Digital Eco System: Clubuddy

The aim of this project was to design a product that would make use of ambient intelligence/ ubiquitous computing to provide a gateway between a user and the digital world in order to aid them in a part of their everyday life. Working in a group of four, with fellow students David Mclaughlin, Leon Pullin and Andrew Taylor, I started by researching some common activities where the user experience could be improved.

Mind Map

 I created a mind map to help generate ideas of scenarios that a user could be in and how a product could be implemented to help solve any problems that could arise. After having a group discussion, drawing from our own student experience so far, we decided to choose a nightclub/ bar scenario to design our product for. Discussion revealed many problems that can occur during a typical student night out in a busy town or particular elements that we found annoying.

Persona

After having a rough idea of the problems we were aiming to solve, we created a persona to allow us to relate to the user and feel empathy in order to focus our thoughts.

Adam Smith is 19 year old student, currently in his 2^nd year of studying Business Management. He is often left with plenty of free time due to his course not requiring many study hours and so he and his flatmates attend sports socials and music events on average 4 times a week. Despite having a strict budget, he finds himself struggling to adhere to it due to the sometimes large amounts of money he spends on a night out. To help with this, he has a job at Urban Outfitters.

During his first year, Adam ran into trouble with a mugger on his way home from a nightclub. After having his phone stolen, he has become very conscious of his safety during and on the way home from a night out. Because of this, he has been looking for a product that could help keep him safer on a night out as well as making it easier to stick to his budget.

Brief

Using the persona as a starting point, we then created a brief. Our brief was to design a product that would help a young adult to enjoy a night out as much as possible whilst keeping safe and not spending too much money. The product should have an active role during all times of the activity whilst remaining unobtrusive.

Concept Generation and Development

I then came up with some initial ideas and used annotated sketches to explain my concepts. I decided that a wristband would be a good method of implementation as it would be easy for a user to wear and would not intrude on their experience whilst they are not interacting with the device.

Another group discussion allowed us to expand on our initial ideas and we decided that a combination of features we came up with independently would best suit our scenario. Combining my wristband concept with David’s key fob idea resulted in a hybrid that could become either depending on the situation. During the day when the user didn’t require the device, it could be clipped onto a key ring and left in a bag or pocket. When the user then went out on a night, the device could be unclipped and wrapped around the wrist.

Here are some more sketches that I did to develop the idea. I focused on the way that the strap could be manufactured/ assembled as well as the aesthetics of the product.

Storyboard

In order to cover all aspects of the user’s nightclub experience and ensure we solved them all effectively, I made rough notes on the series of events that may take place on a typical night out whilst using our product. This helped me to consider every point during the night where the product could benefit the user.

Using the notes as a guide, I then created a storyboard that would demonstrate how the product would be used during the user’s experience in order to communicate the features of the device and design intent.

1.    Adam unclips the device from his key ring which has been in his bag all day and attaches it to his wrist prior to leaving the house for a night out with his friend.

2.    He waits in the queue to a nightclub.

3.    The doorman asks for personal identification to check that Adam is over 18. Adam holds out his wristband, which contains his personal details, and the doorman scans it.

4.    After confirming he is of the legal age, the doorman takes a wireless payment from the wristband for entry to the club.

5.    Adam walks over to the bar and scans his wristband on a touch screen interface to allow him to choose and purchase drinks. Again, contactless payment is implemented to speed up the process of ordering drinks. The barman then prepares the drinks once the payment has been made.

6.    Adam and his friend then collect their drinks from the bar.

7.    After a trip to the toilet, Adam can’t find his friend anywhere in the dark nightclub.

8.    Adam then uses the “Find Friends” feature on his wristband. The wristband then begins to vibrate more and more, the closer he gets to his friend.

9.    Adam then spots his friend and turns off the “Find Friends” feature.

10.  Adam sees that he has a Facebook notification on the screen of his wristband. He then attempts to access it on his phone only to find his battery is empty. Borrowing his friends phone, the wristband automatically and temporarily logs him into Facebook to allow him to access his notification in seconds.

11. At the end of the night, Adam selects the “Call Taxi” feature on the wristband. Using GPS and his personal details, the wristband calls a taxi without Adam having to say a word.

12. The taxi then turns up outside the nightclub to pick Adam and his friend up and take them home.

Following the storyboard, I wrote stage directions in order to direct and film a video that would show a live action representation of the events of Adams night.

In the video, Adam is played by Leon, the doorman by David, the barman by Andrew and Adam’s friend by Lawrence. Making use of an empty classroom, we used simple props such as tables, plastic cups and an iPad to convey the nightclub scenario.



Plastic Fantastic: Introduction

The aim of this project is to design and develop a plastic toy that is educational, engaging and innovative. Whilst the word “toy” usually creates ideas of children playing, adults can also benefit from their use, especially if they are designed to educate. The target market is therefore left open for me to decide.

 After reading the design brief that I was given, I began researching plastics and the way their properties can benefit products and the ways they are manufactured. I also looked at existing educational toys and created a mood board, made up of images of them, in order to gain inspiration. After arranging the various images, I soon recognised some reoccurring styles that were common across the market. These products usually came in the form of a construction toy, a competitive game, a puzzle or something with moving parts that allowed a process to occur during use. The ones aimed at children made use of bright colours and fairly simple yet interesting looking shapes.

I then created a mind map to organise my ideas regarding the theme and style of the product I was to design, using my mood board as a guideline. This allowed me to think about each aspect of the themes and then evaluate them, deciding which would be good ideas. I made another mind map to organise all my research regarding plastics and their benefits.

As toys are most commonly aimed at children, the market is saturated and thinking of a fresh, innovative idea that would be educational and engaging at the same time was incredibly difficult. After a quick Google search of any ideas I had, I soon realised that there were many similar products already out there. It became apparent that if I was to develop an idea similar to an existing product, I would have to work out its weaknesses and improve on the idea effectively or take the idea in a new direction. The market for educational toys aimed at adults is much sparser and so I decided that this is the route I would take as I would have a much better chance of creating something that hadn’t been done before. It would therefore be easier to create a concept that was educational, engaging and innovative.

Using my own experience as inspiration, I thought about things I would like to gain a better understanding of and skills I would like to develop. As an amateur music producer and keyboard player, I immediately thought of music theory. Learning an instrument and the theory behind the music can appear overwhelming and complicated to someone with no past experience of the subject, especially if they decide to take up the hobby later in life. For this reason, many individuals may be put off from starting, despite often wishing they could play along to their favourite songs. For this reason, I have decided to develop a toy that will help adults to independently learn how to play a musical instrument as well as understanding music theory.

Mechanical Dice Roller

For this project, I worked in a group of four to design and make a simple mechanical device. We came up with a product that will roll the two dice, shown in the photos when the handle us turned. The handle is linked to a rack and pinion system that lowers the floor that the dice are sat on down. We removed three teeth from the pinion to allow the floor to pop back up after compressing a spring, when the handle is turned to a certain point. It is this popping action that flips the dice into the air. The acrylic housing on the top of the device prevents the dice from flying off and getting lost. The body of the device was made from hardboard as it could be easily and quickly cut on a guillotine. It provided a sturdy frame to mount the moving parts when glued together.

Smart Phone Concept: Futuristic Idea

This is the first idea I had regarding the phones features. Exploring how the problem of having to pick up and unlock a phone in order to see notifications could be solved, I came up with the idea of a holographic screen. This would project images above the screen, so that they wouor hover in the air, allowing the user to see them without moving. I thought that this would be too advanced for 5 years from now and so I developed the idea into the projector. This would be much more feasible as technology allowing projections has been out for many years and so it would just be a case of miniatirising it and changing the application.

Smart Phone Concept: Self Assessment

In my opinion, the visual side of the project was the most successful as the use of clear, annotated diagrams helped to convey my ideas and explain each of the functions I chose for the phone. I created a range of ideas and then justified the reasons for each with easily understandable paragraphs. Using colour in the sketches and diagrams helped to portray the intent of my designs as it clearly separated the individual parts. I could improve this however, by typing up the annotations, rather than writing them, as this would make them more ledgible. A working model could also have helped to show off the features of the smart phone. I could have done more research into the technology of today in order to gain a better insight into how this may develop in the future, perhaps giving me ideas of how it could be used.

Smart Phone Concept: Ideas and Development

I then created a brainstorm of my initial ideas regarding the possible functions of the smart phone. This was based on solutions to the problems I discovered as well as existing technology.

I created sketches to bring the ideas to life and help me to focus on how I could implement and develop them.

I chose the wrist mounted "watch" phone idea to develop as I believed it had the most potential to be a useful product but then incorporated the other features into it in order to make it more advanced than the current generation of smart phones.

The phone is roughly 5cm by 4cm, which is significantly smaller than current models. This allows the option for it to be attached to a wrist strap in order for it to be work like a watch. This gives the user easy access as they no longer have to take the phone out of their pocket, also freeing up pockets for other items. The phone is held onto the strap by a system of locking pins which can only be unlocked by the user. This is achieved via a fingerprint recognition system which identifies the owner of the phone. This adds to the security of the device as it makes theft more difficult.

The screen projection feature is my solution to the need to pick up and unlock a phone to see notifications. Instead, the use of voice command allows the contents of the screen to be projected onto a nearby wall in mere seconds. This makes it much less effort to check text messages and emails. A benefit of this is the option to change the size of the projection. A large image will allow videos to be watched comfortably without requiring a phone with a large screen. Once the image size is set, in real time the angle of the projection will be adjusted so that the image remains the same size, even if the distance between the device and the wall changes. Likewise if the angle of the device from the wall changes, the projection will adjust so that the image remains parallel with the correct aspect ratio. The projector is located on the top side of the device so that the function still works when the phone is worn on the wrist.

Access to memory cards will be performed wirelessly, meaning that they do not need to be inserted into the device, or be anywhere closer than 10m from it. This means that they can be left in bags or pockets and so do not get lost as easily. Access to the data will be authorised by the fingerprint recognition system, meaning that someone whos fingerprints do not match the ones assigned to the memory card will not be granted access. The use of cloud network storage systems will allow the device to work seamlessly with a home PC, meaning that file access and transfer can occur from anywhere with an internet connection.

The device will be able to work with home appliances such as cookers, washing machines, fridges and heating sytems in order to manage their operation away from home. For example, if the user wanted to turn the heating on before they got home in order to warm the house up, they could set the time and duration for the boiler to come on and the levels of the thermostats. Energy usage and efficiency would also be presented to the user as well as advice on how to save energy by turning off unused devices. A barcode scanning system implemented in the fridge would record the contents, allowing the user to see what food they had so that they could make a shopping list without physically checking the fridge. Suggestions for meals based on the fridge contents would be created and sent to the user if wanted.

Retina scanning would make quick and easy transactions of money for online shopping. Used in conjunction with the fingerprint recognition system, users could purchase goods online without requiring a debit or credit card. Because each individual has a unique retina and fingerprint then fraud would be near impossible and so the system would be much more secure than the current one. This system would take much less time than inputting card numbers and so the user would feel happier about online shopping, especially on their phone.

Smart Phone Concept for Five Years Time

The aim of this project was to design a concept smart phone for use in five years time (2018), taking into account the relevant development of technology and how it could be applied in the form of functions.

I first began by researching common problems that users currently experience in order to understand what aspects of smart phones could be improved or changed, in favour of better usability and functionality. This storyboard highlights the problems I discovered.

1. The annoyance of having to pick up and unlock a phone in order to see a notification such as a text message or email. As this usually happens frequently, this repetitive task can become annoying, leading to the user not bothering to check the notifications until later on.

2. The difficulty of inputting form data due to the text boxes being too small, for example when purchasing items on the internet. Instead, users will often just wait until they get home to use a PC with a larger screen. It is also difficult to read and input card details when on the move or on public transport. This problem means that many people are put off online shopping whilst away from home.

3. Other people can unlock a user’s phone if it is left somewhere and so access personal content without permission. Password protection of course prevents this, but the act of having to type a password or swipe a pattern can be annoying to a user.

4. The majority of smart phones today are not water proof and so if a user goes swimming, they will have to leave it elsewhere. Not only does this mean they can’t access their phone if they want/need to, but the fact it is not with them increases the chance of it getting stolen.

5. Often when users are away from home, they will realize that they need to turn on a home appliance such as the cooker or the heating at a certain time in order to be ready for when they come home. Unless they can contact someone else who is at home then there is nothing they can do about it.