Finishing the Semester

A great part about the design courses at UQ is the ability to show off what you have spent all semester developing to feel proud and sense of accomplishment at the end. This semester was a little different in the way this exhibition occurred. It was an online discord where members of staff, other teams and external design enthusiasts could move through and check out the concepts. Whilst it was great that this exhibition could still go ahead, it was a little underwhelming compared to what I originally anticipated. For the first 40 minutes or so there really wasn’t anyone coming to our group for discussion but also once people started coming it was kind of hard to use the camera aswell as explaining what’s going on in combination with actually using the prototype.

I thought that this was a bit overwhelming and probably lead to a lot of useful information that I would have liked to have said being missed. It was difficult too because after you started other people would join the discord chat so you didn’t really know if you should restart and include them or just keep going with what you were currently explaining. In saying these negative aspects, there was also a lot of positive feedback that we got from valued members of the UX community which is always greatly appreciated. I remember Matt Luscombe giving us feedback early in the exhibition about improving our camera angles and telling us that we should sit our phone on something as we are talking and interacting because instinctively you move your hands around and this makes it hard for the viewer to see. We all put this into action over the next few demonstrations that we did and I think people were able to see and understand our prototypes much more clearly than before.

Recap

This was the last week of official classes and it was a bit strange and also sad at the same time because it will be the last group project of my university life (unless...?). We started by telling everyone what was nice getting back to after the restrictions were eased on the June 1. I personally thought that over the past few months it has been incredibly hard to maintain a consistent routine. This is especially true with physical exercise because most people don't have the right equipment at home and it can be very easy to "not be bothered". This means that I am really excited for the gyms to be reopening so that I can renew this routine. It will be interesting to see how different it is from before with all the new Covid restrictions put in place to keep people safe.

I did a large amount of work on the project this week as we are starting to get closer to final due date and there is still quite a bit to do. I started by fixing up my prototype by putting in place some of the things people suggested in the comments on Mirro. I now have an instructions page outside the elevator that explains to people what they have to do when they are inside. This means they can press the button (up or down) and then read it while they are waiting for the elevator. By doing this there is no time wasted inside the elevator where people just want to get moving and not have their time wasted.

On the website I added all the content that I need that explains the technical features and physical aspects of how it was all put together. I still need to make a Youtube explainer video so people can watch and hopefully learn how the interaction will happen in a realistic environment. I am currently putting the elevator back together as I needed to move it out of the bathroom so it wasn't in peoples way.

For the next couple of days I will be working on a reflection that takes a look back on the whole process and explain some design decisions that I have made along the way. This shouldn't be too difficult because there is definitely a lot of things I would do differently if I got the opportunity to do it again and also many things that I have happy I have done.

Report Back

What is my Concept?

My concept is an interactive elevator that helps people have fun in the mundane space by facilitating collaboration with other riders to achieve the same goal in getting to a floor.

What have I done this week?

The main focus this week has been on putting the portfolio together and building on that. I have added a cool little part that says what my concept is and about who the team members of CDI are and what their degree/majors are. This can be seen in the two images below.

I definitely am a little rusty in HTML and CSS but I think with all the tutorials out their I should be able to achieve the kind of styled website that I am looking for. There is still a lot to do on the website before the exhibit so I will keep getting content to add to that and then also move towards finalising my prototype. This will include adding some cool features and ideas that people gave me in the comments section on Mirro.

Issues & Concerns

Mainly the issue is doing the live demonstration during the exhibit and I guess showing people how this works. It is an elevator so obviously it won't actually be able to accurately demonstrate going to a floor or failing to go to a floor because a person got the answer wrong. This is frustrating but it is just the nature of this type of project. Also because it is in the bathroom, other family members might need to go in there so hopefully I can send them on a nice holiday (haha) so they don't interrupt the presentation.

Moving Forward

Over the next week I will be switching my focus back onto the prototype just so I can make sure there isn't any problems that can't be fixed by the due date. Once this is complete I will start taking photos and videos to provide the audience a visual perspective of how the concept should function. Let's hope it all goes to plan!

Recap

This week started off with the regular recap that we gave to the class about our progress and isolation. It was nice to hear what other classmates thought were the positive aspects of being isolated. There were many answers that ranged from saving time on commutes to saving money on food (ducking in to McDonalds on the way home) and not having to get up early and stay late for some annoying class times.

In terms of work this week, it was pretty relaxing not having something directly due but it was also good to just have a look at whats coming especially in this course with the final exhibit. I also had a look at the reflection and got that all formatted, headings etc so I can knock it out when it comes time to do that.

Over the next week I need to start making the adjustments to my prototype to ensure its ready for the final exhibit. This will include adding a new input device which may be using the bluetooth depending on if this is possible for me to achieve. I also want to make an instructions menu screen outside the elevator because inside you have a limited amount of time to play the game and get to where you need to go.

Video Creation

As the prototype video and documentation were due on Monday, I started the week by editing the video that I had created in Adobe Premiere. I created a script so I knew what I needed to say over the top of the media and so that it met the 6-10 minutes criteria. I have used Premeire previously but it took a little while to get my self familiar with all the tools again. Once I got the hang of it it was pretty easy.

Miro

After finishing off the video and the documentation everyone submitted their work to Miro. It was actually a really good setup because we got a chance to see other peoples videos and their accompanying documentation.

Our job this week is to critique other teams projects to give them advice on how they can improve and encouragement on what they have done well. We have done a fair bit of critique work in IT so far so this isn't too hard. We need to make sure it is actionable advice rather than just saying its good or bad without a reason. I thought everyone did a really good job with their videos, the quality overall was better than I expected.

It's also great to see what other groups thought of my concept and video. Some of the key points they made about mine was:

• Confusion about blind people guessing a charade.
• How does the second person walk in and see the charade?
• Conflicts with the original point about getting people off their mobile phones
• They also suggested putting information outside the elevator.

I am going to look at all this feedback and try to improve for the final product. The point about having information outside the elevator for people to read before entering is an awesome idea and I think it's a perfect addition. This prevents the time being wasted inside the elevator and instead they are waiting for the elevator anyway so having this outside won't waste their time at all - they can either read it or not read it.

Progress Update

The last two weeks have been absolutely chaotic!

I have combined two journals into one because I was constantly chopping and changing prototype ideas and adding and removing documentation. This is going to be everything I have worked on over the past two weeks and the last minute changes I need to make before the due date for the demonstration on the 11th May.

Between now & 11th May

This week from Thursday onward will all be completely focused on building the prototype's core functionalities based on the plans below.

1. LED light up + voice initiation on startup (can be mocked)
2. Voice to text
3. Text to compare to correct answer
4. If answer = text correct answer, if not incorrect
5. Have a visual indicator on correct and incorrect guesses.
6. Have an audio indicator on correct and incorrect guesses.

I have had no experience with Arduino before just using a Makey Makey when I did a previous prototyping course. I found that with that the programming is the difficult part compared with the connection of the circuit. I expected that this would be the same and I was correct. I started by working through the examples in the instruction book that came with the Arduino to get a feel for how it worked. It was actually not hard to pickup at all and it only took me 10-20mins to complete the first example problem. The online IDE for Ardunio is great because I can go back and forth from my laptop to the desktop for working on it.

I thought that the LED's were a great way of showing correct and incorrect answers so I used red and green as people always recognise red being wrong and green being right as traffic lights work like this.

This wasn't hard to connect up as it just requires the LED's to go to the specified spots from the Arduino code then back to GND.

The tutorial helped with this as there is a lot on how to connect up LED's. The difference here was that I won't be using the Arduino to input to turn the LED's on and off, instead I will be using C# and the microphone from my laptop.

The next part was the hard bit and that was working out how to to use C#'s speech recognition reference to input and turn the LED's on and off. I did some research on this and there was a lot of content online about this but nothing specific to what I wanted. I used bits and pieces from online tutorials and Youtube videos and then started creating my own version suited to what I was trying to do. This took most of the time for the development of the prototype. In the end the main functions weren't that complex but I couldn't have figured out the voice synthesizer parts on my own.

These are some links that I used to help me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZjLd2ifxhY

https://www.instructables.com/id/Voice-Activated-Arduino-Bluetooth-Android/

Response Questions

What is my concept / individual focus / individual responsibility for the project?

The concept is an interactive elevator which aims to provide a fun and engaging way for people to travel in the elevator to their floor. My individual component of this idea is to develop the technology for the specific audience of elderly and disabled users.

Key Functionalities

• Voice recognition/answer acknowledgement
• Interaction for a single or multiple users

I aim to replicate the elevator experience as close to the real thing as possible.

Firstly, I will build the general shell of the elevator using a square shower in one of my bathrooms.

From these images you can see the glass around the shower so in order to make it more like an elevator I need to make the glass dark or black. I could always put cardboard on the glass but I think this will take a long time and will provide the same results as using 4 sheets for each side of the glass. This will ensure all the glass is covered.

After this I will add in the aesthetic features that resemble an elevator such as the buttons for different floors and the US level light system above the door (this bit will be simulated as the the elevator isn't actually moving).

As it will be very dark inside I will most likely need a light or torch over the top because some of the software for poses need a lot of light to be able to recognise you.

What is the ideal finished product? (All technical and physical obstacles ignored!)

The ideal finished product is an interactive elevator that does not annoyingly disturb people but instead helps them become alert and ready for the day. It should also be fun and enjoyable and shouldn't feel too repetitive even after using the system many times.

Work Breakdown

This week I read over the requirements for the prototype presentation and accompanying documentation. I have started planning out how my prototype will work such as what parts I will need to simulate, what are the core functionalities that I want to demonstrate and what I need to say. There is a lot of work that needs to happen before the 4th of May so starting a bit earlier in case anything goes wrong would be a very wise decision.

Prototype physical design

A few tutors have given us the idea of simulating an elevator with a cupboard or closet or something similar, however, unfortunately we threw away the perfect cupboard a few weeks ago so I will need a new solution for this. At this stage I am thinking of using a sheet over a part of the bathroom so that the sides will fall down like a square elevator. The drawing for this can be seen in the image below - I have tested what this will look like but will upload later as it gets in everyone'es way who wants to use the bathroom. I want to simulate the success and failure of the game so that you can visually see the elevator progress to various floors and then also stop when somebody gets an answer wrong. I am going to do this by hopefully having the elevator lights above the elevator light up to show the current floor the elevator is at. This may be simulated because I won't be able to use a functional elevator.

Prototype functionalities

There are a few core functionalities that I wanted to include in my first prototype.

• Voice recognition + appropriate response
• Interaction of the charade

This is the main components of how the interaction will occur but parts of these may need to be simulated because I'm still searching and conducting research on the best way to do this especially recognising the pose that someones body is in.

Week in Review

This is the week that our first major assessment piece was due, the proposal report.

Firstly, on Monday I noticed that there was a spot on the template for a "illustration logo". I hadn't seen this before as I was mostly focused on writing the actual content and none of the other teams had done it either. I really enjoy graphic design so I jumped into Photoshop to see what I could create.

Logo Process

Initially I did a bit of brainstorming around our team name which is CDI. These letters stood for Computer Design Institute which was just chosen kind of randomly after we gave ourselves 5 minutes to come up with a name and that was what we got. The name itself is pretty vague and doesn't really offer anything descriptive such as for example a team name like "Roaring Lions". When you say CDI our loud it sounds like an eye so I have used that as the main design component. After this I then found a royalty free image of a digital background and used the clipping mask tool in Photoshop to overlay the digital effect over the eyeball. In the end it turned out pretty nicely except the only part I don't love it the really aqua blue but that colour was selected from the background. Here it is below.

Contact

This week in our contact class I learnt new techniques for conducting different types of interviews without the need for meeting with them in person. This was always going to be a big hurdle to overcome this semester because we’re all used to testing and interviewing people in person as we have done for all our previous design courses. We also really needed to test in real elevators because it gives us an indication of what people are usually thinking in this space and to get a feel for how quickly the interaction needs to happen. This will have to be all conducted online and it seems like a synchronous method such as zoom or skype would be the best way to mimic the real elevator simulation as close to the real thing as possible. Although it sucks that we can’t do it in a real elevator and work with people in person, I think this gives us a great opportunity to think outside the box and develop new methods that could come in handy in the future. I feel like there will be no ‘perfect’ method that all teams will follow but everyone will have to adapt to what is working for them especially based off the target audience they are focusing on.

Thursday Class

At the workshop session on Thursday, we learnt more about Arduino’s. I listened to Steven and Ben but mostly I was still fixing up the report as we had a few issues that we needed to clear up before submission later that day. I plan on going through all the tutorials on Arduino’s over the mid semester break so I am completely focused on learning it rather than being distracted by other semester that is due. It seems like there are a lot of resources out there for helping to learn it and the tutors really know their stuff so I think it shouldn’t be too difficult to progress.

Studio

This week was the first time that we broke up into different classes with the studio taking happening on Wednesday and the workshop happening on Thursday. At this weeks studio we got told that it wouldn't be possible for us to use the workshop at UQ anymore due the whole Covid-19 situation.

After we went through the normal administrivia every group conducted a report back to the class which gave everyone an indication on where people were up to both on an individual and team level. Our group spoke about the dancing elevator and just a few of the changes we made based on the feedback from the presentations last weeks. I personally said that I wasn't have much trouble with the online format of the course as we have experienced so many collaborative tools over our university journey such as google docs, messenger, slack and so on.

For my journals the feedback I received wasn't very good so I need to make sure that I spend more time on these in the future. The main issue was that I wasn't saying exactly what I was doing and instead being very vague and general about the different things we were conducting as a class.

Team & Individual Work

Our team did a lot of work last week on the proposal so most of it has been completed going into this week. I worked on developing user scenarios to give an idea of what the interaction of the elevator would look like. It varies based on the different users groups that we have and for me I am dealing with elderly and disabled users.

Unfortunately at the workshop on Thursday the tutors thought we should go back towards out original idea because it has a much stronger physical component. This was a bit frustrating after doing so much work on the new idea which was the game of saying categories to the voice detection system in the elevator. In the end we made a decision to stick with the second ideas main concept except now it would be a charade style interaction where people act out different things and the other people in the elevator must guess. This will then reward them by taking them to their floor. We need to discuss and do more research into what happens if they get it wrong because the original idea of making them walk up stairs might not work for a lot of people if they are disabled for example or are in a hurry. This would make them frustrated and annoyed and the system and it would make it more of a hassle rather than enhancing the mundane space.

Recap

This week and last week has been absolute chaos to say the least. The Coronavirus has impacted all of Uni after the first case was discovered to have infected a UQ student. This then forced UQ to take a week off where they reassessed how assessment would work going forward. This was expected as a lot of pressure was on uni to have a response to the issue especially with all the students in close contact and the level of international students who have just come back from overseas.

It was pretty scary seeing Italy's number as my sister is currently in exchange over there at the moment and won't be coming back until June. In this time the government has told her to come back but unfortunately there are no planes leaving Italy so she is completely stranded.

Group

In the meantime our group members kept discussing the idea of the dancing elevator that we came up with the previous week. We had to get all our ideas and produce a presentation of concept to the class for feedback. Originally we were meant to be presenting in class but because of the current situation a pre recorded video is fine. It made it much easier to get across what we wanted to say because we could adjust it based on the timing and being able to see our script as we were talking.

We presented our idea to the class and got a lot of valuable feedback. Some of the key points are listed below:

• Dance or use the stairs, you will need to keep in mind that an elevator is also used for people who can not use the stairs. You will also cause some social pressure where people will need to get the dance moves right or everyone else in the lift will need to use the stairs (this could be seen as good or bad).
• Oooh, like the idea of context of a car in traffic! Elevator - would have to be a super quick experience, worth timing the lengths of trips - there’s something interesting to play with there. How does this work for multiple people in the lift at one time? You would have to be very careful about the building in which this was implemented. Bash mentioned an issue with an elevator project at UQ - they attempted something playful to encourage using the stairs and generated some significant complaints from building occupants who used the lift.

From this feedback we are going to think more towards the actual reason behind why people are using elevators in the first place, as an alternative to stairs. This may be because the person using it is disabled or has trouble walking up stairs.

This week I looked at a few examples of similar applications that test social awkwardness and public interactions. The first interaction I looked at was a YouTube video by CityStrokes which involved designing a social interaction with strangers. The focus was placed on an implementation to change the behaviour of a society who has developed around minding their own business and not socially engaging with strangers. It was alarming to see how little people the confidence had to come up and try it whether that be because they were embarrassed to try something outside of their comfort zone or because they simply didn’t have time. Both these factors would also need to be considered in my prototype as it is in a public space and an elevator is spent to speed up people travel and save time. This really outlined the point that this interaction needed to be of a minimal time sink or, if possible, no time lost at all.

Re-submission

The previous idea I submitted lacked the novelty component and I spoke too long about the concerns rather the things that the idea could achieve and what it would be used for.

The new idea is a kinetic bracelet which encourages human activity away from our tech devices. This would work by having sensors in the bracelet that build up kinetic energy overtime from doing everyday activities such as working out at the gym, hanging out clothes, cooking and writing. After this there is a charging component to the bracelet that is universal to wireless devices so when you touch your devices they will begin charging.

The focus for this product is to eliminate being lazy and just sitting on your computer or phone all day without actively engaging and achieving other important tasks in your life. It will no longer be possible to just ‘binge’ Netflix or play games all day without being useful first.

World Cafe

This week's contact session was in the format of a world cafe where we got to explore different themes and discuss them in a group. I got to about 5 different tables and hosted 2 times which was interesting. From the different tables I found the bottom two to be the most interesting as there is a lot of interesting themes that came out through discussion. The two images below are for Enhanced Mundane Spaces and Everyday Sustainability which shows a few great ideas.

Group Work

At the second contact session of the week, the first part was spent listening to a former student, Bash, who now lives in London. He spoke to us about his experience in the industry and more specifically about how to get jobs and what companies are looking for.

After this we were given our assigned groups that we were to work with for the rest of the semester. I was lucky because I got a few mates in my group and I know that they are very creative and have many great ideas from previous semesters in IT.

The topic we all chose as our #1 preference was Enhanced Mundane Spaces. When doing the world cafe it seemed like ideas were flowing much easier than when we started to brainstorm as a group. We talked about

• Buses
• Classrooms
• Elevators
• Walking on Paths
• Stuck in Traffic

We still haven't made our final decision but are leaning towards creating the Elevator space more fun and interacting and overall an enhanced experience.

Presentations

This week we presented our inspirational ideas to the class which we had developed over the past week. I won't go into much detail explaining my idea because it is in the previous post but essentially the core component was harnessing kinetic energy through physical movements to charge our everyday devices. The physical component of the interaction was using your devices and your movements would be tracked through the little sensors in each one of the devices. This would mean that without using your computer/typing/mouse movements it would not charge and eventually go flat. Therefore the requirement is that you are always efficiently using these devices, without the physical movement the idea won't work. Unfortunately the tutors didn't really think this was a strong enough example of adapting a physical component and believed that it was just a technical idea.

Ben and Steven both suggested that I think more about how it makes the user feel and what kind of emotions I can produce from this idea to make it more humanly interactive. Im not really too sure exactly how to do this at the moment but am trying to come up with ideas to achieve this.

Soldering 101 Induction

On Tuesday after class I had the soldering 101 induction which was where we got more hands on compared to the makerspace induction. Initially I had quite a bit of trouble making the circuit to that everything worked and the light would turn on via the switch but after figuring it out with mates the soldering part wasn't very difficult as I have done this at school and with dad before. One mistake I made was accidently soldering the black wire directly to the light so ultimately this cut out the use of the switch and the light was permananently on. This was a pretty easy fix just solder around and remove this extra soldering that connected the circuit.

General Purpose South Workshop Induction

This was a pretty relaxed induction as it only went for roughly an hour. The core message were basically "dont be dumb" and "ask us" if you don't understand how a tool works or something has gone wrong.

The Problem

The problem space is the inconvenience of needing batteries to run your wireless computer technology. Often we find ourselves running out of batteries or disconnecting due to low battery especially at some of the worst times – like at uni etc. This means that we either need to be able to use our equipment until we get home or remember to go buy more batteries. Either way it is frustrating and really shouldn’t happen as wired equipment doesn’t have this hassle.

The Solution

The solution to this problem is to harness you using these devices kinetically to recharge them. It sounds confusing; however, many devices do this today and in some train stations in Europe they have places where you can peddle a wheel to charge your mobile phone, so it is the same principle as this. The way it would work is that when you move your mouse and use the scroll wheel and do clicks you are creating small amount of kinetic energy. This is your body using its energy to transfer it to the energy required to make these actions. By attaching energy conversion devices to these simple mechanisms we can use this energy to power the mouse connectivity and keep it charged.

The same principle above applies to the keyboard capturing kinetic energy to power it. There are two methods of possibility for this though. The first is implementing a sensor within the keys of the board to pick up the downward force of the keys and then transform that into energy which can charge the keyboard.

Target Audience

The target audience for this technology would be the younger generation as they are much more environmentally aware compared to past generations and they have grown up around wireless technology. This is not to say however that the tech wouldn't be great for all ages and demographics and really anybody who finds it annoying having to change batteries on these devices.

Inspiration

There is no exact specific inspiration but rather a bundle of similar renewable energy advancements. Solar has become a much larger energy type than it used to be too.

energy #renewableenergy #kinetic #recharging

Preparations

This course involves building a product which may require some key manufacturing skills and the knowledge of the equipment. To provide us with the best chance of being able to create our products in a safe both safely and as accurately as possible we are required to complete 3 inductions. The first induction I completed in O-Week of Uni which took place at the Maker Space workshop. Our two guides were Blair and Grant who were very experienced in their field and showed us how to use some of the machinery that we will most likely want to utilize in our construction. I have used most of the equipment before however it was really interesting to see how the laser cutter worked and just how accurate it was when cutting. Although not related to the course as such but the 3D printing stations all around the workshop were also awesome to watch and see what they create.

Week 1

Tuesday

In our first class on Tuesday, the start was mainly all about what would be involved in the course and answering any questions or queries we had. It was great to do this because most of us haven’t taken a 4 unit course before so it was helpful to understand how the workload increases and also what will be expected of us compared to the regular 2 unit courses that we have done for most of our time at university. Being one of the final courses for my IT degree it seems as if we are putting all our prior knowledge from other design courses into one final product which we will hold an exhibition for at the end of the semester. This will include schools and industry professionals coming in to see how our product works. While this sounds a bit overwhelming it should be a great opportunity to show off our skills and see what awesome gadget we can create in our groups.

Wednesday

Wednesday’s class started to become more hands on with developing inspiration for designs that would be required over the next couple weeks. We got into groups to talk about our challenge that we were given and the group I was in did “Human Technology Symbiosis”. It was actually really interesting to listen to other group members and a key point that we discovered was that to improve technology we need to provide it with data, in the form of machine learning etc but at the same time we are not willing to share this data to maintain privacy. Also, there were many positives and negatives about Tech – Human Symbiosis. One point I made was with targeted advertising and how its purpose is to help you find what your looking for and for companies to reach you but many times it goes way overboard such as looking one thing up online and then all you see for the next week is that product and any tiny little spinoffs of it. It seems to be a case of where you draw the line and what we must expect in the future when the ability of technology increases. After this exercise we went to new groups and played a game with cards where each suit represented a different topic, eg. Design or quality of.. It was really enjoyable and we came up with a lot of funny sentences out of the words that we were given.

Looking Ahead

Next week looks to be quite busy as we all have to complete an idea that we started to develop at the end of class on Wednesday. This needs to be an idea with a physical component attached to it. I have started to come up with a few ideas but still need to explore the possibilities of them working and ultimately do more research. I will post back next week in more detail on the idea that I present.