Week5 Contact

On this week's contact class, we have to report back the works we have done and what improvement we added to our new concept based on the feedback of the last week's critique. Each of out group members attended the report back session, and after we introduced our current situation, we got a lot of feedback and suggestions from tutors and our classmates.

Critiques and solutions

Last week we have got a lot of feedback from our classmate.

critique one: we need to explore the gap between plaint-language and coding language.

solution: In our first idea, we want to use the simplified coding language to help the users understand the logic of programming like if..else, do.. while, etc. According to the feedback, we will choose a specific programming language like python or java and let the users practise this specific language in an interesting way.

critique two: 'I think keeping the robot in the maze is limiting'

solution: we admit that the maze idea is limited and not interesting enough, so we want to change the game to a box pushing game, which allow the users to control the robot by coding and push the box to the correct place. That is what we thought currently, maybe after our deeply communication, we can find more interesting ideas.

critique three: This would allow for the robot to modify its own code being able to correct your code.

solution: Actually, we have not find out a good way to solve this problem, but I think we just want to make our game an interesting way to help them learning, we don't need to let the robot modify their coding errors, we can find another way to let the users find out the problems by themselves.

About my new ideas

For this new idea, it is still a multi-player game, the two robots was placed at two different sides, and the destination is in the middle. We will let the users to fill the blanks in the coding questions to help them understand the syntax of the programming language, absolutely the difficulty of this game will gradually increase from easy to hard, so you don't have to worry about it. When the player answer the question correctively, the robot will move forward and if they didn't complete the question, the robot will go backward, so the player who get to the destination first will win the game.

Work to do

This week I have got the Arduino kit send by Lorna, and I have started to do some research on it. so the next task for me in the next week is keep learning arduino and find a way to solve the technical problems.

Contact & Workshop

In this week, we participated in the contact and workshop session we are allocated to.

During Tuesday’s contact session, Lorna first went through some options about how can we move our projects to the next level. After that, we conducted the ‘report back’ activity in our contact session in terms of our feedback on online format, team/individual progress after peer critiques, our plans and concerns. By reporting back and receiving feedback, we got a clearer understanding about our domain, and what help and resources we can get from teaching team, which will be really helpful for us. After the coffee break, our team organised team zoom meeting session to further discuss the plan, concepts and also invited Ben to give us further suggestions. By talking with Ben, he gave us some ideas around how can we work under the same problem space but explore different directions, like targeting at different user groups, focusing on different contexts of use, putting concept into different scenarios, etc. That enabled us to become clearer about working in the team manner but focusing on individual part.

During Friday’s workshop session, Clay and Alison first guided us to do a small ‘stand-up’ session, where we talked about what’s the potential problem space of our team and what’s the progress so far. After that, in order to give us some specific suggestions on refining each team’s problem space and moving forward our project, each team was allocated to different breakout rooms, so we were able to have the opportunity to refine our concept further and get feedback on that. By discussing with each other, the specific problem we decided to design for is ‘Breathing for a better life’. Under this team umbrella, we will explore different user groups/contexts in each one’s possible solution. This research direction also got the approval from Clay and Alison, and they shared some articles and apps around this space for us to refer to, which was very helpful for us.

Team progress

In this weekend, our team had some team chat with teaching team via Zoom and several online meetings for our team members. By discussing with teaching staffs, we got some valuable feedback and had a clearer understanding about what we are supposed to do next. In addition, we also got some clarifications around our team’s and individual’s concerns for moving forward. Combining the feedback and suggestion given by the teaching team and critiques received in previous pitch session, and in order to align with the course project domain, our team decided to move our focus from simple gesture-controlled games to a more meaningful day-to-day environment and object. Therefore, we decided to put this interesting domain, ‘Body as controller’, into a daily context, ‘breathing’.

Many people think that breathing is a simple and common thing, but they don’t realise that it is beneficial to people's physical and mental health, and the way of breathing is required in different situations, such as exercise, stress relieving and singing, also varies. So, our team is going to design some engaging and novel ways of interaction to help people learn and practice different breathing patterns to meet their different needs. That means our team can work in the same design space, but explore different contexts, or user groups.

we decided to move our focus from only ‘hand gestures’ to different parts of our bodies; to go beyond only focusing on game space; to put our concept into a more day-to-day environment; to explore how to apply this technology into various contexts, to reduce the reliance of system on the screen, etc.

For our team’s specific plan for the upcoming week, we decided to first keep searching for some research materials, like journal articles, papers, existing solutions, to get a deeper understanding of our team problem space as well as each one’s specific design context. In this step, in order to keep our team can keep efficient communications, we can create team Miro Mind map board, so that we can share our inspirations, progresses, etc. Besides, we’ll keep writing each one’s individual part of the team proposal.

Individual progress

In this week, it was mainly about negotiating the group and individual aspects around the course project. We also refined our concepts in preparation for proposal report. Since our team have decided our final problem space, in this week, I focused more on exploring a particular user group and context of this space. Basically, I’d like to focus on teaching those who are interested in singing how to master the belly breathing method of singing through some interesting and interactive exercises. So, I searched some explanation videos and articles of this breathing method online to get a thorough understanding of that. In addition, I took a look at some existing apps around helping people learn breathing, which was also helpful to enable me to further explore in this context.

Apart from that, I finished the assigned team part of the proposal report, and in the next step, I will try to finish my individual part as soon as possible, so that we can quicker move to next level of this whole project.

Reference

Images retrieved from 'Walking up' and 'Guided meditation' apps

Improvement

1. Compressing the image file size for better display in journal post.
2. Adding the alt text description of each image

Sunday Team Meeting

The team decided to complete initial research on the overall concept of teaching children in primary school through music, before the meeting on Sunday. Further research was based on individual interests. Consequently, I focused on understanding whether maths was a problem for students in primary school that needed to be improved. This was my starting point as I wanted to justify why I was focusing on this particular subject. The research conducted proved that this was a problem within the Australian schooling system as many were falling behind the world’s standard. From there, as I mentioned in my previous journal post, I was told that multiplication was a severe issue within mathematics. I knew I needed to back this up with evidence. Fortunately, this issue did have evidence that supported it because it appears that students are having trouble understanding how to multiply as well as memorise the times table. After this, the next step was to focus on whether music could help students learn multiplication. This was essential to understand because the broad theme is musical things, and, therefore, the concept had to incorporate music and exploration of music in an educational context. Not a lot of research was done at this point which made it hard to understand how best to incorporate music in a way that would help children learn their multiplication or times tables.

In the team meeting, each team member discussed what research they had conducted. This gave the team a clear understanding of what topics had been looked out, as well as any similarities or differences in the information.

The team meeting went well, it was interesting to see that everyone focussed on different areas while researching without discussing it beforehand what they were planning on doing. This meant we had more breadth of research on the team concept. However, this did cause a problem in how the team was initially planning on collaborating. Originally, it seemed we would try to work together as much as possible, so that the overall team concept and idea would be the same, except we would focus on different parts of the idea, for example, different users and technology. To have a clearer idea of what people were thinking we put our research and ideas together in a google doc that we all had access to.

Tuesday Team Meeting

The team got a new team member before the Tuesday session. This worked well for us because we, unfortunately, lost two of our members. Garfunkel is very happy to be working with our new team member and the different perspectives they bring and how we can incorporate their theme in our concept which is similar to musical things.

After the report-back, the team then had a meeting on zoom to discuss how the team would collaborate from now on. This was important to get sorted before we started writing the report to have a clear idea of how to move forward together. However, before this was done we welcomed the new team member and she was able to tell us about what theme she was working on and the ideas she had for the concept and report. From there, the team then discussed the concept they were focusing on in terms of the general target audience and context.

After the initial team discussions, we got feedback from the tutor about the report, individual ideas and how to incorporate the new team member's theme within ours.

The idea I pitched to the tutor was about the dice that helps teach children multiplication through music, as I mentioned in my previous post.

This was well-received, and the tutor made some very helpful suggestions on what areas to research more on. They also discussed how maths is a good subject to link with music because of how patterns are used and how the questions only have one answer. Other feedback included determining if natural sounds were the best way to represent digits and help with children’s memories. This particular feedback made me think about the research I had already done. It was clear that the information did not support using natural sounds because there was no evidence so far that showed those sounds were more useful then instrumental notes, pitches, tones, scales or well-known songs. After the tutor’s conversation with us, the team decided the best method of collaboration is by coming up with individual ideas that addressed the concept. This is because it was clear that we all had different areas we were interested in, whether this was different subjects or target audience. The team part of the report was then broken up into parts to make it easier for people to know what to work on.

Thursday Team Meeting

Before the meeting, I did some more research about the correlation between maths and music, how music can be used in general learning and additional research based on the topics I researched for the Sunday meeting.

The Thursday meeting encompassed reporting back to the team what we had done so far and starting to work on individual reports and ideas. We met back every hour and kept zoom opened to allow the team to ask questions. This seemed to help keep the team motivated to work on their parts rather than procrastinating as it gave the impression that we were holding each other accountable, to some extent. The team seemed to like this approach, and this might be a technique that we can continue as we work on our parts through team-based contribution.

Individual Process

So far, I have done background research as mentioned before in the post. I have also started writing the team domain and individual parts for the report.

The changes to the idea have been to utilise a 16-sided dice instead of 12-sided dice, with 0-12 being shown and 3 blank slides. If the user rolls and gets a blank side, they can then decide what number to multiply with. Each digit, 0 – 9, will be assigned some sort of sound; however, this hasn’t been determined as random natural sounds might not be used, based on the research done. Instead, within the research, it suggests the best way to teach maths using music is through allowing students to match beats, pitches, speed, tempo, words or sounds (Church, 2020). These can be done by using objects, instruments, voice and the body (Church, 2020).

The next steps will be to figure out what sounds to use and how they will change with the numbers, whether this is by using patterns, increase the pitch, scale or tune as the number becomes bigger. I am worried about whether sounds should be instrumental, such as a piano, or use the notes that objects make. I want to make sure kids can explore the sounds, and it would be interesting to allow them to use sound around them; however, I haven’t found enough evidence to show it can help students learn. Nevertheless, I do not want to turn objects into instruments as this might distract them from learning multiplication. Although I have found that familiar and popular tunes help students memorise, I might have to think about how students can create these tunes by picking random numbers which could turn out to be quite difficult. Nevertheless, this would ensure the product is not bothersome to the children, or even teachers and parents. These issues will need to be resolved and the plan pertains to reviewing the research, possibly doing more research and spending time thinking about the idea more.

Our second week of the online class, I start getting to use to the routine of having some extra time to get prepared before the class start. On Tuesday class, each of us went over to share what we had done since the last class.

Our group, Zookeeper, talked to Lorna in the second section of the class. We shared that we were still struggling to find a solution to the feedback we got about our inputs in the project. Lorna gave a good suggestion that I like is that since global warming is a huge problem across many areas/parts of our life. We can narrow it down to one specific subject that we want to focus one. Since our group chooses “option-2” to move forward our project, each of us could focus on a different area in the theme we got. Within the scope of the subject, we could develop what we want the children to experience and learned with the outcome we have thought of. Later, we can compare our result to see what work best. In the end, Lorna also suggested that we look at the elementary curriculums in Australia because the school has included teaching children about global warming in the class. We could see how they did it.

Individual

It really helps me to switch my mindset and to move away from keeping thinking about the input instead narrow it down to what specific area of global warming that we would want to focus on with the output we want. However, another problem that I am facing right now was that I don’t know how to link my idea, making smoke, back to the theme. I was thinking of a direct association with the smoke that causes air pollution and wastes from the factories or transportation(bus, cars, trucks...etc.). After the class, I went to do research and find out that there couple more causes than the ones I thought about; surprisingly, the household is one of them. The heat and lights at homes and indoor air pollution caused about 3.8 million premature death in the developing world. I know heats and lights are related to climate change, but it didn’t occur to me that it would affect air pollution. It makes much more sense to me now that the heat changes the temperature of the air that creates a chemical reaction between the primary air pollutions and oxygen.

Air Pollution isn’t always visible, and sometime we might not even notice what we had done daily affect the cause of air pollution. In here, I think I got some more clear focus of what I want to do with my idea of the input to create smoke. As for now, I might go with lights at home since most of the kids might not have the habit of turning off the light when it’s not needed.

Here are some of the notes I make while I was reading on the information I found. I wanted to make a mind mapping that could help me to visualize and form the ideas better in the later stage. Since everything is interconnected, it would be good to learn and understand the relationship. This practice would help me in my future work as well to organize information and find some insight if it needed for a depth study.

The next thing that I am going to do is do some more research that teaches children about the importance of turning off light in the household. Or if there is any similar teaching that had been thought by the school’s curriculum. It will help me to form my story and link back to the theme and the brief of everyday things.

Here are the links that I looked at:

Air pollution explained

What causes air pollution?

For air pollution, trash is a burning problem – climate central

Based on previous and recent feedback, we found that one of the biggest drawbacks of our products is the lack of playful interactions. However, our team redesigned and reset concepts many times.

New conceptual direction:

A Wearable Technology + Redesign Easy to Approach, Visible and Attractive Things + Call Up Users'Positive or Negative Emotions (Annoying Features) + "Goal Setting", "Behavior Self-Monitoring" and "Tips and Tips"+ Regular Walking and Standing + Physical Interactions, such as Motions and Gestures.

First re-thinking:

A sedentary shoe pad with a pressure sensor that allows the user to enter their own weight. The product automatically calculates the weight required. When the user sits down, the strength of the legs and feet will be greatly reduced. In this case, the insoles will start and count down the or according to the pressure transfer. When the time reaches 55 minutes, the reminder first time and then there will be some vibration or massage phenomena on the device to remind the user. After another 15 minutes or more, users will be penalized for making harsh sounds or intensifying shocks to prick them. At this point, the user needs to get up to exercise or bounce, and then the pads receive a standard weight to time for 3-5 minutes. When the conformance time is reached, the unit returns to normal.

Second re-thinking:

Flowerpot, add a placeable function to the top of the pot, and then each time the user can put something on it. There is a pressure sensor that increases the countdown time after contact. This allows users to plan tasks and time for themselves. The main consideration is that the internal set time like before may interrupt the user's work, but the user is not willing to stop working. Let them set their own time to improve their self-discipline.

Third re-thinking:

Sensor->Auto Countdown->LED/Screen Display Emotions->Reminder Up to 55 Minutes->Emotions Start to Change->Extra 15 Minutes->Emotions Change Again and Sound->User Get Up and Leave Seat->Device Auto Timing

Case1: If within 5-10 minutes the user returns to the seat - > Sounds - > Countdown Reset is detected

Case2: Users can return to their seats to work after the specified time.

Final re-thinking:

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 Concept in Potential

At present, the perfect idea is ‘Shoe Pad’: with a pressure sensor that allows the user to enter their own weight. The product automatically calculates the weight required. When the user sits down, the strength of the legs and feet will be greatly reduced. In this case, the insoles will start and count down the or according to the pressure transfer. When the time reaches 55 minutes, the reminder first time and then there will be some vibration or massage phenomena on the device to remind the user. After another 15 minutes or more, users will be penalized for making harsh sounds or intensifying shocks to prick them. At this point, the user needs to get up to exercise or bounce, and then the pads receive a standard weight to time for 3-5 minutes. When the conformance time is reached, the unit returns to normal.

Work to Do:

Consult the instructor for additional sensors and equipment needed for our project

Find tutorial videos and information to familiarize yourself with the features we need in Arduino and some link coding.

https://forum.arduino.cc

https://create.arduino.cc/projecthub

Start to think about future product positioning and personal development projects.

External Resource

Concept Discussion

Based on the feedback analysis from last week, we discussed how to improve our group design.

We add one more bud to provide users opportunities to have more interactions with our product, LOME.

Physical Interactions

In our new design concept, users will be able to have more Physical Interactions with the flower and the bud.

Once the user considers complaining about their working time or studying life to the flower, they need to pull out a red petal and put the petal on the one-leaf bud. In this case, the red pulled out petal will change to green which means your negative mood is reborn through the bud. When the user finishes negative emotion sharing, they can pull out the color changed petal from bud and put it back to the flower.

In the process of expressing negative emotions, LOME will use funny ways to help users switch emotions.

Motivate Users to Learn Emotion Management

In the new concept, We want the flowers to simply greet family members each day when they come home from work or school, and each person's response determines the status of the flowers. When mom came home before, for example, LOME will ask the mother "how are you doing today", if the mother gave a positive response, such as good, all the petals are green. When dad came home flowers of color can let dad know this moment the emotional state in the home, while LOME still will ask dad how is him today, and dad's answer to remove all the positive answers will make flowers and even appear red and green. And the color state of the flower seen by the members of the family at the moment is the emotional state of the latest member to return home. If the family member's mood is not good, which means half of the petals are green and half of them are red, so that family member can vent the negative emotions with the LOME.

Expression

When users returned home, in addition to LOME status will be updated according to the members of the emotional color, LOME mainly only detecting the negative emotions in the home, such as complaining about the use of words or dirty words, ten negative words will change one green petal to red, and the mood at the user failed to take the initiative to interact with flowers to vent conditions can make the petals of red color, when most of the petals are red, LOME will take the initiative to issue inquiry "look you now the mood is not very good, want to chat with me?" Such an invitation can make users aware of their negative emotions, and encourage them to express them actively, so as to realize the management of their own emotions.

Group Process

This week we had a total of 2 additional group discussions.

The first time (Tuesday)

According to proposal requirements, we have redefined concept and feedback in more detail.

Team domain (which is not yet decided):

• Modern pressure is great, it will have a great impact on people's lives
• Give non-professional users the possibility to create and give ordinary people more opportunities to contact music (crowd: non-professional music lovers)

Target audience:

Removed a persona (music producer), because for professionals, they have a more accustomed way to collect sounds that can be used (because during the collection process, the surrounding noisy ambient sounds will be added, thereby the collected sounds cannot be used in music) and they have a high dependence on the music editing function (professionals and ordinary people have a large gap in the demand for music editing, and it is difficult to achieve functional unification)

Feedback and solutions:

• F: Multi-person participation S: The original plan can achieve the effect of cooperation, collect sounds separately and arrange music together
• F: Noise problem S: Detect the number of decibels and only collect sounds above a fixed decibel
• F: Nice music S: Provide some main melody in the beaker, change the melody by knocking the flask (Inspiration: Airpod)
• F: More functions for editing music S: Does not meet the user characteristics of persona, for ordinary users, the operation is too complicated
• F: Collection of multiple pieces of music S: Add multiple buttons on the dropper / decide the number of recordings according to the number of presses (add a cue light)
• F: More visual effects S: Increase the smoke effect and use the brightness of the light to indicate the upper end of the recording time
• F: More experimental equipment for interaction S: It is difficult for users to heat and cool, and equipment interaction is already very complicated

Technical problem:

• Transmit the sound from the dropper to the test tube
• You can use Makey,Makey as an aid to start touch interaction
• Light up by judging the duration

Proposal report (Team part):

Break down and understand the requirements of the proposal, and determine the content of everyone's work in the team report

The second time (Friday)

Team domain:

Eventually we decided to use option1 as our domain. Reason: enough board to start the discussion

Proposal report structure (Team part):

Reorganize and distribute the content of the proposal, because if the report is completed according to the order of assignment, it is logically difficult for people to understand us, and the feedback part will involve not only the video presentation part but also after the part of user research conducted. Therefore, after the discussion, we decided to reorganize the structure of the report in the form of stages.

1. Team domain (regarding the current situation, sources, influence and resolution possibility of stress)
2. Concept + context (functional design and the reasons behind it)
3. Research stages (related work, methodology, feedback)
4. Audience & intended experience
5. Relevance to theme

• Stage1: Music helps relieve stress (literature review)
• Stage2: Some people will prefer a certain daily sound, such as earsore / ASMR / nature ’s sound sleep aid (a sleep aid app + literature review + online survey)
• Stage3: Self-made music is the most helpful to relieve stress (literature review + online interview + card sorting)
• Stage4: Paper prototype (online + video presentation) + evaluation (TAM) + Honeycomb (desirable + usable)

What have I done in team report?

The reason why we use TAM as evaluation method

TAM is the abbreviation of Technology Acceptance Model; it is proposed by Davis (1989) aiming at measuring the user’s acceptance of a new technology. It is measured by 4 dimensions namely perceived usefulness (PU), perceived ease of use (PEOU), attitude (ATT), intention to use (ITO). Usable: The functions in the system can well meet the needs of users. Desirable: Aspects related to emotional design, such as graphics, branding, and image.

TAM questions:

(PU: Perceived usefulness; PEOU: Perceived ease of use; ATT: Attitude; ITO: Intention to use)

1. PEOU1: I can produce music more quickly using Sound Lab.
2. PEOU2: I can capture surrounding sounds easily using Sound Lab
3. PEOU3: I can playback generated music easily using Sound Lab
4. PEOU4: Learning to use Sound Lab is easy for me.
5. PEOU5: It is easy to use Sound Lab to do the sound processing.
6. PU1: Sound Lab reduces my irritability.
7. PU2: Sound Lab enables me to enjoy the process of creating music.
8. PU3: Overall, I find Sound Lab useful.
9. ATT1: Overall, I believe Sound Lab is easy to use.
10. ATT2: In my opinion, it is desirable to use Sound Lab.
11. ATT3: I think it is good for me to use Sound Lab.
12. ATT4: Overall, my attitude towards Sound Lab is favorable.
13. ITO1: I will use Sound Lab on a regular basis in the future.
14. ITO2: I will frequently use Sound Lab in the future
15. ITO3: I will strongly recommend others to use Sound Lab.

Individual directions:

1. According to roles (designer / researcher / programmer)
2. According to perspectives (domain: music and stress / interactions: music-related interaction methods / target audience: people and music without a music foundation)
3. According to devices (the dropper / the flask / the test tube)
4. According to functions (record and capture sounds / playback and manipulation / mixing)

In the end we decided to use option 4 as the final direction. First of all, it is unreasonable to classify by role. As far as designers and researchers are concerned, their workload is relatively small, and the output content is mainly in proposal, and in the later stage, our main content is to use Arduino and Makey Makey to produce the equipment. In other words, if this is allocated, everyone's workload will be much different.

Secondly, because we have decided that three people will work together to make the sound lab, so if we follow this classification method, we will need to do background research and user research again at a later stage, which will produce three new concepts. This is different from our expected development direction.

Third, Lorna has suggested that the direction of development can be determined based on the device, but in actual discussions, we found that such a classification listing is very similar to option4. Because the main function of the dropper is record and capture sounds; the main function of the test tube is playback and manipulation; the main function of the flask is mixing. So fundamentally, option 3 and 4 are essentially the same. But when making a dropper, you need to collect and play music; when you make a flask, you need to play, operate, and mix music; when you make a test tube, you need to operate and play music. Although we will have a common code base, when assigning and carrying out work, complicated methods and online communication modes make our cooperation more difficult, so we chose option4. Clear classification can help us understand the project schedule and work content more easily.

Although our classification is based on function, it includes: visual / physical interaction, design, technology, and fun in each small classification. For example, the radio includes: how to collect multiple sounds, how to reduce the collected noise, the light display, etc .; the sound playback function includes: how to play regularly, how to control the playback time, how to choose to play tracks, etc .; including in the mixing function : There is a smoke signal when the mixed sound is completed, how to debug a certain sound in the mixed sound, etc. In this way, everyone's workload is very even.

Work to do:

1. Proposal partial completion
2. Consult tutors about additional sensors and equipment needed for our project
3. Look for some tutorial sites to get familiar with the components in the Arduino kit (what are they and how to use them)
4. Start thinking about how you need to complete the function you are responsible for

Reflection

---

During the contact this week, all of our team share our concern with tutors. Considering the difficulty of quarantine and work allocation, there are lots of different ideas within our team. We used to consider option 1, which only demonstrates one prototype as a team. However, as I mentioned, we may accomplish all of the ideas before the quarantine, yet it is the time to locate own focus among those thoughts. That was the conflict and problems in our team before this contact. Thanks to Lorna showed us a way to separate the team, which we still share the outcomes of every research and technology, but we can contribute to our own direction.

I have found research indicates that visualizes the process of coding will significantly improve the pedagogical values of code learning. Therefore, my current concept of the design is about using Anki Vector to visualize the coding process. Here is some examples, the first one is if users input commands like go forward, look around and find a specific object, the vector will follow those commands one by one and finally get the target object. That one is the general usage of my system, which requires Anki to follow the commands strictly. Another example is applying the basic arithmetic like plus, minus into the system. It needs the correct coding of users so that the vector will move numbers of the cube to demonstrate how those codes work in the pc.

There are still a lot of issues need to be justified, like whether it is necessary visualizing the simple code, for example, print" Hello world". Other issues are all about the technology part. Therefore, I am considering adding some digital elements into the system but still keep the integration as the physical form. That will reduce a lot of work in building the prototype. Btw, The future plan and other details will be covered in the proposal file.

Research on domain

Children with autism

Special case: Interaction in children with autism

HCI for Children with Disabilities

This book provided a set of methodologies, architectural models, examples of interaction with children with disabilities, case studies, and usability considerations in the context of disability that focuses on providing the reader with the elements required to build human–computer interaction systems thinking in children.

Research on learning method

Multisensory instruction

Multisensory instruction is a way of teaching that engages more than one sense at a time. User for problems like: Dyslexia, Dyscalculia, Dysgraphia, ADHD

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) Strategies

UDL is a type of teaching that gives all students flexible ways to learn and succeed. UDL strategies allow kids to access materials, engage with them and show what they know in different ways.

Meaningful play

1. Gives the child a choice about what he or she wants to do
2. Feels fun and enjoyable for the child
3. Evolves spontaneously, rather than giving kids a script to follow
4. Is driven by intrinsic motivation about what the child wants to do
5. Creates a risk-free environment where kids can experiment and try new ideas.

Good-quality apps or games for preschoolers

1. encourage creativity
2. encourage problem-solving
3. develop communication skills
4. develop social skills
5. build on interests
6. have positive messages about relationships, family and life

10 Fun Activities to Do with Your 3-5 Years Old

1. Trace letters together
2. Do puzzles
3. Throwing games
4. Matching shapes
5. Play bingo
6. Create a tin can phone
7. Do a color scavenger hunt
8. Try an information game
9. Play with sensory toys
10. Notice the seasons

Concept Development

This week our team worked on delving deeper into our problem space by building off our original concept idea.

Stemming off our theme, Sassy Tech, the maze idea explored how a user would cooperate with a dodgy robot guide to complete a maze. When the user comes to a decision point (left or right), the robot would offer its advice and the user could choose to follow or ignore it. The more the user ignores the robot, the more moody and devious the robot would become. Alternatively, cooperating makes the robot friendlier and more inclined to offer good advice. Ultimately, the aim of this concept was for the user to experience cooperating with an untrustworthy robot. We boiled it down to the problem space of 'how humans put trust in robots'.

Steven the tutor helped us collect our thoughts and think more critically about how we could effectively develop a concept. Once we decided on a problem space, he advised that we identify some core concepts and a mantra. In identifying these points, we considered how each element relates back to the problem space.

Core Concepts:

• Clear objective
• Decision points multiple answers
• Robot offers advice
• Guide in power
• No clear path
• Some idea of progress
• Sensation of being lost
• Trust robot or not
• Penalties for not trusting
• Benefit for ignoring robot

With these foundations, we then spent our time putting forward ideas and developing a concept.

Ideas

• GPS assistant

This idea is a driving assistant that gives you directions in your mission to reach a destination. Similar to the maze, the robot recommends a path. However, you encounter obstacles follow a dodgy route if you follow the robot's directions. Eventually, the user should begin to mistrust the robot and ignore its advice.

• Cooking teacher

This concept involves a cooking instructor that offers methods and ingredients for baking a cake. The robot instructor offers some dodgy ingredients and cooking methods, ultimately leading you second guess the instructions. Since the user has a vague idea in mind of the ingredients that belong in the cake, the user is inclined to place their trust in their own instincts.

• Origami teacher

The origami teacher offers folding directions in your task to create origami. Throughout the task, the robot teacher will offer some incorrect folds. The user should try to guess when these arise based on their idea of what the final origami should look like.

Those three concepts involve making the user suspect that the guide is supplying false information and that they cannot be entirely trusted. Again reinforcing this problem space that people shouldn't by default place their trust in a robot.

Research

When Bat Skwad struct a dead end, we decided that it would be helpful if we each went off to collect some individual research, and then come back with some new inspiration.

• Overtrust of Robots in Emergency Evacuation Scenarios

I found an interesting article about a volunteer study done to test how people follow a robot to lead them to safety in the case of an emergency.

Trust in evacuation robots

The scenario was setup by placing a bunch of people in a mock building which begins to fill with smoke. Incidently, an "Emergency Guide Robot" comes to the rescue. By following the guide, participants found themselves being offered LED-lit directions to an unmarked, previously unknown exit rather than the door they'd first come in through. The bot would attempt to take followers to a clearly blocked-off area, admit that it was malfunctioning, or otherwise behave unreliable. The bottom line of this study was that humans should consider establishing an "appropriate level of trust" with robots.

• "People seem to believe that these robotic systems know more about the world than they really do, and that they would never make mistakes or have any kind of fault ... In our studies, test subjects followed the robot’s directions even to the point where it might have put them in danger had this been a real emergency"

Reflection

After this week, it's clear that our concept is progressing, I'm just not sure where we're headed. After essentially ditching the Maze Bot idea we were feeling a bit directionless. We knew that we were exploring how humans put trust in robots, we just weren't sure of a good application to do so. Then Steven came to the rescue. Steven helped us organise our ideas into a list of core concepts and develop a mantra. With these foundations we were able to focus our ideas more and not stray too far away from the original goals. Consequently, we amassed a bunch of new ideas that all have the core concepts in common. Over the next couple of weeks we'll work on refining these ideas and choosing the best. Another consideration I want to bring up is that we will have to eventually build this thing, so while it is still the early stages of concept development, I'm trying to stay rational with what is actually achievable.

After our team decided to collaborate on a project, we first discussed the team report.

The generation process of concept

In the pitch of the second week, some students paid attention to the problem of helping people with high work pressure to reduce the pressure, so our domain initially started from this point. After that, we set the target users as people with no music knowledge. This is because of two reasons. One reason is that we want to give more people the opportunity to use our design. Whether it is a child, an elderly person, or someone who does not understand music, they can quickly learn our products and they can easily Operate and use our products. The second reason is that as designers, our group is not a professional musician group. We cannot understand the needs of professional musicians, nor do we understand professional music-creation products. We are just music lovers or People who love songs.

Finally, we chose to use test tubes, droppers and other chemical laboratory equipment commonly used in Lab as the appearance of our products, which was inspired by the design of some students and film and television dramas. In the work of classmates, one person designed to use AR glasses to collect sounds. We hope that the process of collecting sounds become more interesting. In the famous Chinese literary work Journey to the West, there is a story in which a gourd collects the voice of an enemy, and then the gourd will attack the person who made the sound. We tried to find a daily necessity or something more meaningful to record sound. In film and television dramas, when people research and create some new things, they will choose the laboratory as the scene, and our products create music, so we decided to use the common tools of the laboratory as the appearance of our products.

Team domain and problem space

We are step by step from broad problem space to a specific problem space. We first read the literature and conclude that music is helpful to human emotions. Then, we observed that some people like to listen to the sound of nature or daily sound. These sounds are very interesting in some music. The next thing we need to understand is the impact of DIY music on people, and we want to collect data through prototypes and questionnaires. We want to know whether people like the laboratory. We will use TAM to analyze the data.

Team report

We have some questions

1. How you intend to engage the audience in the design and delivery of the project?

We guess this means let us explain how we will design some visual effects or sound effects to attract more people to pay attention to our project.

1. About Explain how the overall idea and planned implementation addresses the studio theme (Designing for playful and open-ended interactions in everyday life); your teams chose the theme/domain and focus for the course (novel physical Interaction with/through technology).

This part feels very difficult to write. After discussion, we determined that our Team theme is music metric, and the keyword of Studio theme is playful, open-ended. In the course theme section, we will focus on explaining physical interaction (squeeze, shake, etc.)

Technical problem

1. How to transfer the recording in the dropper to the test tube, and how to delete the sound in the dropper. We plan to use the touch function of makeymakey. I wonder if we can borrow school equipment?
2. How to remove the sound from the flask by pouring the flask to the trash
3. How to judge the length of time, and light up according to the length of time
4. We need to use a lot of wires and sensors, but we can't install so many wires, buttons, and sensors in test tubes and droppers.

After asking Lorna, we learned that there was no need to consider technical issues at this stage, as this would limit our creativity.

individual part

We designed the following 3 ways to divide our project into three parts:

1. According to the research direction: one person studies the team domain, one person studies the interaction design, and one person studies the target user.
2. According to the team role: one is the coder, one is the researcher, and one is the designer.
3. According to function: one person researches how to collect the daily sounds of the outside world and the transfer of the sound between the devices, one person studies the functions of playing sounds and deleting the stored sounds, one person studies the functions of mixing and controlling sounds, beats and so on.

After discussing with the teachers, we chose to divide the functions according to their functions and classify the feedback of each function.

Feedback for each function

Sound collection function:

1. How to use a dropper to collect multiple sounds. In our previous design, a dropper can only collect one sound, but some people think that this design needs to carry many droppers, which is very inconvenient to use.
2. In the process of collecting sound, how to avoid collecting noise.

Play sound function: We did not design a specific method of using the play function. In the initial design, we designed that as long as the user keeps shaking the flask, it will be able to play continuously. When the user stops shaking, it will stop playing. But in this way, users cannot hear the sound of their creation for a long time.

Mixing function: This function we designed is very simple, in the original design, it is simply to play different music at the same time. But the user hopes to have more operations, such as adding a new sound at a certain point in time and adjusting the sound. In addition, at the moment when the mixing is completed, the user hopes to get a prompt signal, such as smoke and lighting.

Last Team Meeting 29/03

Last meeting, our team started to discuss the proposal by listing out the dot points for each section in order to get a comprehensive view. We reviewed feedback we gained from the pitch and consolidated our concept by researching and discussing among the team. I focused mainly on the feedback part since I have received the direct recommendations from the teaching team during the pitch, thus, I have a better perception on summarising feedback as well as noting down the change of concept from the team discussion.

Contact

With the experience from the previous week, I am more familiar with the online teaching method. I have little zoom connection issues, maybe because of the reducing students per session and the use of voice connection.

We have our team meetings on Zoom and collaborate the documents on google drive, and the two online platforms work fine for us and after a week, our team adapts the situation well in terms of group work and self motivation.

The team's plan for the coming week will be finishing up the proposal and for myself, my priority will be finalising the individual concept and finishing the proposal. Afterwards, I will research the possible technology to build the prototype and look for suitable materials.

My concerns for the coming week includes the use of Arduino kits, and the technology, skills and resources I need to build my prototype.

Reflection after contact

During the report back session, our team realised that we are a bit behind schedule. We have discussed among the group and with Lorna to clarify about the segment of group and individual work. We have discussed breaking down the concept by topics, age groups or interactions.

Personally, I am interested in teaching kids math by using lego blocks, however, my concern is that using lego blocks has limited interaction with the kids besides physically moving the blocks from one place to another place.

This Week:

I am currently working on developing the direction I want to take for my concept and how it will relate to the team domain. In the image below you can see some of my brainstorming and mapping of ideas. A lot of the research and context of the team’s original idea was aimed towards households with children and the average family. Based on the background and related work for this problem space, I would like to focus my exploration on homes and households with just adults. So this relates to partners, couples, or housemates living together. It was found through research that children have the most influence on their parents within the home as children learn about being environmentally friendly and sustainable in schools. I want to take the perspective that adults have forgotten or are now too busy with their work lifestyles that they have forgotten the basics of being energy conscious and the Energy Saving Emily device will assist with that.

I have also had a look into the resources and things I have at home which can come in handy when creating and constructing my prototype. I ended up finding some old 3D printed hexagons and strips of LEDs. I thought this could be useful for creating some of the interactions.

I have also been having a play with my arduino and seeing what sensors I can use. I found a PIR sensor which is used for motion. IT is primarily used in outside lights, so when someone walks past the light will turn on. I thought this could be an interesting sensor to use as this could be used to annoy people in my domain. For example every time someone walks past Emily, an annoying sound plays only if they are not being energy efficient.

Work to Do:

For the next week, I have to finish my individual section for the report. I also need to have a good look into what I want my product to look like and what technology I want to see in it. I want to conduct some user surveys or testing regarding sounds or things that annoy people with technology.

Work that Inspired/Interested Me:

I found this Customisable World Clock creation that can be done with Arduino.

https://www.electromaker.io/project/view/word-clock-customisable-and-easy-to-build

I thought this was a good DIY home project to do while at home. It was something quite simple to make and I think I might incorporate some of the features into my own individual creation.

I felt really nervous coming into this week trying to figure out how the project would work as a team assisted individual project as I was already not confident in my skills for this course. Adding to that, my teammates had all wanted to build something I felt was not the most practical but they were confident in. The report backs started of badly for me as well as I found out another teammate had dropped the course, leaving 3 of us.

However, the group discussion later with Lorna really helped in figuring out which direction to explore the concept in. Since my other 2 teammates were housemates, it meant they could easily work on the main project, while I would then use what they built and adapt it to a multiplayer setting, where each household functions as one team, competing against different households.

Moving forward this week is mainly going to be researching how this would work for me, as I still largely have no idea how to accomplish this.

For now, our focus is still howver on writing the report, conducting background research into the problem space specific to housework, existing technologies, the Internet of things, and pong, as well as preliminary surveys and user testings to narrow down the field. I would also like to fully flesh out and plan the specifics of the game - if an app is used to connect each thing, how would it look like, what are the rules, what are the interactions a user goes through, site map, and the specific gameplay of each chore as mentioned in my previous journal, among others

I guess to avoid feeling overwhelmed I intend to just take each challenge as it comes and focus on the immediate plans to complete this week. I intend to use the next week as well as Mid sem break to improve my technhical skills in Arduino as well as going more in depth into the specifics of the problem space and learning about that

At the weekends of week 4, our group have a zoom meeting, discussed what we are going to do in week 5. We devided the writing work of our proposal, and what specific aspects each team member will focus on. We read the feedback from the week 4 team pitch try to think about what kind of changes we could make to our concept based on these feedbacks.

According to the current situation, its impossible to conduct any face to face user research, I tried to gather a few people in a group channel and have a free chat and tried to get some general ideas about our concept. However, unlike in the real world, it was really difficult to hold a discussion online, the focus point of the discussion soon changed to some very detailed questions(maybe because the participants are mostly college students in engineering). The talked about how to translate data into sounds. Because a clip sound wave have three variables: time, frequency and volume. While the data we got from the user only have two, time and pressure. Therefore there are two ways to implement the translation, either transform　the pressure to volume or to frequency. The former will emphasize the rhythm of the music and the latter will emphasize the melody. Although the name of our concept is "Fitlody", however it might be more suitable to combine "rhythm" with "Fitness", instead of "melody."

The insights I got from the discussion.

1. There will be a lot of noise in data and how to deal with these data would have large effect on user's experience.
2. Some of the participants couldn't understand why we want to generate music from the data, they just suggest to identify what kind of exercise user is doing and provide different styles of music.
3. Better find some sample data and have an early experiment on translating these data to sounds and could discover any severe issues that could help to decide a better way to implement the idea.

Contact & tutorial

In this week's contact and tutorial sessions, we had a deep discussion with our teaching team. Basically, we reported back our working progress and ask some questions about the whole project and proposal, and got useful feedback and clarification which help us to divide our individual work and to decide team cooperate mode.

About Zoom

After a week's experience with using Zoom, I'm totally getting used to this online tool, without any network issues, the communication with other team members and teaching team is clear and fluent. I'm just a little worried about, when it comes to practical tutorials like Arduino, how it will deliver the content, we will see in the next week.

Team progress

This week, our team had two meetings to discuss our proposal progress and individual work. As for the proposal's team section, we divided our work like this:

• The Team Domain (Concept/Context/Problem Space) (Shane & Tianyi)
• Response to Feedback (Dennis)
• Related Work (All 3 of us focus on 3 aspects: exercise promotion, music's connection with exercise, music's effect on human emotions)
• Audience & Intended Experience （Shane）
• Relevance to Theme (Tianyi)

As for individual sections, I will focus on using multiple sensors to capture pressure data as input, Tianyi will work on translating pressure data into music rhythm, Shane will take care of sounds & light interactions as output. In the proposal, each of us will discover our direction under the team domain.

Individual work

This week, I reviewed the feedback from last week's presentation and got some new inspirations below:

• Some classmates mentioned that our design could work for both ways, as in the music adjusting to your actions or, you have to exercise according to how the music and lights change. This was discussed previously in our group meeting, at that time, we have not decided to use which mode or involve them together, now the feedback shows some of our audience like to have both. We will do more user research and user test lately to investigate users’ preference.
• Customizable. A further extension of previous point, a lot of classmates commented that it would be better to let users decide the interactions in multiple ways, like exercise modes, music types, volume control etc. Our team discussed this and agreed that provide options for users could make our device more playful and adaptive to different user groups. Our next step will research on users’ preferences, we will set up some questions to find out what options are suitable for them while they are interacting with our installation.
• Health status. Fitness and exercise are connected with human’s healthcare. Some feedbacks are about heart rate detection to provide health status while they are doing exercise and prevent from exhausting. Heartbeat could also be a data input that connect with physical interactions like light and vibration. Our team agrees that these feedbacks are inspiring and for practical concern, we could involve fitness band to capture heart rate data. Also, these feedbacks helped us to reflect on our domain and provide us a potential direction to discover in our individual research.
• Motivation. Link back to our original design purpose, one is to motivate people to do more exercise through playful interactions. Our tutor challenged us about how to use our approach to help motivate people who either have no knowledge of how to exercise or have no motivation to exercise. After group discussion, we thought about two options to answer this question, one is to provide a tutorial at the beginning to let users who have no knowledge of how to exercise to be familiar with our device. The other is to introduce goals, achievement, challenges among friends to motivate users to make some changes. Our team will do further research on this area in the following sections.
• Music type, some colleagues mentioned about what music people want to listen to while working out and if any particular type of music fits better for specific types of exercise. This requires us to do more literature review to see how music affects people’s emotion, music type could also connect to exercise mode, for example, use pop music when users have the intensive exercise and pure music when users just finish their training and relax.
• Promotion, some colleagues suggest that the promotion of exercise can be improved, for example, if everyone is working out correctly, a melody is maintained. If one person is falling behind – music starts to play out of time (causing frustration and motivation to keep up to pace). Fitness promotion is our next step of discovering our domain, one of our members is currently working on this aspect.
• Music haters, some mentioned that what if there are people who do not like to listen to music or if it is using speakers to play music, it could be annoying in public places. Well, our design could not cover every people and satisfy them, so, when we design this, we have a specific user group and use case, to limit it in household fitness. However, we can still involve some adjustments like using wireless headphones to replace speakers, so they won't bother other people.
• Multiple users & interactions. One of our classmates suggested that it could be interesting to think about how multiple people could interact with the concept using different equipment and how that would change the music. Our team agreed that this will make our installation more playful and involve more users to interact with our product. Having different exercise equipment is one of our considerations. We can try to deploy the same algorithm and data detection across multiple fitness equipment.

Making and using an Arduino pressure sensor

As pressure sensor is a vital component in our design, I've searched for some tutorials about how to use this sensor.

Work I have done

I had very high hopes after watching countless videos playing with protoputty so I raced to Bunnings to buy some silicon and the results were … disappointing. It was very clumpy and wouldn't dry properly. I've now realised that my silicone wasn't 100% silicone so I'm going to have another go next week.

In class on Wednesday, we had the report back and then discussed with my team and Lorna about our progress and how we are going to continue with the project. Our team has decided to continue to develop the idea together but branch off in terms of the form, the inputs, and the outputs. I'm glad we're still working a lot as a team and I understand that we do need to do some individually due to access to resources, but I am a bit worried about trying to come up with a form alone. However, I'm going to keep researching and playing around with different forms myself so I feel confident in what I choose to write in the report. I'm also having trouble making any concrete decisions about the way my project is going to go as I feel like its so up in the air at the moment. However, I feel confident in myself to have some idea by the time the report is due. When discussing with Lorna, we were very implementation focused, as we were feeling quite a bit of anxiety around creating this prototype alone. Lorna reminded us that this is all about the interaction between the user and the prototype so I want to keep working on my idea and make it as interesting as possible and worry about the details later.

On Thursday, I had my first prac class. It was a bit more awkward than the Wednesday because no one had their cameras on (mostly due to internet problems) but it felt less personal that going to a physical class, but I guess we have to get used to this with all classes being online. After we split up to go work on our individual work, our team decided to focus on our report to ensure we had enough time to write and edit before the submission date. I got most of my team sections done and now just need to finish up on my individual sections.

On Friday, I had no classes so I decided to spend most of the day working through the Arduino project book. I didn't find it too hard but mostly had trouble with the electronics side. I want to keep working through the book to ensure that I am prepared for the Arduino tutorial next week and can ask any questions while I have the tutors online. I had a lot of fun doing these activities and couldn't help myself timing the spaceship interface project to the song "Red Light Green Light".

Work to do

In the next week I need to finalise my idea to write my individual section of the report. I also want to keep working through the Arduino project book and have another play around with protoputty.

Work that has inspired me

Clay suggested in our presentation to have a look at Sphero. I really like this idea and want to try and incorporate some form of chasing/following the user around in Emily to further annoy the user into changing their behaviour.

Minasan, kon'nichiwa

Between week 4 & 5

After the critiques the previous week, some problems with our concept were highlighted. To recap, the main issues were regarding everyday usage missing and its interaction (the levers) not being playful. Our team, the BAT Skwad decided to ideate more and research more individually regarding concept refinement. One idea that I thought of was Doggo Assistant

Although, at first doggo assistant might not be sassy but as you progress and start ignoring it, ignoring the reminders and mistreat it (being lazy and instead of tapping the dog by hand, they might tap with their feet), the dog becomes sassy as well. The dog can fight back by pissing on you or headbutting you and in extreme agitation state, can even bite you.

Week 5

In week 5, the team had a meeting where we each discussed our ideas to find the one we collectively are ready to work on. Although we had plenty of ideas, there was none that fully satisfied us. With doggo assistant it's interactions are mundane and not playful enough. So we took up this problem to our tutors & they suggested to write the core elements we had in our first idea. In reflection, this is something we should have done after critiques. This process makes sure that team is in agreement with whats important. So, we extracted four core elements in our pitch idea -

• Decision Points - We want users to decide their own fate . If users are nice to tech, tech is nice to them and vice-versa.
• Tech's Control - The tech should be in control even though human think they are.
• Reason for not trusting - The user should have a reason for not trusting the tech.
• Penalty for not trusting - The tech should penalise user in a sassy way to not trusting.

Following the points above, I came up with another idea of Self Aware Robot (sorry for terrible name) -

Self-aware robot is a robot you found lying on the side of road. You took it home, powered it up and it started talking!!. The robot said its from future and is aware of fact that its a machine made to serve humans so reasonably, the robot hates people misusing tech. Hence, whenever the user misuses the tech, such as watching too much TV or phone, the robot becomes sassy and starts spouting at user to stop. Now, the user just wanting to watch TV can stop the robot in the following ways -

Everytime you try to shut the robot up, you are torturing it. Being tortured again and again, the robot gains control over your appliances and starts raining havoc such as making you watch a documentary about being kind or turning off the TV. Although some parts of idea is missing, like what else can the robot do, what extent of power the robot has over electrical appliances, etc but, its a introductory concept whuch the team can refine if its decided to be our main concept moving forward.

In its essence, Self Aware bot is a habit changer which tries to lead you to using less tech and also teaches you kindness. This concept covers all the core elements we want extracted above. The concept is yet to be finalised by team but, moving forward in our next meeting, the team will again extract core elements from each idea to iterate over.

Min'na arigatō.

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This week my team, Twisted, continued our report writing, focusing first one the group section of the report. I finished my "response to feedback" after discussion with my team in our group meeting about how we wanted to respond to the feedback we received. The main areas that we received feedback on were:

• Addressing colour blind/visually impaired users
• Creating a more open-ended interaction experience
• Defining a specific curriculum to focus our inquiry on

I therefore conducted research into these areas and consulted with my team mates to decide how we could best improve upon these areas.We had a Zoom team meeting on Tuesday to check in with each other regarding our team report progression and ideation for an individual concept.

Individual concept:

I originally wanted to go down the path of exploring alternate/further interaction modes as Clay suggested in his feedback on our pitch e.g. twisting or jumping on the mat to adjust saturation etc. After spending some time exploring this avenue, I realised there wasn’t much I could adjust if I still wanted to keep the Twister mat, which I am keen to keep in my concept. Instead I decided to change my focus to another aspect we were indicated needed improvement, which was creating a more open ended experience to adhere to the studio theme. After reflection, I realised our initial concept did not allow open ended interaction as it was very structured and inputs were either right or wrong. I think this is because we were designing a concept for use in schools and tried to replicate common educational techniques. I instead want to alter Twisted so that users can freely explore their creativity without negative reinforcement and employ more creative processes to also align better with out team theme, 'creative learning'.

To address this, I have ideated for a concept that instead allows students to create their own drawings on an interactive wall which they can then colour in using the same mat presented in Twisted. The new concept will still focus on teaching colour theory and fostering collaboration and inclusion in Grade 1 classrooms, but will create a less structured learning experience than the initial Twisted concept. The original concept required inputs from students that would be deemed as incorrect/correct, which inhibited creative freedom for students and fostered a narrow user experience. The students will now create their own subjects to colour-in through using their hands to draw on the interactive classroom wall. Once a student has drawn their image outline, they then need to touch the drawing to select it and then move to the mat to colour in the various segments. There has been some changes made to the mat including the removal of the 'less', 'more' and 'apply' buttons. These buttons made it difficult for single user scenarios and would also be unnecessary with the new intended palette. The new colour palette will include all variations of primary colours that act as the basis to create any shade. These colours are; warm blue, cool blue, warm red, cool red, warm yellow, cool yellow, white and black. Not providing students with any premixed colours (e.g. green or purple) will force them to discover how to make these colours themselves and explore tonal variations to better understand colour theory. The interaction will also consequently be slightly different. Instead of having to select the 'apply' button, the colour will appear on the wall as soon as the user stands on a colour/s. They can then combine colours by either; following the 'Twister' interaction mode by using multiple limbs to select different colours, or by collaborating with classmates to mix different colours. This provides the students with further opportunities for colour and artistic exploration and freedom. Despite the concept being less structured, students will still gain the same benefits from discovering how primary colours can be combined to create new ones. They will also be encouraged to employ creative processes such as experimentation and hypothesizing, which will support the team theme of creative learning. Below is a basic sketch of the new concept:

The main inspiration for my individual concept is the Team Lab Sketch Aquarium: https://www.teamlab.art/w/aquarium/

I was lucky enough to actually visit one of the Team Lab exhibits in Tokyo of the Christmas break and was amazed by their installations that comprised of various forms of colour and light to create immersive experiences. When initially ideating phys comp concepts, I was very eager to draw inspiration from the Team Lab exhibits and did some research into their diverse range of installations. One I found, the sketch aquarium, aligned unbelievably well with the studio and team domains.

The Sketch Aquarium allows children to draw a fish and see it transform into a moving digital version on the virtual aquarium wall. The idea of a large interactive wall in Twisted was influenced by this concept as I loved that way that all children could view the collective display of their individual creativity.

In the Wednesday studio, we went through each team's progression as well as individual progression and concerns for the project. I discussed my concern with Lorna regarding development with limited resources, less access to tutor help and team member support. I have been restricting my ideas based on what I feel is achievable at this point which is limiting my potential for good concepts. Lorna advised me to disregard implementation during the ideation phase so that no good ideas are disregarded due to implementation concerns. As I had already come up with my new concept but was worried about developing it, I decided to go through with it and draw upon course support and research in future to help with development.

In Friday's workshop, we went through a similar process discussing our progress. My team also discussed our individual focus/concepts with Alison and Clay in our breakout room. I discussed my implementation concerns again with Alison who suggested I could use a touch screen device to mimic my interactive wall for my prototype. This made me feel a lot more comfortable about going forward with this concept. She also suggested I could do a small scale prototype which I drew out as a basis for research so I know what I will have to develop:

Reflection:

After talking to the course staff about ways to simplify the prototype build, I feel a lot less anxious about having to create the prototype on my own. I was banking on the fact that I would have support from 3 other team members at the start of the semester, so now doing the project individually is quite daunting. Nevertheless, the design process so far has shown me the immense benefits of research when approaching a problem and I am confident that with resource and tutor support I will be able to make a prototype that aligns with the concept aims.

Being in charge of the "Response to Feedback Section" has also meant that I have been critically reflecting on some areas that we didn't quite nail for the initial prototype pitch. This learning curve has actually been very beneficial in hindsight, as I will ensure in future that I have a comprehensive understanding of the problem space before my next proposal. Additionally, it has motivated me to consider all required themes and domain aspects when ideating a concept e.g. the open-ended interaction wasn't incorporated too well so this will certainly be a focus for future iterations.

Over the weekend I plan to finish my individual section for the report and start research into Arduino colour display and how to connect my buttons to the touch screen.

Presentation

This week was stressful being the first week online. We decided on doing a prerecorded presentation as it would allow us to show how pong would be used in daily life. My job was to film, which meant figuring out exactly how each type of chore would be done and what tools could be used to play pong. Due to the restrictions, I had to make do with what I had at home to try to convey the message. Having to figure out the filming and and framing to show the game best was a challenge, then having to edit the videos. It was interesting working these out and we definitely need to explore how different chores where perhaps have no tool or many interchangable tools could still use this.

Response to critiques

The most commented on by far was the usage of the knife in game, where in hindsight would be dangerous for children or if some were too engrossed with the game. Initially, I had thought that cooking would be mostly done by an adult, hence being responsible and that simple flicking motions would not be too dangerous. However, different options might need to be made.

Another common trend in the feedback was that it should be available in multiple rooms. While not addressed in the video, it was what we had originally intended, hence the scenes of a door outside, a bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen. It could have been made clearer in the video.

Sound would be incorporated, as well as exploring alternative means of playing the game that are task specific, where chores such as cleaning, mopping or sweeping would still work if not be extremely suited for it if where the ball lands over time helps ensure the whole area is cleaned well and no spots are missed, but chores such as cooking or doing the laundry could benifit from a different approach to the game while still being fun and playing a part while completing the chores.

Competitiveness could definitely also be worked on, having a reward motivating gameplay to aim for, making it less repetitive and encourage users to get better at each task.

Other general critiques

A wide range of interesting ideas were presented, and a main trend I noticed was adapting it for use to a group or people, whether in the context of teamwork to complete a challenge, or simply how it would function in a public setting where many others who might not be interacting with it or be the primary user but still be affected.

Other feedback mainly involved developing their concepts further, although a particular area that I noticed was how a few concepts could potentially affect mental health negatively, the opposite of the majority of users that would likely be encouraged. This could involve different cultural norms, which I found interesting especially growing up in a culture different to Australia, where i now live.