On the Tuesday of week 4, we had our group presentation on a topic which had to be novel, interactive, fun and physical. We had decided that we will be going with the topic of teaching people about global warming with an interactive device. I think live presentation in front of a classroom would have been a lot more fun because we were planning on having volunteers to come up and do a small demo of our concept. But, cause of restrictions we decided to make a video to explain our concept as demonstrating the concept online-live through a skit would have been very difficult.

We had divided into different tasks that everyone in the group will be researching about and preparing for the video. I particularly looked into explaining the problem space. I recorded my voice using my phone (which did not have the quality that I was expecting) and sent my part of the presentation with the recording to Kasey, who was editing the video together and had the rest of the voice over. Eddie had planned to do the skit for giving a demo of our concept with his housemates.

After our presentation, we received critique feedback from the class, all the teaching staff members on slack and via zoom.

After that, we talked to Alison and clay in a private zoom room on the things that we can improve and they helped with different ideas. The main aspects that we talked about were how to make the input more interactive and who will be our target audience.

Later in the week, we had a group meeting to discuss about the proposal-report. We also tried to discuss the various input methods that can be replaced in our original idea, but we failed to do so. Hence we decided to meet again on Sunday where everyone would bring in 2 ideas for 'ways of input' and bring in 2-3 research paper related to any aspect of our concept.

I had mostly researched global warming and sociology, and teaching children about global warming which I shared and summarised to our group. One of the input methods that I preferred that I thought of was having 2 garbage bins as the inputs. One for plastic and the other for biodegradable things only. Depending on how much each bin weighs, it will affect the globe accordingly. such as if the plastic garbage bin weighs more, then the earth will turn grey and brownish with sounds on cars honking, whereas if there is more biodegradable things or less plastic the globe turns green and blue with sounds of birds chirping and rivers flowing. But the only problem that we discussed with this way of input was that it was too binary, like before when we had received the feedback about our presentation.

Eddie came up with another Idea of input where we use a strip which can take our inputs via our finger. We will be able to glide across it to input.

But we still have to research more on the ways of inputting.

Later we also divided the sections of the individual report to make things easier.

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 had our first online lecture which went better then I anticipated. It was of course not better than a real lecture, but it will do. As long as the course is not cancelled I'm happy to be honest.

Pitch

On Tuesday my group presented our concept for the class. We decided to record the presentation beforehand and just add it to the youtube list which I'm glad we did since it removed some of the nerves. I think the presentation went well and we got lots of useful feedback on slack. Mostly the feedback said we needed to include some interaction with the output of the concept, find a more specific target audience etc. As of right now the concept is not something definite and my group are still working on the details.

Group meeting

In order to go through the feedback and come up with some specific details around our project we had a group meeting on Friday over discord. We managed to go through all of the feedback and also decide on a target audience and what we wanted the end result of the project to be. Hopefully next week we will have the concept finalised so we can start writing the proposal.

Teamwork

This week as a group we worked on our concept, iterating through the problem space and how the concept would solve this problem, then creating a storyboard and detailed explanation of the product, all of which was used in the presentation on Tuesday.

Problem Space

In the group my main focus was on developing the problem space, the main issue we feel 'Helping Hand' Will solve is a form of social distancing but devolved through wanting to be polite and not having to tell others what distance you wish to keep depending on your mood or what we called 'Social Activity' Listed below are three examples and thus the social distance they wish to keep from others. These might be a bit extreme however they get the general idea across. This problem space made it quite easy for us as a group to then develop the concept to better solve this problem, through gestures and motions used to keep others away (rude) or inviting them to come closer (nice).

Post Presetation

After the presentation there was numerous feedback, however the main concern was in the form of the concept, creating a robotic hand that creates complex gestures might be too hard to do, too heavy or creative that it attracts attention when the user wants to be left alone. This is where the group split into individual workers, to develop their own form they would like to work on, and what role that fulfills, personally I really like the emotion and 'sass' that body gestures can make, so why stop at a hand, I want to make a small moving mannequin that conveys these gestures of rudeness or being inviting, while being simple with maybe one joint per limb, making it easy to pull off, while the whole body can convey emotion better.

Pitch

Process

In the one week break last week, my team and I met up and continued developing our ideas from the brainstorming session we did as a group in week 3. In week 3, we talked about giving a hand a personality and using it as a way to help people in their everyday life. We decided to focus our idea on the backpack hand that acts as a personal space manager.

We thought about other ways of giving the backpack hand personality and sassy-ness, which was really fun and funny. However, after having ideas that were going all over the place, we decided to think about a problem space first before continuing.

Problem Space -> People want appropriate social distances for their social activities, without having to tell others.

With this, we decided on two intended experiences, the personal space manager (our first idea) and the conversation stopper. We named our concept The Helping Hand.

Presentation

We decided to use google slides to present our concept. Each of us chose a section to present and did voice-overs. My part was the intended experience section as I was in charge in sketching the concept and the storyboard.

Feedback

Below are the some points from the critiques about The Helping Hand and my thoughts about it.

Size

• Too bulky, heavy
• Smaller = more portability
• Not convenient to move around

We added a backpack to our concept as we thought it would be easier to move the hand and its parts around. But I do agree that it is still very big and probably too heavy to walk around with it, especially in crowded areas (spaces where you would want to use it). My team and I talked about some ideas like attaching a smaller arm on a cap or a headband.

Gives the opposite effect

• Rude, Cultural differences (can maybe be solved by looking it as a separate entity)
• Strong personality, might scare people, make them feel awkward
• Draws attention. People might be interested in it and purposely interact with it.
• Distracting to user

As we wanted to make this arm seem as sassy as possible, I guess it may come off as rude and hurtful to some people. The tutors gave a good idea of making it appear as a separate entity so it would not be you being rude but the hand instead.

It drawing attention from other people could probably be solved by making it smaller or by changing its form to something simple/everyday so it can be more inconspicuous.

Other forms?

• Face on a display
• screen/lights/sounds
• Doesn't have to be an arm/body part
• Small creature
• Puppet

For this concept, we wanted to move away from using sounds (voice), lights or facial expressions to using gestures or body language instead. This would make it more novel and give it more sass. Lorna and the tutors gave good examples of other forms that we can think about instead of using body parts. As the team members would each be designing a prototype separately, we can each focus on a different type of form and see each form's benefits and disadvantages.

Points to Note for the Future

• Experiment on different forms
• Make it less noticeable to avoid drawing attention (blend in, simple looking, small size)
• Show that it is a separate entity
• Make it less bulky and heavy to be more portable

Emotional Birds

Looking back at our presentation, I believe we managed to cover a lot of information and give the audience a good sense of our concept. Our team started to go through the feedback after Tuesday's session and will continue to go through the rest in a separate meeting on Friday. From what we have seen so far, the concept fell short in the everyday aspect of the brief, which we will discuss in further detail on Friday's meeting. We have already looked into how the concept could be moved into a household, so it might very well be that we end up pivoting from our original concept during this week. There was also some feedback related to a lack of output interactivity. This is something we have to look further into as we believe too many features might take away from the core purpose of the concept and rather be a distraction. More features aren't always better. Moreover, I believe a concept could just as well focus on one place of interaction instead of splitting the focus between two places of interaction. With that said, we're going to discuss this in further detail on Friday's meeting and might end up with a different concept by the end of this week.

General Thoughts

I found that most presentations were, for the most part, within the requirements of the brief, with a few exceptions. Most concepts had minor issues only which I think is natural at this stage of the development as ideas are still rough and unrefined. However, there was a lot of potential and creativity in the various concepts pitched. My only concern is the feasibility of many of the presented ideas. It is nice to see the ambitions and dreams of a finished concept, but I do believe several teams will soon find it more difficult to create than what they initially assumed. Especially those who seek to measure emotions in one way or another. It is definitely going to be interesting to see how the various team will prototype their concepts and see the concepts evolve as we move forward in the course.

My feedback

Fire safety using audiometrics

Consider how it can be made accessible to the elderly given that the concept users AR technology. Some people might find it difficult to use and navigate through a phone screen.

Could probably be easier if used with AR glasses instead of a phone as it will react to body movement instead of having to point a device around.

In terms of immersion, I would argue that VR is a better option as AR lacks the same sense of depth. If that is important to the concept that is.

EMS – enhanced mundane spaces

You could consider AR to open up for multi-room play/inclusion.

Consider using different sound effects for each household tool and how they all could be different games that support one core gameplay.

Team Zoomista

Could you use a combination of a touch interface and body as a controller to make it even more interactive?

The Nagging Cushion

Will the user actually have to carry the pillow? This seems like an additional hurdle to overcome to use the pillow instead of just having a 'away from pillow' timer and general trust of users

Team Garfunkel

How will users be able to distinguish between which item makes what sounds. Given that music is a combination of several tones it would be nice to distinguish between various tones on sight, a connection between the sound and the physical item.

Team Twisted

Could this work with only one user? E.g., after having stopped on the yellow colour, you will have to move over the other colours to get to the apply pad. You should consider how people won’t mistakenly activate another colour when walking past other colours.

As a colour-vision impaired user, I would definitely enjoy having something that separates hue, saturation and lightness for me to help me understand what colour it 'actually' is given that many colours can look the same. E.g., use voice, text or icons to further distinguish colour combinations.

Also, as a colour-vision impaired user, I find HSL to be the most helpful way of learning and distinguishing colours.

Lome

Consider using the already developed voice assistant on various phones to be the sound input of your device given that some of these already use AI to understand language and tone. This could also provide users with a sense of control as they have to speak to the phone to activate when the device is actually listening in on conversations.

Ninja Run

Consider how you could use the physical space other than just horizontal block alignment to visualize what happens. E.g., could blocks be stacked on top of each other to visualize the number of times a loop runs?

Consider how you could teach other things too, such as HTML, CSS not only scripting languages or programming languages.

Helping Hand

Could it also help people get into social situations, not only shoo people away?

Bata Skwad

What is the connection between the problem space which talks of device sentience and the concept pitch presenting a maze robot?

How does a robot giving suggestions and ramming into your leg fix the problem of devices not working for you and people not trusting tech.

It sounds like the machine is focused on a really broad set of functionalities; can it be scoped down?

Mobody - Handy Aero 2020

It seems rather similar to leap motion. Could you make use of this existing technology and improve upon it to use other body parts as controllers in addition to hands?

Fitlody

It would be interesting to see if it could work both ways, as in the music adjusting to your actions and you having to exercise according to how the music and floor lights change.

Give me a beat saber version of fitlody.

Team Hedgehog

It could be interesting to have a visualization of your movements after the game finishes.

Could be interesting to use sound to navigate around in a dark room / maze.

Negative Nancies - Energy Saving

Maybe giving Emily ‘human or animal traits could help the users care about the messages it gives.

Half-ice no Sugar - ITSY

What will the various interactions do? E.g., what will an ear twist vs an arm tug mean, and how will this correlate to a specific learning outcome?

Output could be glowing patch, heat, buzzing.

Team Triangle

Is there a timeline where you can build the music sequences using these vials? It’s a nice and creative way of capturing, mixing and playing with music. How would sounds mix? Are there any controls to adjust the volume of each sound, when they enter and exit and so on?

Team 7

Could it be something else than a game or add it as a gamification on top of some mundane task to make it more of an everyday thing?

It would be interesting to explore how to teach people of danger signs, such as teaching users to sense dangers using electro haptic feedback.

Team CDI

Could the elevator take you to the wrong floor if you are performing the incorrect dance move? As in not stopping there for you to walk the rest of the floors but move one floor closer or further away for each successful or unsuccessful dance move.

Think about how dancing in the elevator may impact people who are uncomfortable in the elevator to begin with, that wouldn’t enjoy people jumping up or down.

concept: instead of elevator, use a horizontal escalator such as the ones at the airport. It could be a joined effort to make it move faster and would look like a neat line dance for everyone else watching.

Team Zookeeper

It would be more interesting if questions were difficult to choose between as in would you take a train vs a bus and what ramifications will the various choices have.

Could questions be based on activities in your home so that people become more aware of their choices?

Team Hi-distinction

Could you move away from the screen to make it less similar to consoles with motion sensing? Could boxing output some interesting artwork such as being interpreted as different hues and saturations to colour in an image and hitting certain areas to colour in that area?