Prototype construction & user research

This week, I spent most of the time on building prototype and connected my components with my teammate, because his part of data processing needs data input from pressure board.

At this prototype stage, I used a stack of paper to simulate the pressure board. There is a palm area guideline on the paper. The pressure sensor is hidden in the second layer to assure sensitivity and to lower the influence while users are putting their hands on the board. The sensor is also linked to the computer by cable to transfer pressure data.

Other than reading pressure data from computer, I decided to provide signals to let users know how much pressure they put on the board, so I add a LED light that can change the brightness depending on the pressure applied on the force sensitive resistor.

At this stage, the collected pressure data can be shown in three ways: one is direct values through serial monitor, second is through pressure waveform on the serial plotter, third is through LED’s brightness. Additional interactions will be added for the next step.

Next step

• Connect with teammates’ components to deliver a single prototype
• Look for additional data resources as input
• Replace the existing FSR by a larger sensor