Week 9 – Designing the Object as well as the Experience

This week, we spent our class at Fab lab again. We continued the work with the watch and the human-centered design for our project.

At the first half of our class, we focused on finishing the watch, the one that would detect the curl and twist of the users when they used the watch so that the watch could make sure the users do the exercises as asked. In the previous two classes, we have designed the watch’s surface, laser cut the wood, sewed the strip, and learned the basics of the circuit. In this week’s class, we furthered our understanding of Arduino software. I haven’t done any coding with Arduino since high school, so I still needed some time to get familiar with the software again. Luckily, the main task in class was to understand the sample code and imitate the code rather than write code by ourselves, so it was pretty easy. We first tried some sample codes. After uploading those codes, we saw the effect on the circuit directly. This gave us a better understanding of what the code would do. We first tried the simple “blink” code in which the light bulb would blink. Interestingly, my friend’s light bulb was different from the normal ones, and hers blinked more frequently than that of the rest of us, so we altered the code to adjust for it. We also tested the sample code that would monitor the tilting. After learning the basics of the sample code, we started to build the watch. We first tackled the model itself. By using some zip tools and glue, the watch became stable without using many materials. After making the model, we connected the circuit and uploaded the code written by the staff at the Fab lab. The code would monitor the number of times the user curl and twist the watch. Overall, the watch was not a complicated model to build, yet it was cool to see how we could make something useful to other people with simple tools. Knowing the basics of all those tools that we have been studying for three weeks, we would apply that knowledge in future design.

In the second half of the class, we continued to work on our group project. This time, we adopted the technique of storyboarding. In the process of creating the storyboard, we drew how the users would interact with the design step by step and wrote the key points for each picture. Through this activity, we could have a better understanding of the whole experience the users would encounter. In addition, it made us reflect deeper on the context the design would be used in. One feedback we received was to consider how the user would be introduced to the design and how more people would know about it. After hearing the feedback, I deemed those were important factors to consider because those would help we design a better experience.