Document and evidence individual work done

Project:

I mainly focused on the research and team report before this Thursday. Due to I have two other assignments due the week after the break, so I am going to focus on those works first, and I will keep working on it after they are completed. Based on what I have written in the last week’s journal, I gave up all individual ideas since they do not totally match the requirements from the relative works, and I came up with some ideas about how to make the flower more playful and interactive, for example, installing a movement sensor on the top of the flower to detect user’s movement so that we are able to ask the user to do some exercise and capture his/her movement. Then, we are able to implement some features based on that like unlock the annoying feature by complete the exercise. But based on Arduino research, it is hard to capture user’s movement by sensors, also, due to the size of the flower, if a movement capture sensor is implemented on the top, then the LED light cannot be placed on the top due to the size limitation. I also tried to think about other ideas, but it is not better than the team concept, so I decided to follow the team concept, and improve it based on my design direction.

Contact:

On the other hand, a Miro board experience session was hold during the contact session. The first task is to ‘Methods for Discovery’, where we are required to explore alternative approaches for user discovery. Same as most students, YouTube was selected as my research approach to observe the passengers on the train. I think online resource is an efficient and convenient resource approach under this circumstance because in-person research is now hard to be conducted. The video relates to an old lady have a conflict with a woman who puts her bag on a seat on a crowded train. Everyone is watching their conflict, and some of them are taking videos on their phones without expressions. No one laughs, no one helps, and no one says anything. However, I think YouTube is not a suitable platform to conduct an observation because most people upload uncommon things such as fighting that happened on the train. Since uncommon things can get more like and no one watches things that they can always see in their lives. So, it is hard to observe how people commonly behave on a train on YouTube. I think if an observation session is necessary in a project, then I would review other people’s online notes about passenger’s behaviour, and try to find insights from them or, do academic research.

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Things need to be done

The next step is to further study the target audience in my design direction. For instance, the target audience’s feature. Discover target audience’s requirements and needs in terms of reducing the sedentary behaviour. The relative works in the team report only reveal the key aspects of changing the behaviour; however, what they want and need are not covered in the research, and they are important to the design because it might affect the accessibility and acceptability of the concept and the final product. Also, it might bring us additional insights for this domain and the concept such as the motivation and barriers of solving the problem. So, it is necessary to discover their requirements and needs. On the other hand, as mention before, the target audience’s characteristics can affect them to take actions in offices. However, what kind of characteristics can affect it and how they affect it need to be more specific in order to discover the potentials to improve the domain problems in this direction. Moreover, the team concept is improved based on the analysis of a number of research, such as the implementation of wearable technology, playful elements, and annoying features. However, the target audience’s attitude to the improved concept is unknown. Whether it is interesting, annoying, and flexible needs to be discovered. So, it might be helpful for us to identify the current problems we have, and it might bring insights about our features such as the user’s acceptability of the annoying and playful features and wearable technology, so that we are able to improve them before we go further in this domain.

Moreover, how the concept can be built by the Arduino is unknown. It is frustrated if a creative idea is not able to be made because the related function is not supported by the Arduino. So, Arduino online tutorial and further discussion with tutors are important in order to discover potential ways to build up the concept, or looking for alternatives to some features. Slack can be used to ask questions that relate to the Arduino and the development of the concept. In addition, Arduino online tutorial can be found in YouTube.

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External source

“Idle Stripes Shirt - Ambient Wearable Display for Activity Tracking”.

The wearable technology can be implemented in different things such as watches, glasses and earphones. In this case, it is more unique to combine it with a shirt. Basically, it is similar in appearance to usual shirts but it integrates an ambient display in the neck area. Based on the user’s sitting time, the display gradually illuminates with different colors. There is no lighting on the display in first 15 minutes. After that, every few minutes one stripe will be lighted, and all stripes will be activated if the user sit at the desk for an hour. The strips gradually fade if the user starts walking, and it takes 5 minutes to totally turn off the ambient display. It aims to encourage the user to take a break or even light activities after long-time sitting, and to reduce the total amount of sitting time per day. So, it can improve the user’s health as well as the awareness of the time spending on sitting.

It shows a number of key aspects in this domain. Firstly, easily accessible, visible, and appealing things can be everything on a desk such as pens, books, or even lamps, but it can also be something necessary and important in people’s daily lives such as clothes and shoes. Moreover, compared with office supplies, they are more portable. So, it is easy for users to carry, control and get used to it. In addition, wearable technology fits those things and this domain. Since changing sedentary behaviour might involve light activities such as standing and walking, and as a reminder, it needs to monitor user’s sedentary behaviour. Thus, it is important to ensure the product is flexible and easy to use so that users are able to easily take actions without interrupt them after long-time sitting. On the other hand, there are various ways to notice people. For instance, the change of number, color, shape, brightness, images, temperature, or even vibratory can be used in design. However, we need to consider how it might affect users and the way to implement it. For example, in this case, the change of lighting with fiber optic material is used, and it is light and shape-flexible, which means it can provide the experience of aesthetics, flexibility, and surprise.