This week is the first week that we move to the online course, though we met some software/network issues, the overall experience is pleasant and communication is clear regardless of physical distance. We are getting used to this new form of course delivery.

Group pitch

We had a group meeting at the beginning of this week, prepared for the presentation on Wednesday, we divided our tasks and each one was responsible for several sections. Below is my individual work:

Sketch

Within the field of product design, the ability to represent our ideas by using effective visual methods such as sketching opens doors for better communication between designers and the audience. We find that using sketching is an efficient way to explain our concepts and designs.

I drew the full view and front view of our installation with explanations and physical components introductions. Although these are just rough sketches, they can help the audience to have a basic impression of what our design looks like. In the next stage, we will listen to feedback from our tutors and also from other groups to iterate these designs.

Persona

In our presentation, we also decided to use a persona combine with a storyboard to show an actual use scene in daily life, just to demonstrate our design is practical. By thinking about the needs of a fictional persona, we may be better able to infer what a real person might need. It can also help us to share a specific, consistent understanding of various user groups.

In this persona, I introduced a user called Michael, a father with a child, due to COVID-19, he has to stay at home and want to have some fun. Most importantly, he wants to keep fit, and all gyms are closed during this period. In previous experience, he always feels boring while doing exercise, and lack of motivation to keep fit. This time, he would like to try some fitness equipment which is interesting and help him to stay healthy while working remotely at home. Also, he would prefer to play with his child, considering this would be a great chance to spend with his family.

Critiques on other groups

I learned a lot through listening to other groups' pitches, some ideas are inspiring and gave me a lot of reflections.

EMS - Housework Thread

The design purpose is quite interesting and trying to solve an actual problem in our daily life. Turning housework into a game could be a great motivation and promotion for people. Just wonder if the ball is a little bit annoying for those who don’t want to be bothered while they are cooking, for example.

Zoomista

A clear introduction of design inspirations and purposes, and using colours to express emotions is reasonable . However, when it comes to the design, playing music in a public space may have several issues: will it annoy other people, will it affect the actual interaction if it is in a crowded and noisy place?

Ninja Run Game

Really interested in how it will help young children learn programming. The mechanism is clear and logical through project demo. But it seems too simple for 9 year old children, could lower the age while you are considering target audience.

Zookeeper

Hope it can adapt to more complex questions rather than simple A or B questions. Other than that, it is meaningful in raising people’s awareness of environmental protection.

Reflection of pitch feedback

We received a lot of feedback from our presentation, these comments could help us to improve our design, but first, we need to look into these comments.

• Some mentioned that our design could work both ways, as in the music adjusting to your actions and you have to exercise according to how the music and floor 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, since our audience like to have both. We will do some user research and user test lately.
• Music type, some 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.
• Promotion, some 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.

Next step

On Sunday, our group had another meeting to discuss how to divide our work for the project proposal, and how we might to discover our domain.

First, we agreed that we still want to work as a team to complete our original design, each one response for a part of this installation, so, we sent an email to the teaching team to ask for permission. And we have roughly defined our individual target, for example, Tianyi will discover the algorithm to translate pressure data to music, I will discover how to build a board that contains pressure sensors and collect pressure data, Shane will focus on using a projector to provide light and image feedback and interaction, just to make this device more playful.

For the proposal, we decided to review some literature for the following three aspects: Tianyi will search for electronic music generating related literature, I will focus on music's effect on human emotions, Shane will discover music's connection to exercise. We will do this to enhance our theoretical knowledge to justify our design in our domain.

Personal discovery

As I mentioned above, I will discover how to use Arduino and pressure sensors to capture pressure data for music generating. During this weekend, I have learned some tutorials as a kick-off.