manipulable/constructive or constructive pedagogical designs can foster positive and fun ways of doing chores.(1) Therefore, the competition between individuals is reduced, and the exploration of the game is stronger. I think the game can be divided into three difficulty levels:

Level 1: low speed & continuous ball

Level 2: medium speed & discontinuous ball

Level 3: high speed & a newly added ball

This is just a preliminary idea, and how the final mechanism will determine the increase or decrease of game content according to the difficulty of programming, but the exploratory framework of increasing difficulty is the basis.

1. Bjering A, Høiseth M, Alsos OA. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. In: Ifip H, editor.: Springer International Publishing; 2015. p. 209-23.

Questionnire

I made the questionnaire and ask my friends to fill the form, but there is something that I am concerned about. As most of my friends are around 20 years old, the sample group is actually not what we want. It can reflect on the demand of young people but as our target audience also include people who are older. I am afraid that the result cannot tell us what older people are thinking. So, I decided to make a Chinese version, but due to the network, it's hard for people in Chinese to access google doc. And now, I do not know how to access the people in Australia who are around 30 or 40 years old. So, right now, I am facing some difficulty. Trying to work it out with my teammates.

Content of Questionnaire

I have divided the form into five short parts. The form can be completed in two minutes. The parts include:

• some basically information about housework
• How often do you do this housework?
• How much do you like this housework?
• Game preference
• Housework and game

Most of the questions are yes/no question or linear quantization problem so would not take a long time to finish.

Interview

The interview questions include two parts: housework information, entertainment.

For the first part, I have prepared some questions:

• Who are you living with?
• What's the situation do you think "It's time to do housework"
• Are there any specific chores that you really like or hate and why?
• How will you emotion change during the housework?
• Can you remember something interesting that happened during the housework you have done?

For the second part, I have prepared some questions:

• What would you do for entertainment with your family members?
• Have you ever doing something fun to fill in the boring time?
• Would you focus on the housework only? or would you do something else in the meanwhile? What's that thing and why would you do it?

Other questions would be added according to the answers given by participants.

My plan is to finish the interview in 30 minutes, and I really want to interview a family rather than an individual. But I'm still looking for participants.

Team

In the online session, we shared what we have done so far with our classmates. And after hearing others' achievements, I felt that our team need to catch up on the domain research part since we only did some research for coding, but for the domain Creative Learning, we have not done much research.

After the session, I and my team have discussed the coming assessment proposal. We shared the screen and try to understand what we should do in each part.

Everything went well, but our idea about the concept has been a little separated. One team member wants to make an AR coding system by using the projected and computer and use the robot only as feedback for users. Others want to teach the people to code by programming the robot. Therefore, we separated into two teams focus on different concepts, but the good thing is we all focus on the domain of creative learning and coding learning, so we still can share the resources.

Individual

This week, I focused on the research of my domain and coding learning area. I have done some research on creative learning principles, and the situated model of creative learning is inspiring to me:

1. Immersion in the topic of interest, in traditions and in the subject matter;
2. Experimentation and inquiry learning;
3. Resistance from the material of interest [1].

For coding learning, from the research, the example is inspiring to me:

[2]

As you can see, the system display three screens, which are helpful for feeding the gap between simple language and real coding language. And the form of block is also fascinating for users, and also helpful for people's understanding of the structure of the coding language. So I am also considering using the block to help users organize the code, especially for those who have not learned to code before.

Interview:

I did some interviews about the users' intended experience about a coding game, the results shown below:

Reference

[1]L. Tanggaard, ‘A Situated Model of Creative Learning’, European Educational Research Journal, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 107–116, Feb. 2014, doi: 10.2304/eerj.2014.13.1.107.

[2]M. Khamphroo, N. Kwankeo, K. Kaemarungsi, and K. Fukawa, ‘MicroPython-based educational mobile robot for computer coding learning’, in 2017 8th International Conference of Information and Communication Technology for Embedded Systems (IC-ICTES), Chonburi, Thailand, May 2017, pp. 1–6, doi: 10.1109/ICTEmSys.2017.7958781.

Individual work done:

This weeks, I mainly focused on searching existing strategies to figure out how the sedentary behaviour can be reduced. Also, a team concept was formed based on all collected information, and finally potential individual concepts were considered.

1: Existing strategies:

The improvement of physical environment is an efficient way to change the norms of use. The key point to change the physical environment is to focus on the redesign of the easily accessible, visible, and appealing things around people. For instance, stairwells with music elements can attract people to use stairs. The use of technology is another key role to reduce this behaviour. Recently, there are an increasing number of implementation of technology in our physical environment, such as wearable and mobile devices, computers, and interactive chairs that use to remind people the sitting time. On average, computer, mobile and wearable technology tools are efficient to reduce sitting time, which is 41.28 minuets per day. Moreover, he also points out that the most frequently used codes in those tools were “goal setting”, “self-monitoring of behaviour” and “prompts and cues”.

2: A team concept was formed:

Four Strip Patches

The Four Strip Patches are targeted to people who have long-time sitting at home. This concept addresses the negative effects caused by the sedentary behavior by providing a visual and playful indication, which aims to increase the user’s awareness of long-time sitting and reduce the sitting time by encourage the user to do light activities.

They are four patches (8cm * 2.5cm) with display areas (fiber optic material) on the front and attachable material on the back. The user is able to attach them anywhere on the clothes and remove them from the clothes, which aims to provide a more flexible and personalized way to wear the devices (figure 2.1). Moreover, they are easily accessible and portable so they can be used in different environments and places.

The patches start to count the time once the user sits down with patches on his/her clothes. The time is expressed as a percentage on the display areas, such as 0% at the start. Also, as an additional reminder, the display areas will gradually illuminate over time (figure 2.2). Patches begin to bleep constantly when the percentage of the time reaches up to 100% (55 minutes).

Based on the distance between each patch, after that, one of two interactive games below will be activated.

Case 1: When patches are close to each other.

It is similar to the game of Whac-A-Mole. A patch is randomly selected by the system, and the lighting on this patch starts to appear for 0.2 seconds. Then, it is fully off and another patch will be selected. It is repeated until the game is over. The user is required to slap the patch, and the game is over when the user can successfully slap the patches for 20 times.

Case 2: When patches are far away from each other.

The user is required to move/shake the body parts that have patches on the clothes constantly, and the percentage of the sitting time will be reduced gradually. For example, if the user sticks patches on the sleeves, then the user needs to shake his/her arms constantly until the number turns back to 0.

It relates to the theme because, for instance, the strips can be placed anywhere on the user’s clothes. So, a number of combinations can be made, and the styles of clothes can be more personalized. Moreover, since they are light and can be stuck on cloths, they are portable. They all aim to attract people to use them with different options. Two interactive games were created in the concept in order to redefine traditional light activities such as standing and walking, and through implementing the playful and open-ended elements, we want users to rethink and explore how sedentary behaviour means to them.

3: individual potential concept:

Flower

It is an artificial flower with a flower pot (see figure 3.1). basically, the petals are displayed as a transparent electronic ball on the top. a touch sensor is installed on the ball’s surface, and a LED is placed inside the ball. moreover, the stem is a pole where electric wires are placed inside. The whole circuit is installed inside the flower pot. It has several functions: firstly, it starts to count the time once the user starts to use the laptop or computer. The stem gradually curves over time, and the colour of the ball (LED) also gradually fade out with flickering which aims to create a feeling of breath. The breath is getting weak if the user is keep sitting. Also, it aims to create a feeling of withering. The flower will start to make the sound of crying. All of these is to personalize the flower, and trigger the user’s compassion, and let the user stop sitting on the chair, and save the flower. I have thought about the way to interact with the flower for few days, and there are no any good ideas. I was thinking about touching the ball will let something funny happened, such as changing the colour, asking user to do exercise. But they are not interesting enough. I also think about the flower can read the current weather by connecting to the internet. If it is sunny, then the user is required to place the flower under the sun to get sun light, and the stem will turn to normal. Or if it is raining, then the user needs to water the flower in order to ‘save’ it. But all of these only involve simply walking and standing, there is no playful elements in it.

Things need to be completed for next week:

based on what I and the team have done so far, now I am thinking about I should form an individual concept or keep working on the team concept. I quite like the team concept actually but I am afraid I cannot make it out because I have searched on the internet, and it involves a number of extra materials and knowledge that I totally don't understand. So, if I keep working on this concept, then I might need to change some features of it so that I am able to make it out based on what I have learnt so far. For the another option, individual concept, I have come up with some ideas but compared with the team concept, I totally do not satisfy all of them, like they are not playful enough, the interaction is not funny enough, or the idea is not interesting enough. Actually, it is a bit hard to combine fun with this domain since people are working on their works when they are sitting, it might negatively affect the work efficiency if they interact with the product. However, the team concept perfectly solve this problem, and this is why I like the team concept. I have tried to think about how to make the “flower” concept more playful and interactive, such as touching the ball and changing colour, but they are too simple for me. So, I might keep thinking about possible ways to make it more interactive during these days, and whether I am able to make it out. If no idea comes up, then I might need to focus on the team concept. Then, finishing the individual report before the due day. For the team session, the report is almost done, what we need to do is to review the overall report, find out something need to be improved with extra resources, and correct the grammar. Also, we only need to discuss our individual directions like what each one of us is going to focus in this domain to ensure it can be explored broadly and deeply.

External source:

“Rotating, tilting, bouncing: using an interactive chair to promote activity in office environments” https://dl-acm-org.ezproxy.library.uq.edu.au/doi/proceedings/10.1145/2468356

It is an interactive chair that aims to reduce sedentary behaviour. Its appearance is same as common office chairs. However, it offers the opportunity to physically interact with the computer without using the keyboard and mouse. Basically, it has three types of gestures. Leaning or rotating the chair enable the user to switch to different applications; the forward and backward tilt can be used to control the scrolling of the screen; moving the chair up and down can be used to reload pages and confirm or reject actions (see figure 1.2).

Although the purpose of this product is to reduce sedentary behaviour, it does not require walking or standing after long-time sitting. Conversely, it requires users to do light activity while working by rotating, tilting, and bouncing the chair. It brings me insights of this domain: since the awkwardness of standing might negatively affect office workers to take actions, frequent and simple physical interaction such as motion and gestures can be used to substitute standing and walking. Moreover, it is efficient if it can be implemented with things that are frequently used in office, such as chair, keyboard, mouse, earphones, and pen, because it means the user needs to do a light activity every time when he/she wants to use the stuff. Furthermore, the implementation of the gesture interaction should be based on the feature of the things. For example, in this case, the design of the gesture interaction is based on the basic operations of a chair, such as leaning, rotating, forward and backward tilt, and moving up and down. Adding novel ideas on it so that it is easy for users to operate, learn and accept.

The Work Done & Reflection:

Concept forming:

In this week, the domain we are going to focus on is decided, which is helping people to reduce sedentary behaviour. Based on the information I found, most of us have this behaviour. For example, sitting for 3 hours while playing computer games or, sitting to study or work at a desk for long time. on average, it occupies around 9 hours per day for adults, and it could be longer for some occupations such as office workers and call centre workers who spent around 11 hours/day in sedentary behaviour. long-time sitting or lying can increase the risk of obesity, cardiovascular disease, cancers, and poor mental health. So, it is necessary to change the sedentary behaviour.

An initial team concept was formed. “The nagging cushion”, it’s similar in appearance to usual cushion but the main purpose of this cushion is to remind people to stand or walk after they have seated for long periods, which aims to reduce the sedentary behaviour. Specifically, the cushion starts to count the time after the user sat down, and the semicircular particles on its upper surface will be raised and move after sat for one hour, which aims to create an uncomfortable feeling to the user so he is not able to keep sitting on the chair, and the state will turn back to normal in five minutes.

In addition, it has a playful and annoying feature: when a user has seated for long time such as 2 hours or, ignore the reminder, the voice system inside the cushion will talk to the user such as ‘You have seated on my face for two hours! That hurts!’, ‘Do not throw me away just because I am annoying’, and ‘Do you know how heavy you are?’. They all aim to divert user’s attention and remind them they have been working for long time so it is the time to take a break for a while. In order to make sure user is standing or walking, user is required to carry the cushion. The cushion will then record the number of steps or the change of the height. If the system did not detect anything, then it would say something like ‘Hey, come on, just few steps’ or ‘I knew you gonna be lazy again’. On the other hand, this system can also read the current time and user’s daily plan set on phone. So, it will remind the user the upcoming plans, as well as daily routine like lunchtime.

Obviously, the target audience are people who need to sit for long periods for study or work. Such as students and office workers. Also, it is suitable for people who often sit and play video games for long time. In addition, one of the features they have is they dont take regular breaks to stand up or walk around after long-time sitting, maybe it’s because they are too busy so they lose track of time or, they just don't care about it. and now they want change it.

Presenting the concept:

In addition, I considered how to show the concept to all other students properly in the video. I think drawing and animation are the best ways to show it because in the current stage, no prototype has not been created yet. So, the most suitable way to show my concept is to convert the long text into clear, simple, and obvious drawings and animation. In this case, animation was selected because the show case could be more fluent and it is much more easily to highlight what I want to bring to users. Also, it is something I have never tried before, it is kind of challenge for me. Firstly, I created a basic outline and framework for the animation.

Then, through using the drawing mobile application, I draw all features I need on it.

Then, I spent few hours to learn how to make it as an animation by using Adobe After Effect, which is used to make videos, and it is suitable to be used to create animation for videos. Then, based on the basic framework, I created animation for each part of the concept, and here is the final video:

I have learned how to make animation by using this software, and it is quite helpful for me to improve my knowledge as a designer, since designers need to share their ideas visually. So, in the future of my work, I am able to create bettwe quality materials to support my concepts/ideas.

Show-case feedback:

On the other hand, we got some feedback from the showcase. Firstly, many feedback indicated that they expected more encouragement from the product, in other words, positive stimulation. Others expressed the desire to get more comfortable warnings. These feedbacks brought us a lot of discussion and confusion, that is because our design theme is "Bothering", it is difficult for us to find a balance between "Bothering" design and a comfortable experience for users. After seeking advice from the tutor, we decided to keep the product as much playful as possible to be the primary direction. In addition to finding a balance between "Bothering" design and product comfort, the feedback also mentioned the balance between "Bothering" and make user angry, if the user is in a special environment when using the product, for example, a work that needs to be highly focused, or being in a meeting and does not want to be disturbed. In these cases, "Bothering" that usually does not cause too much trouble is easily considered as irritating, as a result, users are very likely to give up using the product. The feedback also mentioned the lack of interactions between the product and the user. In our opinion, this will be a very serious problem and may totally change the current design. In the current design, the cushion will only passively accept information and give feedback, but the user cannot directly interact with the cushion.

Work to Do:

Based on the feedback, additional research is needed, and I made a research plan for the team:

1. A deep background research of sedentary behaviour, including why it widely exist in people’s life.
2. The research of existing strategies that have been used in real life.
3. Case study of real related products with physical computing.

Work that Inspired/Interested Me:

(Retrieved from http://static1.squarespace.com/static/540b9875e4b08e28fe49c8f5/t/56c56e342eeb81548d4df6ae/1455779393464/Yue+Huang+Defense.pdf)

It is a little machine that used to remind people how long they have been seated on chairs. The designer added human emotions into it. So, based on the sitting time, the machine’s ‘facial expression’ will change. Such as it cries if the user have seated for long time, and he/she still keep seating; it will be a happy face if the user leaves the seat. It inspired me because, firstly, it is portable with a tiny size which means users are able to easily carry and use it anywhere they want. Especially for office workers, sometimes the limitation of the office space is one of the reasons restrict people to stop sedentary behaviour. In addition, it creatively implemented the human emotion feature into the concept. Since reducing sedentary behaviour might take really long period of time. The designer tried to make it interesting by using this way so the user might feel that someone is also staying with her/him. A kind of companion along with the user.

Determine the form of cooperation

The most important thing in the Tuesday section is to decide which option to take.

Some elements have been taken into concerned.

• the innovation space in the university is also not accessible anymore.

This means we need to be more cautious with our ideas and try to avoid the resource that we are not able to have.

• Due to the policy, it’s impossible for us to sit and work together.

Thus, we need to figure out what can we do to reduce the amount of team cooperation. Fortunately, my roommate Yifan also has this course and we are in the same group, which means, at least we can complete something together.

Basically, I and Yifan would work together, and because there are only three team members right now, so we talked with Gloria. She could join us but the barrier would be the method of cooperation. Some physical items would be hard to share. And we also worry about the coding part. Will it be difficult for us to work on the same file? Another option is to work on another project which is related to the domain. As her original idea is different from ours, it could be a chance for her to do something she would like to do.

We also asked for advice from Lorna. At last, she chose to work with us, and she would focus on developing the idea further based on our project. I have to admit that I am worried about the coding part and the cost of our project might be higher because we need to use two sets of equipment. Well, this is a special period, I have to accept all the possibilities.

Division of labor

The second step is to decide the division of labor. I created the google doc as usual. We decided to look into the problem space by looking through the academic paper and in the meanwhile, we would conduct some user research based on the problem. The users' research includes a questionnaire and online interviews. We also need to explore some examples and existed projects which are related to our problem space. So, Gloria and Yifan would do more about academic research. I would be responsible for the user research and example exploration.

We would share the result in the google doc and begin to write the report on Monday.

P.S. I really wish the google doc could provide the function of the Gantt chart.

Starting

It's time to start the research. And it comes to the individual work.

Reflect from this week

This week is the second week of online learning, and it is also a very struggling week. As I mentioned in the journal last week, our group struggled earlier this week because our group was not satisfied with the previous pitch concept, and we failed to obtain a unified opinion on a new concept. We also reflected this in the report on Tuesday. This situation actually continued until Friday, although we did some housekeeping work, such as the assigning the workload of proposal, but there is no actual progress.

We have considered following the feedback suggesting us to focus on education, but we found that education is actually difficult to integrate with the body as controller. Until our group discusses again on Friday, we reviewed the idea of looking for to everyday life mentioned in the feedback, we started to refine our concept again from the beginning. Finally, we found that Paula ’s original pitch actually provided a very interesting direction, that is, using breath as the controller to bring well-being. This can be a very interesting direction. And as far as I understand, there are already similar breathing training devices in psychological research using video feedback, but it is very raw and not portable. We then determined our concept, and each person diverged separately. I chose the scenario of using breath controller in outdoor activities, so I will focus on the movement of people and the portability.

At this point we have basically completed the team section of proposal and started the individual section.

Work to do

In the next week, I will continue to embody my concept, because our final team problem space was actually determined on Friday, so we did not get much time to think carefully about our individual ideas. Next week, I will focus on the specific implementation of my concept, especially about technical methods that may be used. At the same time, I will continue to write the proposal.

And this week I finally received my Arduino kit. Next week, I will begin to explore the possible use of Arduino.

Aside

This week I initially explored some basic usage of Arduino and made a traffic light system based on the tutorial. I used the voice control in DECO7230, so I skipped the part of using Arduino, and only tried it in workshop tutorial. But in general, I think this is a friendly device. Only one strange thing about Arduino is that its preset variables HIGH and LOW turned out to be the int variables, which I thought it should be Boolean.

I have given feedback to most of the presentations. It would be too long-winded to list them in the journal, so I prefer to talk about something I was interested in and some feelings during the presentation.

Concepts related to video game

Having watched all the presentations, there are some ideas I think it’s really interesting. As I’m a video game lover, I have paid more attention to the concept of games. However, when I see those concepts, I always find it is similar to something I have known. Well, I have to admit that you can always see Nintendo from the gesture controller. So, as Nintendo has done so well in this area, can the controllers break the restrict of gestures or is it possible to be used in another area instead of just games.

Another concept’s a robot to “help” people make decisions. In another course, I have thought about using games to help people diagnose the mental disease as people can make decisions that they most want and do not have to think about the real limitations. The aim of this concept is very different and the form reminded me of the game “The Stanley Parable” Also, the aim is to think about the relation between people and technology.

There is another game for blind people. I really like this concept. Because looking through all the concepts, this might be the only one that specially designed for the disabled.

What’s new in this course

At first, I thought this course is a bit like design thinking. But now, I think the difference is that I need to consider the practice for the project. I can see that most of the concepts are designing for a certain problem and a certain group of people. Not only the interaction but they also consider whether people would accept it, is it safe enough, will it interrupt others and many other features.

Online presentation

It’s not the first time for me to have a meeting through zoom. But because of the hardware equipment, I have lost the chance to get more feedback after our team’s presentation which it’s quite disappointing. So, next time, I would make sure at least my microphone would work. Another thing it’s that without seeing people’s mouth, it becomes hard for me to understand others. Good chance to practice listening. ==

In terms of my team and the assessment, we lost two team members, and gained a new one. It was expected, and I had the slightest consideration to defer the course, however my current course plan would not allow it, if I wanted to graduate this year. I've already delayed my program a year, and it's not ideal for me mentally and financially to extend my studies (those GoCard fees are no joke). Anyhow, this quarantine situation has certainly brought about a lot of change, and when I get adapted to one thing, something else changes. In this case, that was my team. It was sad to see my team members leave, especially since I was interested in seeing where they would go with their concepts, and I felt we had gotten along well. We bid them farewell, and I wished them all the best with their studies. It sucks for all the students and the teaching staff that so many unprecedented changes had to happen. I just hope we all make it in the end, and it's as much fun as I'd hoped it would be going into the course. Our new team member, Jen, is a familiar face, so there was not much need to warm up to each other. I think the first few weeks of the course where we talked to different members of the course is to thank for, since normally I would not know many people outside of my friend circle. Jen's team was also looking at a concept rather similar to our team's, so we had a discussion on how we would want to approach the project. We decided it fit nicely within our scope, as long as we described it as something along the lines of "Musically-enhanced learning for primary school children", since our concepts weren't based on the current school curriculum, but still aimed to provide an educational value.

In terms of the report, we broke it down into its sections, and designated different parts to each team member. We established that many parts were dependent on other sections and that a lot of it would be collaborative, however the sections written by individual team members. This meant that we'd have to write some parts before others; I'm responsible for writing the response to feedback, so I have had to use blog posts and individual sections in the report to get an understanding of what and how my team members responded to, and the commonalities of our team as a whole. For the most part, we approached things differently, especially since we each had diverse interests in primary school education, which is why I believed it was necessary to make some mention of individual responses.

There's certainly a lot of work to be done, but with the pressure leading up, and my desire to have a mid sem break that I feel I've actually deserved, I'm trying to do the work I can. I could definitely be a lot more productive, and the productivity tips from Lorna and the rest of the cohort have been somewhat effective, but I'm learning it all comes down to my self discipline. In all honesty, I felt I was losing myself the past week, but after some time in the sun I've regained myself a little, and in my current state I'm pumped to do my best until Friday evening, rest a little, then complete the work necessary over the mid sem break (while also making time for some games with friends, if I feel I deserve it).

During this week, we pushed forward the progress of the project as planned. On Tuesday, we re-confirmed the division of labor after the team composition changed, selected the option 4 plan and got the consent.

Work have done

1.Questionnaire for housework and game preference

This mission was accomplished by our teammate Zhuoran. The other teammates check it and give some suggestions for modification. In my opinion, too many of these options will increase the cognitive burden of the respondents, so I suggest Zhuoran remove some options.

In addition, the questions in the questionnaire are mostly multiple-choice questions, which can be completed quickly after testing. It is still being tested, and we will make changes based on the feedback from the surveyed subjects.

Here is the link of the questionnaire：

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1DIyiIzN6fIDxB3pu1Zx3IAx4FWPfoQufxx1pvn--OxQ/prefill

2.Background research

The main part I was responsible for is background research.This task will last for a while because I haven't learned about housework games that use projectors.

I plan to conduct research on three aspects:

1. housework games
2. parent-child relationship
3. pong game

I will extract inspiration from them and apply them to our projects.

This background research is mainly about the first aspect and a part of the second aspect.

1. The first paper I studied was an indoor football simulation system based on VR technology. It solves the problem of limited indoor sports space. It uses the method of suspending athletes to solve the problem of athletes achieving limb movements in a small range. Combined with the VR eye mask and the stereo imaging of the flexion screen, the athletes can perform limb movements in situ and feel the three-dimensional running and kicking.(1)

Inspiration:

(1) Use silicone posts instead of real football, and realize 360 ° surround, users can shoot from any angle, and cause a real touch. The game experience will be better if we can add a real touch to the shot, but the specific form remains to be studied.(1)

(2) A semi-perspective VR eye mask is used. One of the eyes sees the virtual imaged football of the VR eye mask itself, and the other eye sees the information about the transition of the field and its own motion displayed on the screen. This technique will help us if we use VR eye masks and also observe the surroundings, but how to design the hardware is a problem.

Disadvantages: Although it can achieve the sensory effect of providing unlimited venues for athletes in limited space because people need activities when doing housework, the hanging method is not suitable for our solution.(1)

(1)

1. The second thesis I studied was about how gamified domestic chores affect family interactions in a positive and negative way.

inspiration:

(1)The article mentioned the following reward methods:

1) Treat chores as everyone's responsibility and therefore work for free

2) Pay every trifle of the child,

3) Weekly or monthly payment of an allowance for children to complete the agreed chores (If the child fails to complete the agreed trivia, it will be deducted from the allowance.

Our reward system can be set to give rewards for completing housework every time, or issue rewards after accumulating multiple housework, motivating children to complete tasks.(2)

(2) The article mentioned 6 six elements of games:(2)

1) There is a set of rules,

2) A variable and quantifiable outcome,

3) Different outcomes are assigned different values (e.g. positive and negative),

4) Interactive: The players can influence the outcome by doing some effort,

5) The players are emotionally attached to the outcome,

6) Negotiable consequences: The game can be played with or without real-life consequences.(2)

Based on the reward system above, we need a variable and quantifiable outcome.

Different chores should have different rewards because of different physical output.

1） mop : 15points

2） sweep: 15 points

3） wipe: 10 points

4） wash dishes:10 points

1. Zhang LI. Indoor sufficient ball mould plans system based on VR technique. 2017.
2. Bjering A, Høiseth M, Alsos OA. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. In: Ifip H, editor.: Springer International Publishing; 2015. p. 209-23.