Development

During this time, a lot of what was done was domain research to decide upon factors to focus on within the project and completing the first major group assessment piece this semester. As a team, we decided that we would all like to pursue the idea of Emily, but we will explore varying aspects. Each of us will be developing Emily to suit different target audiences, and we will each focus on a form of our choosing. We've also decided to look at varying energy saving practices, depending on our interests. Most of my team members appear to be leaning towards the heating and cooling aspect that I previously mentioned, however I'm tossing up between that as well as light consumption within the home. I'm really excited to see all the outcomes that the team has, as we all seem to have really different takes on Energy Saving Emily! We are all very willing to help each other out where possible and share any findings we discover during the process.

My Direction With Emily

I have decided that I would like to explore Emily in an adult household. I believe that sustainable living is something that has only just taken off recently, and due to it being a novel topic, it is hard for adults to adopt such methods at home, due to the living styles they are so accustomed to. I would like for Emily to educate adults playfully and make an impact on their household energy savings. Taking on peer feedback, I would like to find ways in which to induce more discomfort into Emily in order to prompt energy changing habits. I think that adults would be able to tolerate such levels of discomfort more than children would, hence the selection of my target audience. To induce further discomfort, possibilities that I was initially exploring included ideas such as making the aircon temperature colder when using it unnecessarily, or similarly doing the same with water. The most prominent idea that I have had which I think would be within my skill range is to implement light restrictions during night time should a user use too much light during the day time. I would probably only restrict this to one room in the house though (ie. living room) as I think it would be quite cruel to leave a whole house stranded in darkness at night! I think to balance such an act, it would be humorous for Emily to be a bit cheeky and almost taunt the users slightly when the darkness strikes, but still be funny and hopefully somewhat endearing.

Reflection

I'm happy with the progress I've made on the development of the idea, and how the project is functioning in terms of individual work and team collaboration. I'm still nervous about the implementation of it, however I have made some progress on the Arduino Kit booklet, which has given me a bit more confidence. Something I'm not happy with is my journal documentation! I have definitely been losing a bit of motivation to document and have some catching up to do which I'm definitely not happy about. I originally thought journaling would be the easiest part of the course, but clearly the motivation part is not as easy as I thought it would be.

Future Progress

Things that I am needing to do from here is working with the Arduino Kit to implement my idea, and of course coming up with a unique form for Emily! I haven't had any burst of inspiration yet, but I'm hoping that through developing a functioning prototype, I will be able to come up with a form that suits her functionality and personality. Finally, I am going to try and allocate a time on certain days to do some documenting on my journal posts once or twice a week (fingers crossed I can stick to it somewhat)!