Week 1: in-class activity /Gabriela N./

My team (Team 3) designed a product for Fellow Nick whose main issue is that he always checks his phone while being in bed. In the interview, Nick mentions that he would like to spend less time on his phone as he currently needs one additional external battery to make sure his phone will not die during the day. So, at the beginning of the session, my team reached a conclusion that we needed to design a product which would prevent Nick from becoming increasingly addicted to his late-night phone use. Therefore, we decided to create a personalized product aiming to help Nick unlearn checking for updates in bed. “Nick’s box,” as we called it, constitutes of an AI robot (robot because Nick is a huge fan of robots) which guards a box where Nick is supposed to place his phone before bed to charge it. If Nick decides that he wants his phone, he needs to ask for permission providing the robot with a reason. The robot, being an AI, assesses the extent to which such phone use is necessary and may provide a sassy response reminding Nick about the pointlessness of his decision to browse in bed. On the other hand, if Nick needs to use his phone due to an emergency, the box is going to open instantly. Of course, this is just a prototype but, if such a project was to come to life, it would be imperative to make sure that the user would have immediate phone access in case of an emergency.

Nick could also place the robot guarding the box in a different room. This would discourage him from checking on updates often as he would need to get up and walk to another room to fetch the phone.

Leave a Reply