Embracelet

Connecting couples.

(written by Benjamin Eder & Philipp Hauptmann)

The original idea
In the two weeks of the course, our team developed two bracelet prototypes which are supposed to help couples in a long-distance relationship. The basic idea came from an interview of our team member Shao. The question was: Did you ever had a hard situation in your life you had to overcome? 
As a result, Shao told us that he lived in a long-distance relationship and what helped him to overcome this situation. We took his experience and extracted important points. As a result we figured out that small attention gestures like a short message are important key elements. The fact that the partner is thinking about you is more satisfying than the actual content of the message itself. In a brainstorming round we figured out what we can do to strengthen this user experience. We came out with the idea of bracelets which can transfer visual and tactile feedback between each other.  We chose the bracelet because it’s tight to the body and allows subtle interaction.

The story behind – and first decisions
Creating the story board, Shao had in mind, that the bracelet idea also seems to fit in the family context. His story introduces you to Xaver, Leni and their child Schorsch, which are apart a huge time of the day, because Xaver works in night shifts. The basic idea was, that everytime a family member touches the bracelet, all of the others receive visual feedback by their bracelet turning into the color of the sender. Now, when Xaver wants to show that he thinks about Schorsch, Leni receives a feedback, too. This is some kind of a conflicting user experience and results out of the mixture of the different contexts ‘belonging to a group’ and ‘intimate communication’.  In order to create an unique user experience, we decided to focus on only one context.  After discussing in our group and with the help of Martin’s feedback, we settled for the original context of a couple being apart.

Basic elements
That means we’re gonna have only two bracelets, which represent the direct connection between the partners and aim to allow them emotional and physical closeness over spatial distance away. Touching your own bracelet to let your partner’s bracelet glow addresses the emotional side: the bracelet begins to fade and lights up and you know that your partner is thinking about you right now. To enhance the experienced closeness, we decided to add tactile interaction to feel your partners touches physically: stroke above your bracelet and it simulates the touch on the corresponding spot on your partner’s.
After working on the prototype for several days, we achieved every element we wanted to put in the product.

In general, Embracelet offers three modes to interact with your partner.

Mode 1:When one partner feels lonely he or she can tap on the bracelet and both bracelets glow with the sender’s color for a certain period of time. In addition the receiver’s bracelet vibrate on the same position of the sender’s tap. By simulating your partner stroking around your wrist tenderly, this shall strengthen the closeness to each other.
Mode 2: When the receiver taps on his bracelet shortly after it began to glow, both bracelets start vibrating and glowing. The new color differs from the sender’s and receiver’s color by being a mixture of both. This symbolizes the connection of the partners and both know that they are thinking of each other at the same time.
Mode 3: An additional feature is the white color of the bracelet’s LED. When you are getting regionally closer to your partner, Embracelet starts to glow in white, getting more and more intensive the closer you  get to him. That expresses the increasing anticipation you feel when you finally meet your partner again.

Technical Details
For reasons of economy, we developed the pair of bracelets as a master/slave system. One bracelet sends touch gestures, the other one receives the corresponding feedback.
At the first glance, both bracelets look identical. Both have built-in LED Strips. But the difference between sender and receiver is on the inner side: while the sender needs touch sensors to compute the input, the receiver includes vibrating mini motor disks to simulate the partner’s contact. Both bracelets are controlled by / wired to one arduino mega board which manages the software. The final product acts both as a sender and receiver.

Alfons

(Carola Meier)

The second group is called Alfons. It’s a tool, which helps you in difficult situations, like giving a speech, writing a test or other situations, in which you feel uncomfortable and wish to have a loved person next to you, holding your hand. In most of this situations having someone with you isn’t possible, but Alfons won’t let you alone. It’s a little gadget which is held by you and your loved person. It transfers the pressure of the hand to the other person. The loved person is still not there, but you can feel its love and its support. It’s not just in one direction. The stressed person can also push his Alfons and the other person feels it.

Alfons is based on Miriam’s, a course participant, experience. When she had a math or physics test at school, her father learned with her for it and for the test she got a necklet, called Alfons, which look like a cat with a very long neck. Alfons knows a lot about math and physics, like Miriam’s father and was able to help. In the test she hold Alfons and felt the help and support of Alfons and her father. Our group wanted to build a new Alfons with the ability to transport the feeling of holding hands.

Designing and building of Alfons was an iterative process. At first we started to look for a good material, which can be squeezed and gives a good feeling while doing that. We also had to decide how we want to give feedback for pressure. At first we thought we give vibration, but a normal hand doesn’t vibrate. Then we thought about giving pressure to the middle of the hand but finally we decided to push the top and bottom of the hand like a normal handshake.

Position Alfons squeezes the hand

Iterative process of designing Alfons

The next step was to build a software and coordinate the hardware. When searching for hardware I found a swim board, which was the perfect material to build Alfons with. When the software controlled the hardware we had design a cover for Alfons. We thought a lot about it. In the end we hand to different cover. One for adults, one for kids.

The last step was to film the video prototype and to present our product.

Final version of Alfons

keepsake

The Story

Keepsake is based on an experience story by Simon. Simon collects experiences. That is how he started the interview describing his unique way to conserve the little precious Moments in life.

Whenever he encounters a little event that made him happy and kept sticking in his mind, he writes it down in a list. This way, he on the one hand can not forget it and on the other hand is more aware of the little positive things brightening everyday life.

Below you can see the parts of the interview and the resulting experience pattern and storyboard of our idea:

The Idea

After hearing Simon’s story we wanted to create an opportunity for everyone to enjoy it. So we wanted to develop such a list for everyone. The main ideas were kept and some developed during the conception:

• it is a personal thing, so nothing to share in a social network, but only to have for oneself
• the experience in Simon’s case is held very short, so for an entry no more than a title is required
• but as some people might like to store more, you are also able to add a longer description, a photo and audio to preserve the atmosphere around you.
• as it is also about keeping the nice memories in mind we had the idea to automatically save date and location of an event so you can be automatically reminded of it when you are near or if you haven’t heard of it in a while – just as you like

The Concept

Basically for the list of experiences we wanted to use something you always carry around with you anyway and have ready to hand. So we decided to build a mobile app.

As we loved the idea that you are reminded of the experiences as you come closer, we decided to not only make a basic list of them, but keep them also stored in a map. That is why we created two overviews a user can switch between.

To make it possible to create an event very fast and easy we added a textfield at the top of the two views. Here you only have to enter a title of the event to create a new one. Time, date and location are saved automatically. Still it is possible to edit the entry and add new content.

Clicking on an event in the list or map opens up a detailed view of it. Here you can see everything describing the event and the location is automatically shown as address.

If a user likes to add a lot of content to the new event directly it is also possible to go to the detailed form directly. Here some usually automatically filled options (location, date, time and the frequency of appearing reminders) are hidden first and we worked a lot with icons so that a user will not feel forced to fill out the whole form.

In general we wanted to keep the app rather simple as the basic idea won us over with its joyful simplicity.

The Development

To emulate the experience of a user we created not only realised our ideas in a web-app but also created a product video about it you can watch below.

In the end the thought-out design, the video and the web-app all together should illustrate the experience a user could have with our app.

Matchday

(Tobias)

In the course „Praktikum Experience Design“ our team developed a companion app called Matchday. The application motivates two classmates to study for their exams in a competitive way.

The artifacts we created during the steps of the experience design development process are listed below:

• user stories:The Contest & Matchday
• storyboards: story I & story II
•  mockups: Matchday wireframes

We got the idea for Matchday while interviewing one of the participants of this course. We were asking if he ever had to overcome his own self. He described a competition between him and a friend. They wanted do more running. They decided to run 50km each in a specific time period. The one who first reaches the 50km will win. He told us that he does not wanted to lose against his friend and that the competition motivated him to go out and do some running.

We extracted the important key facts which build the core of the described experience:

• two opponents which compete
• increasing motivation through competition
• track own progress
• fixed goal

We took these key facts and transferred it in another context and expanded it. We thought about students who study for their exams. Many students have the problem that they procrastinate during the exam period instead of preparing for their important exams.

The results of the transfer:

• two opponents > compare learning progress
• competition > motivates to study
• own progress > overview of learned content
• fixed goal > pass the exam
• limited interaction with opponent > no distraction while studying
• keep up concentration > block distracting content
• show activity status from opponent > supports competition
• competition between friends > mutual help

In the following video prototype you find an implementation of the just mentioned results.

https://vimeo.com/123778622

Schokobox

(Carina)

During the two weeks our group designed a box called “Schokobox” which help two friends through the Lenten fast and encourage their connectivity. But how do we get to such an idea? The idea is based on an interview with the topic: Have you ever been in the situation to overbeat your weaker self?

The important points we took out of this experience were:

• First to have a concrete start and end date. You start and end together with your friend.
• During the Lenten fast you have someone who understand your problems and can motivate you and the other way around.
• After the previously arranged time of abstinence you and your friend get the gratification and both are very proud of each other.

With this background we want to conserve such an experience and encourage the psychological need of connectivity with a product. We designed the “Schokobox”.

In our Story the two friends decide to abstain from chocolate and other sweets. First they determine the start and end date. Each of them has an own “Schokobox” at home and a special button carrying with them. As a last act, before the abstinence starts each of them puts some favorite chocolate in their box. The chocolate waits until the time is over. During the abstinence you can see on the top of the box a timeline. It shows the progress of the actual day, how many days you have managed and how many days are left. When someone has trouble to resist and feels bad, he can push the special button to communicate his feelings. When you push the button down a circle starts growing and changes the color from blue over pink to red. The period of time you push controls the size and color which symbolize your size of dissatisfaction. Such an event appears on the box symbolized with a circle in the same color and size at the actual day. The circle appears on your own box and on the box of your friend and disappears after some hours depending on the size. When the circle disappears a marker in the same color is left on the timeline to show the event. For us it was not important to show who of them had trouble to minimize the feeling of a competition. During the abstinence you can fill your box with sweets you aren’t allowed to eat. When the time is over the box opens and you get your gratification.

The “Schokobox” makes the Lenten fast not only easier.  It turns the time to a special event for you and your friend.

For more impressions of our “Schokobox” just look our product video: