Week - 3

After teams were formed in the world cafe session (I couldn't attend the sessions that week as I was ill and a bit paranoid about it being the COVID-19) I met my team later in the week which included Kasey, Eddie and Kaun. Our team meeting included a brainstorming session where we came up with different ideas for the problem space, technologies we can use, target audience, and different emotions that humans have. We also came up with solutions to the problem spaces that we discussed. We used colour post-it notes to divide our topics into different sections.

We also had another meeting on Sunday where our agenda was to finalise on a concept that we will be taking forward.

We decided on a problem space that relates to teaching people about global warming.

Tuesday - Contact

On Tuesday we started off with a 'stand-up' where each person in all teams was to explain what the team and they themselves had done so far in the course. Although interesting to listen to what the other teams are doing there was a lot of overlap and repetition from many team members. So far in the process, most of what we have done is as a team and therefore there is little extra to tell when asking a second team member. I believe we would hear more unique aspects moving forwards as we are moving into the individual parts of the course. However, I'm also concerned about the amount of time this takes up and if it's worth the time as I didn't feel like I learned anything from this exercise.

After the stand-up, we jumped into team chats to work on our concept. In this meeting, we talked about starting to write the report and work out how we could split the concept between ourselves. We decided that we wanted to split prototypes based on outputs and inputs. Given that Thomas and I live in the same house we decided that we could take one input and one output so that we are able to test if everything works as it is supposed to locally before testing remote. Moreover, Tuva was to prototype automatic input and Marie were to prototype an output. However, at this point, it was still unclear what the individual prototypes should be.

At this point, Ben came in to give us some feedback on our concept. He brought up some good points on how manual input could be an extra barrier of entry. We also discussed how we should consider the physical aspect of the concept such as what the balls are doing and how they could be interacted with. Ben also gave us some technical suggestions to look into such as ESP32s or ESP8266s for the connectivity and Galvanic Skin Response(GSR) as a sensor in case we wanted to measure emotions as users were holding the ball in their hands. Finally, we asked for some tips and tricks too for user interviews.

After our feedback from Ben, we went on to create an interview protocol to get some early information on how people understand emotions, how they display them as well as if and when they are comfortable sharing emotions. We decided to write some open-ended questions to begin the interview with, continue with a task to allow users to show us how they think and then end with some more directed questions.

In our team meeting, Friday of week four, we decided to pick up where we left off earlier in the week, by focusing on the rest of the feedback we received after our presentation. Moreover, we aimed to refine our concept idea further and come up with solutions to how we could split our project among our four team members.

Feedback

We summarised and condensed the feedback we had received to make it more actionable and easier to take into consideration when moving on with our project. There were a lot of interesting ideas to consider from what we received, such as how users themselves could input a mixture of emotions of their making, combined from for example clay or colours. Handing over control of the input parameters would allow for a more exciting approach which could potentially be more reflective of how complex emotions are. Moreover, it might feel better for users to have complete control over combining and creating a representation of their feelings at that given time. Another suggestion was to move to a household to ensure everyday use. Our original concept did lack a specific everyday use-case, which is why we especially took this suggestion to heart and which formed the basis of our pivot. A third suggestion was to have more complexity, as in increasing the number of emotions. This leads me to believe that either people weren't listening or that we were unable to get our message across as our intention was always to reach for such depth, but that our prototype would have to have certain limitations, which is why we talked about various ways of measuring the emotional intensity and which emotion users would pick. Another suggestion was to attain data that would tell us the connection between colour and emotions, which we also did mention in our pitch that we aimed to figure out in our initial user research. Others suggested making the installation a safe space where users would feel safe sharing their emotions, which is a important suggestion and one we will take into consideration moving forward. Some people suggested more collaborative interaction between people which we also have taken to heart in our pivot that I will talk of later in this post. Another suggestion was to explore shape and form together and how this could elevate a sense of certain emotions. Shape and form is something we are looking into that we haven't landed on as of yet, but we would very much like to explore how senses can be combined to emphasise emotions. The last types of suggestion were to have other types of emotional input such as heart rate, heat, and so on. Automatic inputs are something we are taking into consideration moving forward with our concept.

Pivot and Refinement

The rest of our meeting revolved around how we could pivot our project to be more of an everyday concept. We started talking about what type of experience we would like people to leave with and came up with four possible paths to pursue; individual and collective awareness, emotional release, spark discussion and improved communication skills. Which opted to figure out which ones to focus on specifically through user research. With that said, we did agree on the purpose of our concept to revolve around collective awareness plus a display of feelings outwards. This comes as a response to our feedback where people suggested more collective interactions, in addition to how we as humans share emotions daily would be a nice foundation to build upon in terms of making the concept more of everyday activity. As for target audience, we were all intrigued by exploring our concept in a multi-person household focused on student accommodation, given that isolation in COVID-19 times will likely have a significant impact on people living together. Towards the end of our meeting, we had gone through various types of inputs and outputs and how they could be applied to a household and landed on a vague concept that we wanted to pursue the next week. This concept was a cylinder with balls inside of it, where each ball correlates to each person in that household which shows that individuals emotions throughout the day. This came from some requirements we set for ourselves, that the concept should be easy to display and easy to access. We played around with input and output methods for the concept, but in the end, we did not land on one specific input or output. This will have to come during our next meeting.

This week, we needed to pitch our ideas to the studio. Therefore, we really needed to solidify our concept and idea. Prior to this, it was obvious in our group discussions that each individual had their own interpretation of the theme. Therefore, I suggested for the team to all go and further design the theme concept space and report back to the team.

As a result, below was my own interpretation of the theme space:

Enhance Mundane Spaces

Definitions

Enhance: intensify, increase, or further improve the quality, value, or extent of.

Mundane: lacking interest or excitement; dull.

Spaces: position (two or more items) at a distance from one another, be or become euphoric or unaware of one's surroundings, especially from taking drugs

To Enhance

• You empower

To be Mundane

• Mundane tasks

o Use your curiosity to enjoy activities such as washing dishes and organizing.

o vacuuming, doing dishes, or dusting the house

o activity you dislike

• It is not a choice, rather it is a must

• Something you dislike

• Something you find discomfort

To NOT be Mundane

• Spark curiosity (https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/what-matters-most/201705/how-deal-boring-or-mundane-tasks)

• Challenging/complex task

• Strength of creativity

• Prudence strength to organise

• Stay focused, using self-regulation strength

• Appreciation of beauty

Inspirations:

* https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263594631MundaneMobilitiesPerformancesandSpacesof_Tourism

• https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/what-matters-most/201705/how-deal-boring-or-mundane-tasks

Reflection on this exercise

This was a great concept as it allowed all group members to share their interpretation to ensure that we captured a holistic interpretation of the theme space. By employing this method, the team was able to freely devise and formulate their own ideas which were shared and further refined as a group without the fear of subconscious judgement

Continuing The Course

The last week has been quite a mixture of emotions, confusion and thinking about the future. With COVID-19 making a huge impact to the course, it has definitely brought upon new challenges and directions to take. Regardless, I'm still excited and ready to continue the course with all the changes to come, although am quite nervous about taking on the task with a more individual outlook as I don't feel very strongly in my programming skills.

Group Chats

Upon discovering the changes to the course, we sadly lost a team member within the group. Upon discussion with the remaining team members, we revised our initial idea of the chair as it felt like a more complex idea to create as an individual. The idea that we've come up with explores changing energy consumption habits through implementing factors of discomfort. We felt that through an individual aspect, this might be something that might be less difficult to tackle.

Research Questions

We conducted initial research questioning to collect some ideas that we could explore. The following questions and responses were recorded:

Q1. What energy consumption habits do you want to change?

• Taking shorter showers
• Using phone less
• Using and buying less plastic
• Reduce power usage at home
• If it’s too cold/hot for the dogs
• Outside door is left open
• Devices/tvs/lights left on
• Cleaning not done
• Air conditioner/heater left on

Q2. What response would bother you? (e.g. sound, light, social media shaming)

• Sounds that keep happening for a really long time
• Spamming of the same message
• High cost
• Stops them from pursuing hobbies
• Stops them from going out
• Alerts on phone
• Creates more mess
• Loud noise
• Speaking (e.g. yells ‘Help me!” when someone walks past)
• Complaining about how cold it is etc.

Q3. What form? (e.g. small box, plant, unappealing v appealing?)

• Something that is too heavy to move
• Something stuck in position
• Wetness
• Embedded in the bad habit
• Emotional connection

The Concept

Based on the responses we received, we came up with the concept of a small portable object that playfully annoys and disturbs users when they have committed a negative energy consumption habit, ie. leaving the aircon running when not present. The user will be alerted after a certain time through an annoying sound initially (potentially the ball complaining), however if they do not take any action, then it will continue to annoy them through flashing lights, vibrations and annoying sounds. The goal is that the user becomes annoyed and made to feel uncomfortable which forces them to fix the problem. Hopefully with constant annoyance, this will improve their habits of being more energy efficient at home.

Possible ways to explore and create this that were discussed were varying sensors to measure light, sound, water and movement detection. Sensors is not something that I have had much experience with however, so I'm hoping that it won't be too challenging for me. In saying that though, I'm definitely ready to step out of my comfort zone and explore something new!

We are still confused about the future of the project and our ability to be able to develop such a project with all the big changes, so hopefully after the presentations this week we will have more of an understanding and more confidence in the concept and ourselves!

Video Call - Bash

I enjoyed the video call from Britain as Bash had some excellent advice. Although I was already familiar with the information that he gave, having spent countless hours looking at employability before, I still enjoyed hearing about his story.

Team Formation

I wasn't too surprised with the team I received given that I tried to team up with people I know can do good work by putting my notes close to those I'd like to work with rather than the most exciting theme. This decision is a result of previous semesters where I've been in teams where a couple of us have to pull the weight of other group members. Given that I'm doing my thesis, I can't afford yet another semester where I have to spend enormous amounts of energy and time making up for the shortcomings in other people's work, as my thesis progress took a significant hit last semester. The negative aspect of this is that this team will have similar input to me given our same cultural backgrounds, whereas the positive side is that I know they can all do great work. I believe our group will be fully capable of producing a captivating concept and have a lot of fun while doing so. I hope that, in this course, we can focus on ideas that are more physical than digital as I'm interested in learning more than just web and app design.

The first thing our team did was to sit down and write up a team agreement, with one team member joining us on Discord. After the class, we decided to have a meeting to start ideation. There, we discussed the theme, emotional intelligence, and produced as many ideas as we could. We chose to focus on two aspects, input and output, whether they should be internal or external, physical or digital, and how they could be combined. After coming up with some initial ideas, we opted to plan a meeting for Friday to choose one concept to move forward. Previous to the meeting, we were all to come up with two additional ideas.

My Two Ideas

Thomas and I sat down to ideate a couple of ideas on a train ride back from a friends house. The first concept I ideated is a wristband that senses when you fidget with it, as one often can do when bored, making the device glow brighter to show your boredom and promoting human interaction. The second idea was the 'shrieking box', which you throw as hard as you can into the air. The further and faster it travels, the more loudly it shrieks, emphasising the emotions of the pitcher.

Friday's Meeting

After having presented and discussed our additional two ideas, we tried to look for combinations between them and the ones we came up with, in the previous ideation session. We chose to pursue the high-level concept of angry birds of emotions. This concept combines the emoji balls, different coloured balls with emoji faces to throw at people, from the first ideation session with a physical Angry Birds like game. We explored various input and output methods for the concept, amongst others, including sounds in the emoji balls from the shrieking box idea; Filling up different emoji balloons to visualise emotional output from the first ideation session, and many more. What we realised is that we have a lot of great ideas for input and output, and should conduct user interviews to narrow down to the best options.

After coming up with a concept to present, we started to put together the presentation and divided tasks amongst ourselves. Thomas and I were supposed to create a storyboard, Marie was to make illustrations, I was to make a visual theme for the presentation and Tuva put together most of the presentation. Moreover, we planned to have an additional meeting on Monday to finalise our presentation and rehearse ahead of the pitch on Tuesday, however, due to uni closing down a week, we postponed the meeting in case the format of the presentation would change.

Tuesday

World cafe

In the world cafe, we have developed a variety of ideas.

round 1 context

round 2 audience & domain

round 3 refine

In the first two rounds, we tried to broaden our thinking and think of more possibilities for the theme. In the third round, we started to chose an attractive idea to refine it. I post these results below.

In fact, in the process, I felt that I had misunderstood many concepts, which affected the progress of our third round. Each round is only 15 minutes, which is not enough for discussion. I need more time to think about topics that interest me.

After the world cafe, I have chosen the aspect of body control as my favorite theme.

Wednesday

Mobile sharing

In Wednesday's contact, a graduate from UQ shared his interview experience. He pointed out the importance of self-introduction. The unique personality can attract others to hire you.

The sentences like:

My name is...

I am unique because...

can help us describe ourselves.

Team formation and ideation

After that, I had the first meeting with my team members. We have shared our contact details and build our team chart quickly. And we also have started generated our initial concept based on the inspirations from our classmates and brainstorm.

Brainstorm

As you can see, we tried to expand our thoughts. Because our theme is related to body control, we listed the composition of the body and what it can do. We want to create an interesting interaction by doing this. And also, we found some inspirations from the internet and add some themes we want to explore more in the future.

Future work

We plan to narrow down our ideas and prepare for the presentation next week. We will use the concept map to find the ideal concept and develop it more detailed.

World Cafe

Beginning the week with World Cafe was quite exciting. I had already done a form of this in DECO3500 and quite enjoyed the activity, so it was great to be able to do this again with a variety of different topics. In my previous journal post I listed some of the themes that I was interested in exploring, so this activity gave me a chance to do that, as well as meet more people in the class.

The topics that I had a chance to explore were Change Through Discomfort, Change Through Positive Reinforcement, Emotional Totems, Sassy Tech, Bothersome Tech and Creative Learning. Throughout this activity I hosted twice, which was exciting however it would have been nice to see some other people step up to host so that I could explore one last topic. In saying that though, it did allow me to take on a slight leadership role, which is something that I have been trying to improve upon.

After exploring these topics and brainstorming some weird and wacky ideas, the top four topics that really intrigued me were Change Through Discomfort, Change Through Positive Reinforcement, Sassy Tech and Bothersome Tech. I definitely think the themes that I'm interested in overlap in some way which I found quite interesting.

Chatting With Bash

To continue the week, former UQ graduate Bash Isai, chatted to the cohort online all the way from London. It was really interesting to hear his experiences and he gave us some valuable tips on how to get a job. I had come across the idea of job recruiters as my partner has one of his own but I didn't realise how easy and useful they could be. I definitely am going to be looking into finding myself a recruitment agent!

He also conducted this insightful activity which began with us writing 50 words about ourself, and then continuously cutting it down until we had three words. From those three we had to select the one that best represented us. The three that I ended with were unique, genuine and exceptional, however I thought that genuine was the word that best encompassed myself and my attitude as a whole.

Meeting The Team

It was finally the day to meet the team! I'm happy with my team as I've never had the opportunity to work with any of them and so far it seems like we've been getting along well. We do all struggle a bit with programming though so that should be quite interesting, although we've made an agreement to work on any kind of programming bits together. I got my first preference of Change Through Discomfort which is awesome, meaning that I'm excited to get into the course!

We dived straight in, coming up with a team name (Negative Nancies) and listing out potential bad habits to explore. Through this process, we placed a tick next to ideas that we thought would be interesting to pursue as they seemed more suitable for the semester project.

We further pursued some of these ideas, exploring potential interactions that could be possible ideas to target throughout the course. As we brainstormed, the topic of implementing discomfort towards sitting down for too long looked promising. We brainstormed quite a few fun ideas for it, so it's looking like this may be what we decide to explore! We currently haven't decided upon what characteristics we want to implement in the chair, but with the next assessable coming up in less than next week, we should have a drafted idea soon!

Reflection

Today in the studio we undertook an activity whereby we grew existing inspirations to develop and share our own ideas. This process is called "World Cafe".

Personally as I reflect on Today's process, what makes such a seemingly simple practice — that of talking together about things that we set out during our studio 2 and developed and intentionally linking the essence of our conversations with students. Through our informal conversations, it offers us the opportunity to notice the possibilities for mutual insight, innovation, and action. I feel, through using this World Cafe methodology process, it offers a unique mixture of freedom and focus, of coherence without control.

Work Done

Today during World Cafe, we were able to experience and learn/ immerse our understanding of other ideas and general themes. This was another stage in the ideation process in which we undertook to seek inspiration to generate a brilliant idea.

Three rounds were involved whereby specific tasks/focus areas were explored. In the first 2 rounds, with each different concept/theme, I encouraged the group to define each of the words in the theme. This allowed the group to mutually understand and gather everyone's interpretation of the theme. Without restricting a specific idea on each member, this allowed the group to gather ideas from different perspectives to collectively define the space for the theme.

During each round, we respected all group members to ensure their ideas were fairly shared without interruptions. When I came up with an idea, to ensure that my thought wasn't lost, we had two large butcher papers to jot down our ideas to share after the other person has finished sharing their idea.

After three rounds of world cafe, we were given an opportunity to vote for the best concept/idea

After the three rounds, I'm really inspired to further investigate the idea of "enhancing mundane spaces".

Further Research into "Enhancing Mundane Spaces"

In today's society, we are constantly surrounded by mundane spaces. An interpretation of mine at this stage is:

ordinary spaces and places that don't normally get a second glance and that are often overlooked by the world because of there mundane and ordinary status in the world.

Typically car parks, building entrances, loading bays, public open spaces, back streets and "Non Places/Spaces". I will be further looking into space both in a physical and abstract context.

Lessons Leant

From my experience after today's workshop and understanding thus far, World Cafe methodology fosters an environment that develops good conversations. I felt during the studio, this World Cafe approach is designed to get authentic dialogues started. This is in order to encourage the sharing of ideas in a relaxed, informal and creative atmosphere.

The card ideation method was a new and exciting approach to me. Our table came up with some fun ideas, although most of them were toilet-related due to the cards we drew.

However, I feel our creativity was limited by having to stick with the first cards until they had been exhausted. This issue became especially apparent when we were supposed to do the same task individually, where most of us had one or two weird words that didn't make sense in that context or cards that had words that didn't make much sense at all. Even though I am fond of ideation methods, I've noticed that in most subjects this far, we have not used any ideas after we came up with them. I believe this is for the simple reason that they are either not captivating enough as a concept or not feasible, making the ideation process somewhat wasteful. I'm hoping that this will not be the case for this subject.

In the end, we did decide to present the idea of a mechanical plant that would die as you are wasteful with water in your home; A simple but intriguing concept. This concept came to be when we ideated on the sentence "Design for enlighten in a bathroom using ridged with quality of detached". The idea is enlightening due to how it visually represents your water consumption with a familiar, easy to grasp metaphor, that of a plant dying, which equals bad. Although the plant isn't required to be in a bathroom, this is where the idea originated. The mechanical aspect of the plant came from the ridged requirement, and the plant itself can be picked up and moved around, hence fulfilling the detached requirement. We did continue to ideate on the concept with a new card reading semi-trailer instead of a bathroom, as we felt like we wanted to ideate something else than bathroom ideas, but eventually, after voting, ended up presenting the original idea to the class.

All images can be viewed here if not shown below.

Project Inspirations Ideas

I had a few different ideas for my project inspiration presentation and these are the ones that did not make the final cut.

Shoes

p.s. I used the third idea (bottom right) as my final project inspiration.

I was browsing through the internet to see whether any of my ideas already existed when I found a shoe that is similar to my first idea.

GPS Shoe

The shoe has LEDs in the toes of the shoes. The LED lights on the left shoe point the wearer to their destination and the right shoe shows the distance.

https://weburbanist.com/2012/09/27/no-need-for-directions-with-gps-shoes-to-guide-you/

Social

For these ideas, I designed them with introverts in mind. Some introverts have trouble communicating with other people and some of them want alone time and a personal space for themselves.

Relfection

In today's session, we were inspired by other ideas presented to us by fellow peers. Although each presentation was succinct, most who presented today conveyed their ideas and concepts with clarity.

I noticed a trend in ideas whereby emotions, shoes and music were hot topics regarding individual concepts.

Tasks completed in the session

Feedback

It was very useful and effective in completing these critique forms as each student presented. This was an effective way to ensure we were engaging in the presentation and also providing an opportunity to provide valuable feedback.

Idea Explanation

Concept - SMART BEDROOM

Utilising the most recent AI and heat-mapping technology, it will allow the SMART BEDROOM to map emotions in the body.

The bedroom will respond to the human’s emotion accordingly. Responses by the AI incorporate all 5 senses to help better the emotion/situation.

CONTEXT OF USE: Retirement Home - BEDROOM

Motivation

In today’s society, there is a constant battle to help those who are battling with mental health, and in particular the emotions of the elderly and children. In today’s society, there is a contestant emphasis on ensuring the quality of life and healthy personal well-begin.

Emotions originate in the brain but can manifest as physical feelings throughout the body. Given the demographic, accessibility and university access is a major factor to consider. As a result, this does not require conscious human interaction, rather the AI will detect and action accordingly.

Affective computing is an essential part of current HCI. This technology allows for automated human affective behaviour recognition. This type of recognition is provided by means of the capture and analysis of implicit information about the user, such as vocal and facial changes, alterations of body movements and gestures, and so on. Recognition of affective behaviour is a part of effective interaction where a computer approaches the emotion, mood, attitude and personal preferences of the person. Adding the ability of emotional intelligence to computers makes them more coherent to the humans who interact with them. Light and colour are omnipresent environmental factors which influence the human being.

Light and colour are ubiquitous environmental factors which have an influence on the human being. Hence, light and colour issues have to be considered especially significant in HCI and fundamental in affective computing. Affective computing aims to integrate issues dealing with emotions and computers.

Inspiration

!Y(gpvznAiKbl)

In the first week of classes we did some idea generating exercises the first being based off the seven challenges of Human Computer Interaction. The group I was with was assigned Environment Based Challenges where problems posed by individuals interacting with the increasingly evolving intelligent environment we live in today. We did a number of exercises going through our individual interpretations of the article and then summarizing the points we found into a more concise list of issues that should be thought about and addressed in design in the future. The second brainstorming activity we did involved using playing cards and randomly generated words to come up with interesting contextual scenarios in which an idea space was created. Seen in the picture below with the cards and word key that were used to generate the sentences. This was rather enjoyable with the group at my table as we had some good ideas along with many silly ones which still worked. Seen below are some of my interpretations of using the sentence: "Design for Disconnecting in a cemetery using hopping and the argumentative quality".

These exercises were quite useful in generating interesting ideas and concepts which will be needed for our presentations next week.

Who am I?

My name is Marie Thoresen, I'm 26 (soon 27) and at my last semester of the master of interaction design program. After I graduate I aim to work with web design and graphic design since this is something that I've been passionate about for a long time.

What I hope to learn/achieve in PhysComp

Since this is my last semester I'm aiming to get better in areas that are connected with future employment. Programming is something that I've never been good at so this will be my main focus this semester. Especially programming languages who are related to web design would be a major plus.

I'm also looking forward to make something physical since I enjoy making things with my hands with various materials. If I had the time and money I would probably engage in more DIY projects so this course is a great excuse to do just that.

Lastly, I hope to achieve a good grade in this course and make something that I can add to my portfolio at the end of the semester.

Week 1 activities

The first week we spent getting to know the course and what to expect. I must admit that at first I was a bit sceptical as to if this course would be something that would peak my interest or not, but after the first two lectures I must say I got excited for what the coming weeks have in store.

After the first lecture we were tasked with reading a chapter in a paper. The chapter I was allocated was about ethics, privacy and security which is a bit funny since this is exactly what my thesis projects is about. Because of this I knew a lot about the topic from before which made it easy to join in on the discussion. I felt the discussion went fine, except that it was mostly just three who discussed while the other sat on their phones/computer and didn't contribute much.

In addition, we got to do some ideation for the main project by using a card deck and some notes which allocated different locations, design etc to those cards. This exercise turned out to be very difficult since there were many factors to consider and the different cards woulds always match one another.

The ideation went for three different round where, the first the group would come up with ideas together. In the second round we would come up with ideas alone and in the last we would change one idea from the first round.

These were the ideas I generated from the second round:

Design to embrace a ruin from different dimensions in an aggressive way

• Make life like scale of ancient ruins so people can interact with them however they like without the fear of permanent damage
• Idea above using holographic means instead of building materials
• Idea above only making the ruins as they were like before they became a ruin (from another time).
• Idea above using cameras or holographic to show the decay of the ruin from its prime to current standard
• A smaller scale remake of the ruin that shows the entirety from the bottom and up so people can see every single detail of the building process
• An invisible shield surrounding the ruin so people can interact with it as closely as possible without damaging it.

Design to embrace (in) a hot air balloon by sliding it in an aggressive way

• Instead of having the hot air balloon as a high-altitude device it can be used to get people from A to B by sliding it with a rope etc. that pulls it.
• Using a hot air balloon to surf
• Couple therapy air balloon where they won’t be allowed to slide down before they have resolved their dispute.
• Force people to hug by sliding the air balloon so they crash into each other. Blind dating air balloon.

On Friday morning I set aside some time to come up with ideas for my Project Inspiration Pitch. My approach was to use pen and paper so I could sketch if I needed to, but I mainly wrote down descriptions and justifications for my ideas.

In this session I came up with the smart wardrobe, an assistive shower cubicle, a desk chair, an annoying coffee cup, an improved steering wheel, and a conversation table. I feel like my ideas were mainly driven by the environment I was in when brainstorming, which was at home with a view of my desk, dining table and wardrobe. I don't drink coffee but there is a normality of being addicted to coffee in university and in the hobby groups I'm in. The steering wheel idea was likely from a culmination of my frustrations with morning traffic.

In the end, I chose to pitch the smart wardrobe because it has a lot of potential for cool features to implement and a good purpose.