Studio this week

This week our team started working on the report that is due next week. We had a team discussion in the studio session to talk over feedback, the pathways we wanted to go with the concept and possible technologies we could implement in the final solution.

We had a good discussion on how we would go about individually continuing in the concept space. We decided we would all have our own take on the final form but work together as a team to work out functionalities and features.

I am also working the background research related to our concept space. I am looking into the topics of People and Technology, Human Behaviours & Attitudes and Saving Energy in the Home. I have done a fair bit of research on People and technology and the use of it in the home. It was interesting reading that most people would trust smart device if it were user friendly, proved to be reliable and was marketed well towards them. I think this was an interesting article to come across, as I personally sometimes struggle to put my trust in smart devices. I have a Google Home at home and we have decided not to use it any more as it started interrupting our conversations at it started listening to keywords in our conversations. As a family at home, we found this creepy and turned it off. I guess initially I bought the Google Home because it was marketed really well for use in the home, it show how it can make life more convenient and easy to access and control parts of your home. But after use and having it in the home it proved to be a nuisance.

The graphs below show some of the interesting statistics found in a study in the UK.

Plan for the Week

For the rest of the week, I plan to continue on my team section of the report and have that finished to allow the team to check and proofread any of the information. I also need to start brainstorming and thinking about my individual section and the form of my prototype and what I want to get out of it. Additionally, over the weekend I hope to start collecting some recyclable items that I can use to prototype with my Arduino. This should keep me busy while being stuck at home :)