Design Brief
The final project in the course "Connected Objects for Learning and Playing" had the prompt of "Smart Writing Tool." I was tasked with creating a novel writing tool that leverages connected objects.
This was a solo project during COVID and another layer of the challenge was to use readily available sensors and prototype and test in my apartment since shop access was very limited.
01 Material + mechanism exploration
I conducted three different material and mechanism exploration to help me take inventory of what materials I had access to and what I could possibly do with them.
These experiments helped me come up with design criteria and design constraints which helped me ideate.
01 Conductivity test of drawn materials on paper
Graphite powder slurry
Water soluble colored pencil & brush pen
Aluminum compass and graphite stick
02 Hydro-dip
03 Unconventional objects and materials as writing tools
I'd tried hand tools (hammer, screw drivers and hex keys), vegetables (brusel sprouts, potatoes and dill), colored detergent foam, shaved pigments and knives. Some of the results can be seen below.
02 Concept & constraints
Before I went deeper into any of the mechanisms and applications above, I narrowed down the brief for myself by setting a set of guiding questions and design criteria. I usually find that giving myself constraints gives me more control and helps me find some direction while ideating.
The concept became a smart writing tool that writes useful information to its users and people around it.
Guiding questions
What are writing tools for?
Who gets to write and express ideas and who decided on this?
Who is reading/consuming the written materials? Why?
What are ways written materials are recorded and how has it changed throughout history?
Design criteria
The design needs to:
be intuitive
be an enabler for stakeholders
provide new experiences
The use of technology needs to:
create new possibilities
be used to level the playing field
03 First iteration
The first iteration of the design that provides useful information and provides voice was a mood sensing assistant that helps a deaf person navigate a social setting by providing real time mood suggestions.
This smart writing tool, VibeLive, is a device that listens to sounds around it and picks up sounds people make that suggest certain reaction and vibe. It will then display the reaction/vibe using LED pattern and also on a LCD screen. This can help deaf people know more about what's around them and also help anyone monitor a room's mood without having to be physically in the room.
I could also imagine how this could be used in a baby monitor to give adults another layer of information as they monitor babies who might be sleeping in another room.
TOOLS
lcd display
sound
input
sound sensor
output
color changing LED
vibe-Live
04 Second iteration
The second iteration of the concept focused on providing information to the message receivers while giving a voice to a voiceless object. Emotional plushie senses when too much force is being exerted on it and expresses its "feelings" through a LED array. I image this can help cultivate empathy in children.
For young children, they might be very rough with their stuffed animals and toys and this can potentially translate to how they treat real living beings around them. We never want to see children hurting family pets or even pulling on adult's hair with excess force. The Emotional Plushie is designed to teach children that even their stuffed animals can be hurt when they hug/pitch/press too hard on the toy.
TOOLS
8x8 LED matrix
flexible touch sensor passive buzzer
input
output
Emotional Plushie
05 Final Design - Levi's talk show
The final iteration of the concept built on top of the previous 2 iterations. However, the stakeholders have changed. The voice is given to plants and the medium of the writing is on the internet.
Levi's Talk Show was design specifically for my learning cactus, Levi II. I found myself sometimes wonder what my plants would say to me if they can speak. Levi's Talk show a tool that allows plants to talk about how they are doing and their needs. If there's no specific needs, the plant will share other curious information. The talk show gives plants a digital presence on social media (twitter) and allow them to communicate with the world.
There is a need for this design since the internet and social media have become the archives of writings of our day. Humans are already making social media accounts for pets. Plant parents already share plant pictures online but what if plants can be the ones actively sharing?
TOOLS
Temperature module Humidity module
soil moisture sensor
Twitter API
input
ambient humidity
output
randomly generated tweets when plant has no dire need
Stakeholders and personas
The plant
Plant owner
The audience
Prototype
Design diagram
Example output
