This Week

At the end of the week, I was given appraisals from three different teams: Hi-Distinction, Botherhood and Garfunckel. The feedback was very well recieved for my prototype and what my overall concept was. Some pros for my concept was that most teams thought it was suitability and creativity wise, the concept suits the goal very well, the teams agreed that we would see themselves using it if they were to try to minimise energy consumption at home, the result would certainly be effective.

Some feedback regarding the temperature comparison came up too. Something I did not think about was different seasons. Should consider at summer or winter, the normal user wants their room to be more warm or cool?

Some negatives inregards to Emily is that it is still lacking some playfulness. The teams recommended getting more touch pad to work and have the LED colours changing based on the temperature.

With this feedback on board, I will try and implement some changes and see if I can get some more users to test my solution. I hope to also improve on the lighting and touch sensitivity to make it more user friendly so they hand to place a full hand on the hexagon.

Improving Prototype Build

As part of my final build, I want to make a shell for the hexagons so that I could fit all the wiring behind the hexagons and make it neat and tidy. I have also done this design so that I can race the 3D printed hexagons making more surface area for the user to touch and easily put more force behind their touch. Below are some progress pictures of this.

Next Steps

I am going to look into creating multiple touchpads in the form of a game. I am also going to work on the lighting in the hexagons and see if I can get them to change colours and patterns a little different. I am also implementing the speaker and vibrating motor.

Inspirations for this week

This game inspired me this week. As I was thinking of what colour-touch game can I try and incorporate into Emily, this popped into my head. I am going to try and see if I can add a small sequence, where the user has to touch the panels in order to turn off Emily, based on LED colour. The hard thing is I will have to do this with only 3 hexagons as that's the length of neopixels lights I have left.