For the midterm project, I and my partner did not first come with up the device we wanted to make and then think about what use it may serve. Instead, we first met and discussed the problems we see in real life. Among all the other crazy ideas that solve trivial problems in life such as a machine that spares your hands and helps you take potato chips out from the Pringles tube when typing and all the other ideas of the same sort, we chose to focus on a social problem because it would make more difference. We both agreed that people nowadays care so much about their digital lives and images that they are starting to drift away from what really matters, which is their relationship and interaction with friends and relatives around them. I told my partner what I saw the other day in a restaurant. The young other is taking her little girls, who obviously just got off her ballet class because she is still in a yarn skirt and ballet shoes. They had a tableful of food, and the girl tried to talk to her mom for like a dozen times but every time she responded with a short sentence which consists of less than 10 words. The girl seemed so sad and I imagined her as a child whose parents are too busy for work on weekdays, and she is dumped to extra-curriculum and tutoring centers on weekends. No matter what the mother had to deal with on her phone, I just wished she could spend more time talking to her daughter, perhaps about how her ballet class has been. After telling this story, we decided we could work on the idea of shifting people’s focus from their phones to something else. We first gave the device a setting: in a restaurant having a meal with friends. Then, we came up with this idea of building a plate that takes away your food if you are looking at your phone. The best way for us to realize this idea is to let people put down their phones onto the device and then we detect whether the phone is there.
After deciding on the problem that we want to address, we started idealizing. We figured the plate should look like a lunchbox because we need to put in a whole set of electronic parts to make it movable to deliver food. There were three ideas that stood out and seemed feasible. The first is a drawer that automatically opens when detecting the phone is on it. The second one is a box with a flipping lid that serves food by opening up. And the third one is a car without a ceiling inside a “garage” that can move in and out. Following are three sketches of them. We chose to realize the third one because it is most relevant to the knowledge of rotating motors in both directions that we just learned in class.
The most significant step during the realization of our plan is making the sensor work. At first, I wanted a weight sensor because we can tell with it whether the weight on the box is in the range of the weight of a phone, or 150-220 grams. However, after we looked up online how a weight sensor works, we figured that for the weight sensor to work, we need to build a structure that nails the sensor in between two firm boards, which seemed too much for a lab. Therefore, we decided to opt into a more practical solution with a force-sensitive sensor. Although it is not as precise as a weight sensor, it is at least functional with the right amount of effort. However, although the sensor works by pressing, the value it returns does not change if we put a phone on it. I and my partner thought it is probably because the weight of the phone is not completely held by the sensor, making the pressure applied to it smaller than its detecting threshold. At last, we found that it works well when we attach a panel to a small sponge block and then fix the sponge on FSR to transfer all the force onto the sensor. Another hard step we took is making sure the wheel we laser cut could take the car out. Even though the four motors are all rotating crazily after we gave them 12V power, the car still won’t move. The wheels are spinning without taking the car forward. We tried changing everything from the structure of the circuit to the texture the car runs on but the car still remains where it was. Thanks to a study away senior who shares the same table with us that night (I don’t even know his name) and our instructor Inmi who kindly checked out on us at 7 o’clock in the evening, they thought the friction between the wheel and the table is probably too small to take the car forward. They gave us some precious suggestions. Such as putting some tape around the wheel and make the wheel thicker. Finally, we cut out more cardboard wheels and joined them together to make a four-times-thicker one. And we also explored better solutions for fixing motors onto the car to make sure the power they generated will be conducted entirely to take the car forward.
Since our project is more of a pragmatic one and less fun or artistic, we really want to present a user-centric, easy to use product. We spent much time discussing how we can make people realize the issue it is trying to solve and prompt them to try the device on seeing it. So, we rastered a phone on the detecting panel and wrote down a simple sentence to instruct them, “please place your phone here”. A lot of people walked through us and susceptibility put their phone on the box after reading the instruction. In this process, I think it is the pattern that drew their attention, and the instruction beside it told them exactly what to do. Without either of them, it would fail our intention of making it user-centric. In addition, people’s attitude indicated that they think their phone is something very private and cherished. Therefore, some will feel insecure if they are not well informed of what this device does and what it gets from their phone. In this case, assuring their security and privacy while timely informing them the idea of our product is critical, especially if we want to add more features such as phone charger that involves physically engaging their phones. There are also users suggesting that this design can be used in other settings such as a shoebox. Whenever the box detects someone is getting close, it opens. When that person walks away, it closes up. I think this is another great application of the device.
Looking back to the problem we wanted to solve after we finished the whole device and made significant changes comparing to our original ideation, I think we tried to solve the problem in our own way. We received critiques saying that “forcing” people out of their phones is passive and it won’t encourage anything. I think this is a great angle of seeing things since we approached the design process from possible solutions to an existing problem, but she sees the problem from its root. I think this will be a great mindset for my future designs so that I won’t constrain myself in what is already problematic. Moreover, I realized in doing this project that there are tons of details even in the simplest electronic devices. We built a device that only does two things: get out and get in, but there are already hundreds of details to be tackled. The whole thing will break down even if one of them is working weirdly. But a designer can’t possibly know what will come up during the ideation stage, for example, we never thought that we couldn’t work with the weight sensor until we actually got one. One takeaway from developing this device is that when such problems occur, not only should I think about technical solutions but also open my eyes and explore other possibilities and alternatives because there is not a definite answer when developing a product. You always need to try one in order to tell whether it is compatible with the rest of the idea in realizing the original goal. Moreover, I think that interactive devices are not only about technology and edgy electronic components. Instead, it involves solving a problem creatively in the simplest way. And a designer should always think about what an audience/a user wants as well as the bigger problem he/she is trying to solve. While building the product, I can also reflect on the problem again to check whether my original view on it is comprehensive or not, just like this time I noticed that probably a better way to engage people with people around them is trying to facilitate a meaningful conversation instead of denying the existence of phones. Carrying out a solution to a problem gives us a deeper insight, and it is not only the users who benefit from a great device developed.