Re-Live (Tangible/Interaction design project concept)

This project was a part of “Doing Good“ theme set by SIGCHI (Special Interest Group on Computer–Human Interaction) for the year 2015-2016. This product was designed as an assistive technology. Here the focus was on using set of interaction design methods to achieve such a product.

Overview: Focussed on designing different interaction design methods, by prototyping & building three products bundled that reminds the user (in a very subtle manner) to take short breaks while using either computer screen or phone screen.
There were three different products that were tested & used in this project.

A fitbit sensor (Clipper)

A very basic mobile application

Kubie which was developed using Arduino board and LEDs emitting different patterns of light of different amounts of time

Group: Daniel Delgado, Mikko Honkanen, Yash Todar

Stages

Observations & Context

Creating idea kernel

As a group of three, we started to understand the space of assistive technology before we began. For this we used affinity diagrams to generate ideas, concepts & later brainstorming to develop and choose one of the concepts to work on.We decided to pick certain categories in which we were basing the ideas & concepts under.

The categories where we worked upon were: Disorders, Syndromes, Natural Causes, Medical Conditions, Addictions and Discriminatory Groups.

After initial brainstorming session, we were down with 20 different ideas out of which we selected 10 best ideas based on a mutual agreement scale. These ideas were in the zones of:

App that calculates food nutrition by taking a picture
Smart plate to understand food type and kind
Calorie counter for drinks/food measurement for pregnant women
Behaviour therapy tool for ADD/ADHD patients
Something for people suffering from insomnia and anxiety
Stress/shyness resolver

“Online/Smart Phone Addiction” Was our chosen topic

Several reasons as to why we agreed to focus on this topic was because of the negative effects we identified of users suffering from this addiction.

Although these effects are not easily recognized by users suffering this addiction or do not connect it with online/smartphone addiction; it has been proven in many cases the harmful health effects such as stress , Repetitive Strain Injuries, pain at shoulders, neck, eyes.

Consequently, we were in the process of wanting to come up with a physical/tangible device which will make people aware of their online habits/on-screen time. The idea involved using some visual approach for the prototype which will have a direct effect on the person.

The device would emit a sound, light or animation which would distract the user for some period of time. This would relax them as well as motivate them to take a break/walk/stretch. In the future, this idea could be scaled for anxiety and depression patients as well.

To bring a new angle into the problem statement, we decided to merely, observe, in our KTH library, classrooms and Cafe. We found that, about half of the people were using their mobile phones actively or at least looking at them occasionally.

Key insights:

While not using the phone actively, the people kept their phones on the table & kept looking at them every now and then.
All of the mobile phones were held silent, so people were using them only by looking at the screens or in some cases listening to the buzzing sound of the vibrating phone.
We came to determine that people are attached to their cellphones and also how they use it.
We also spoke with the founder of the Internet Addiction institute so we could arrange a visit to the institute for the later stages.

Our goal was to understand & identify our potential users, which would help us in our user research. We knew this would be an imperatve process & this would be powerful tool to help us build good personas and scenarios.

We got insights that suggested people were not finding a problem by having too much of screen time. They were hinged to their devices and they did not think it was necessary to take breaks. As per research, this could lead to stress, muscle/body pain & RSIs (Repetitive Strain Injury)

We met researchers in online & internet usage who provided us with insights about how long term screen time affects our eyes and could eventually lead to stress. At the end, we decided a tangible prototype, rather than a GUI based software, as a solution and built personas & scenarios around that idea.

As per the affinity diagram that resulted into varied aspects & common variables between different people, which is based on Cooper and Reinemann(2003)’ framework for this study.

In order to create strong personas and profile, we interviewed & visited 5 experts in the field, conducted simple surveys & had further observations.

Because of these activities, we ended up creating three personas (one primary & two secondaries) & scenarios relating to each of them.

For the scenarios, we came up with one scenario per persona, which would let us identify the problem & also give more meaning to the solution that the prototype may provide.

Personas, Storyboarding & Scenarios

Three Scenarios

We constantly had in mind all three of our personas, which is the reason why we decided to create a physical prototype, consisting of two products.

The first one geared toward users that are constantly sitting in front of statically placed screens (office workers, students, etc. who have their office or study room).

The second prototype is geared for users that may not only be working in a sedentary position but also on the move (news reporters, business professionals constantly traveling, etc.)

Sketching/Paper Prototyping

Using several prototypes, grant us the ability to clearly test particular interactions instead of just the overall product idea. For testing the overall product idea we used scenarios.

This way, the prototyping is more efficient and testing results become more plausible. Before testing, it is useful to try to put ourselves into the user's’ context, so that many aspects of the prototype can be improved already before using test users’ precious time.

We started sketching and prototyping with paper and quickly moved to informal evaluations of the paper based prototypes.

In order to test one of the product ideas, we decided to use the methodology described in the lecture about sketching and prototyping, namely using something already existing that has been designed to be used for something different.

Therefore, we used an iStubb, which we could use to simulate the feeling of having a tracker that would alarm the user after a while. This way, we were able to add more functionality into our paper prototype.

With the help of interactive prototyping, we were able to test how users interacted with our prototype, while with sketching and early prototyping, we were not able to evaluate how the users interacted with the prototypes.

Interactive Prototyping

Clipper is a small wearable which has a three way switch, an LED indicator & a vibrating micro-controller. Clipper was designed by keeping in mind the scenario of how some users might have to travel for long hours..

Clipper is portable & hence it would not be a big task to carry it around. The purpose of Clipper is to give timely notifications in the form of vibrations. The number of vibrations and the intensity of the vibration can be changed through the mobile app.

This is the part of the Re-live ecosystem. Using the form factor of iStubb we decided to use it as Clipper and also made few initial sketches to see how it would fit in the user's hand.

We used this device as an evaluation of how our idea would work, since the general purpose of our product would work in a similar matter. This way we were able to add more functionality into our paper prototype.

Kubie (Interactive Prototyping)

Kubie is a prototype, which is mainly designed for the desk area of users. The form factor of Kubie is that of a cube. Kubie has two functions, first of all to display a clock timer and secondly to gradually/softly change the colour of the cube itself when it detects that the user has been sitting for too long in front of the screen.

Kubie will be connected to the desktop & will take data like keyboard & mouse input to determine if the user is using the computer. In addition, Kubie will change the colours as per the time the user has spent in front of the screen usage. It's a smart device that detects if the user is watching a movie or playing a video or browsing the internet.

As kubie only displays visualizations of colour, its discrete & does not mean to get in the way of user's concentration while working.

I built an advanced version of the paper prototype using some physical hardware like Arduino and LEDs. This was an advantage because it gave us the power to test certain functionalities which were not possible to test with paper prototype. For example. testing the correct light intensity of Kubie was not possible with a simple paper prototype, but with the help of an Arduino board we were able to test different light intensity level.

In the end we figured out that having a bundled product would workout best for our prototypes since it would be able to cover the needs for our created personas in each of their scenarios. We were pleased by the outcome, since we could try out different mediums for prototyping, like in Houde and Hill (1997) & didn’t have to focus only on drawing screens for a screen based application.

Testing & Evaluations

The evaluation in general plays a crucial role in developing the prototype to its full potential or further versions. Its also important to understand what part of the system or the design has to be evaluated first.

Evaluations give out information about the functionality, what the user thinks of the system who is unknown to the system by which the designer gets to understand the other flaws in the system or the design.

In our case, the final evaluation provided is with the feedback that people could use the product. We also got to know which aspects of the prototypes to improve.

Using several prototypes, grant us the ability to clearly test particular interactions instead of just the overall product idea. For testing the overall product idea we used scenarios.

Naturally, when using the actual platform that the final product is going to be using, like for example, a mobile device, the native interactions on that particular platform could be tested.

In these cases, the test users would also focus more on the visual representation of the application. A low-fi prototype instead could be used to test the overall concept of the product. This was also the case for us, when first testing a paper based prototype of the mobile application & later on moving to an electronic version.

Further observations

A major disadvantage of interactive prototyping compared to sketching and early prototyping is that it takes much more time to make changes to the prototypes, especially if the changes are bigger or concern the more general concept of the prototype.

For interactive prototypes, making small changes to some parameters can be very fast, which is again why interactive prototypes should be develop with one testing aspect in mind, like in Houde and Hill (1997). For example, varying the light intensity based on user feedback between evaluations was easy using the Arduino board.

Getting a good sample size to evaluate the prototype is always an advantage. It also helps to have a good number of iterations and design improvements after every certain amount of people give their feedback about the previous prototype.

Its also important to get users early on while testing because the earlier the system is evaluated, the more mistakes or usability issues can be solved. For our next project, we will make sure that we find relevant test users as early as possible, so that testing can be done early and possible during each phase of the design process.

More about the evaluation phase

6 user tests + 1 demo + pilot test Tasks

Set the timer in the mobile application to 3 minutes.
Set the vibration intensity of Clipper to medium
Watch a video online
Set of questions regarding light intensity and vibration level, errors, optimal path

How well do the prototypes fulfill their purpose of reminding the users in a subtle way to take a breaks when doing screen based work?

Research questions specific to Kubie

Is the light level of the Kubie prototype visible enough?
Does the participant notice the different light intensity levels?

Research questions specific to Clipper

How well does vibration work for Clipper?
Do all users notice it?

Light Intensity of Kubie

Mobile Application

Clipper Vibrations

Overall: Positive Feedback

Discussions

The designer has to take decisions and make sure the selected method is appropriate for that user, product or design even. It requires self judgement and critical analysis as this is an important toolbox. We chose to first observe live people in number of places like library, bus stops, classrooms and other places. This gave us some motivation about how people are so connected with their gadgets (phones, laptops, tablets, ipods, etc) and there is not much of talking that goes on when people are in front of each other when using mobile phones for example.

As we evaluated the system, one of the feedback given to us by our professors stated that, it's not always important to evaluate all the interactions in a prototype but can evaluate one interaction with several key aspects & design variations to see its output and usability.

As the course was designed in a way that all the process and methods had to be done in very short span of time, several of the methods were not able to be used completely or as effectively as we would've liked to. One suggestion that could be implemented in this course is to evaluate the systems or designs of other peer groups, which might be useful in understanding how other teams used different or similar methods to reach their goals.

We ended up with pretty obvious facts about people having too much screen time, even though we made quite a round different topics at first as we chose a different idea than the initial, but in accordance to the topic in mind, which might have been an interesting design decision, we thought that coming up with something completely new could enhance our creative abilities & innovativeness.

The working process doesn’t have to start with a ready problem statement, but rather with a focus on figuring out what the real problem is.

We believe that this is a major advantage of the interaction design methods, if used correctly, they guide the design process towards the correct solutions.

Our main issue was that the problem area was hard to observe, which is why we couldn’t start our design process based on observations.

Conclusion

Screen time can have a harmful effect on humans after long periods of use.
Majority of users not aware of time spent online.
Users rarely take (conscious) breaks while on screen use.

Our final prototype can be seen as a tool to make users aware of their screen (computer, smart phone, television, tablet, etc.) time use, which we can identify as an up and coming problem to users eyes and personal health.

Our tangible prototypes provides a creative solution for users not only to become aware of their screen time use but also to be able to set subtle messages/notifications that would inform users to take short breaks in between their screen time use.

This way, users will not only become aware of time spent online but also give their bodies a break, after long periods of being in a sedentary position.

Our end goal is that by making users aware of their screen time, they will voluntarily try and reduce their amount spent online.

Learning outcomes: Interaction Design, Interactive Prototyping, Screen Time & Effects, Observations/Contextual Observations