Contact & Workshop

In this week contact session, we started the team appraisal on others’ concepts. By going through videos and corresponding pdf files, we were able to get a deeper understanding of other’s concept. After that, our team shared ideas on their concepts in terms of how well these concepts related back to the course context and team design topic, what strengths and weaknesses these concepts had, and what kind of actionable and constructive feedback we could provide.

In the workshop session, Wally and I were allocated to the breakout room with Qisi to get clarifications on appraisals that our two groups have given to each other. By talking with other team, we were able to better comprehend their comments on our concepts. Also, Clay and Alison gave us the feedback on our weekly journals, which was helpful for guiding me to make further improvement.

Team progress

Our team mainly worked together on watching videos and pdf files, and writing the appraisal in this week. We first wrote each one’s opinions in the google doc, followed by discussing together of our thoughts, and finally each of us were assigned the task of organising our comments and writing the integrated feedback for 2-3 people.

Individual process:

In this week, I mainly worked on getting help from teaching team, analysing feedback I got from my peers and evaluation participants, improving my previous journal entries, purchasing materials for improve my prototype, planning my tasks for the next iteration of my concept.

First, in this week, I headed to campus for getting technical help around soldering from Ben. For my current prototype, wires for the 7 LEDs were a little bit messy, so Ben helped me solder a ‘connector’, which 7 pins were able to be integrated into one. All of the ground pins of 7 LEDs therefore can be organised into one. Also, I got a long wire which has 8 pins from Ben, so when I improve the wiring part of my prototype, the positive pin of each LED and the integrated ground pin can be connected into each of these pins.

In addition, by combining the appraisal from other team and the result from previous user testing, I organised key feedback into 8successful aspect and further improvement*:

Successful aspects:

1. The combination of sensors (force sensor and microphone sensor) is reasonable and capable enough to achieve the intended user experience
2. Multiple feedback is effective on guiding users’ breathing practice
3. The way to show output of interactions is playful

Further improvement:

1. Providing users with the continuous visual feedback (gradually lighting up LEDs or using the LED strip)
2. Using the alternative way to give auditory feedback (using laptop speaker to play music)
3. Considering more feedback (for example, vibration)
4. Adding decorations to the ‘breathing tree’

Also, I have made the following improvements on my previous journal entry according to the feedback from Clay and Alison:

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

For improving the appearance of the simulated microphone of my concept, I bought a real microphone from Big W, so that in the following week, I can try to disassemble it and get the microphone sensor module in. If I failed, I would choose to sing with my microphone in front of the Queen Street :)

Plan for the next week:

1. Improving the wiring of my current prototype
2. Improving the microphone part
3. Using Ableton or Python to play music according to the data read from Arduino

Reflections:

In terms of giving others feedback, it’s important to appraisal their concepts in a totally objective perspective. Also, the feedback should be constructive and actionable rather than the ambiguous or unrealistic one. In order to give more valuable feedback to others, our team also search both physical and digital resources they could use online, which not only helped them improve their concepts, but also gave our team more opportunities to get to know different resources.

For my concept, the physical form and interaction means have gained the positive feedback from peers and participants of user testing, proving more obvious and more types of feedback is the aspect worth exploring in the next iteration.