Week 16 - Final Presentations of our interaction concepts

So the day has finally arrived! Final concept presentations of DNB601 Industrial Design 6...

Once again we had the special guests of staff from the LifeTec to sit in on the presentations and offer their opinions regarding our designs and our considerations of Universal Design and designing for the limited user. 

Our group presented 11th of the list, and although it took sometime to come around, I feel our presentation was prepared, informative and concise. The feedback from the tutors was interesting and helped shed some light on what we achieved and how it was interpreted. 

Leo was impressed that although we werent able to get the software working precicely as we wanted it too, that we still understood what it was we were intending to deliver and convey, and that the technological features of the design had the potential to be refined and made possible with the help of professionals in the appropriate field of coding and software programming.

Yasu pointed our a minor issue regarding the network on which our concept would work off, this network we understood would be one for GSP tracking, and in later design and development would be implemented into the Syncing Hubs and potentially run on its own frequency based network. Although the details werent there regarding this hiccup it was still easy to understand the designs intentions and see the progression the product could take with more time and further development and research. 

The LifeTec staff member present noted that she thought the height of the hub wouldn't allow someone in a wheelchair to sync the wristband like others would be able to, but we assured her that not only were limited users considered when designing the height of the syncing hub, but that by allowing the hub to be used by the 1st percentile female meant that individuals in a wheelchair could still access the facility. But alternatively, the other method of syncing individuals into a group (the individual method) could account for this potential problem, still making the product useable for the limited user. She also expressed how she liked the design and the issue it aimed to solve as she believed the problem was a good one to try and fix and that she had experienced the exact pr problems stated in context herself. 

Marianella pointed out some valuable observations of how she understood the need for the project, and the interactions it provided and how they were relevant and necessary. She also stated how initially with the mention of wristband she was a bit skeptical as to its purpose due to the fact of how many people seem to use a wristband within this project to try and resolve their issue and produce their concept. She stated that the way we utilized the wristband made it an necessary and successful inclusion to the overall concept. Steve mentioned how we chose the wristband as a result of design exploration and consideration and how we didnt try to fit our design and concept around the need to have a wristband. This point again reinforced Marianella's thoughts and I think she took this on board and appreciated the comments intentions.

Unfortunately Carolyn left before we could recieve any verbal feedback from her, it would have been good to know her thoughts on our end result as she had her input in our conceptual designs and considerations earlier in the design phase.

Overall the presentations were interesting to see what end designs and concepts each group ended up with. There were some great incorporations of the arudino and some wonderful models produced by the groups. 

Below are some images taken of a few of the presentations from todays class;

Today was a good experience and definately provided more insight into how interactive design can be interpreted and applied to various products, contexts and users. And it definately shows how much more as Industrial Design students there is to learn about the functionality of interactive technology and what it can do for the design world. 

Interaction design is a very interesting topic within the world of design and this subject has definately ignited an interest into the possibilities and potential it has to offer, safe to say some extra external research and product searching might be in stall this summer holidays.

Needless to say my group members were a joy to work with, their passiona commitment and various skill sets brought collaboration alive and made our product and final presentation possible.

So thank-you Steve, Joey and Hannah, and thank-you Marianella, Leo and Yasu. To everyone else, as always its been a pleasure sharing semester antics with you all and its safe to say this has been fun semester and I look forward to the potential 4th year has.

This concludes the DEB601 Industrial Design Blog entries. 

Kindest Regards,

Charlie Knowles

N7503512

Week 15 - Presentation Boards and Bubble Machine ahead of Week 16!

Below are our groups 2xA2 Presentation Boards, as produced by Joey and Steve with influences from Hannah and myself. However the majority of the credit definately has to go to those two for the tireless effort they put into producing these.

Presentation Board #1:

Presentation Board #2: 

A few days out from our presentation I purchased an automatic bubble machine from the local reject shop - we will use this in our presentation to replicate the hubs intentions. Hopefully it will go down well with the tutors and no one will get bubbles in their eyes... ouch.

We are well on track for our presentation on Tuesday. Just the Report, BOMs and Brief left to complete...

Bill of Materials

I Have been working on the Report for a few days now, and thought I would include some information regarding the finalization of our design and concept, so without further a due;

Here is the Bill of Materials for our finished product; 

  

The BOM works off the intended production of 30,000 units of GroupIt Wristbands and 150 units of GroupIt Syncing Hubs.

 

We intend The GroupIt wristbands will be sold to festival goers for an additional $40 per unit ontop of the base ticket price.

Cost to manufacture 30,000 Wristbands = $405,000 AUD

Sale of 30,00 Wristbands @ $40ea = $1,200,000 AUD

Profit margin of 30,000 Wristbands = $795,000 AUD

Cost to manufacture 150 Hubs = $41,000 AUD

Sale of 150 Hubs = $0.00 AUD

Profit marigine of Group-It system including loss of hub manufacturing costs = $754,000 AUD

As shown here, we conclude that the GroupIt system has the potential to be a highly successful business attached to any major event or festival.

Week 15 - Videos

Attached to this blog entry below are our groups finished videos, a massive kudos to Joey and Steve for their wonderful editing skills and added humor to the videos, and a big shout out to Hannah who's headbanging made her look like the biggest of metal fans and a regular concert attendee. hahaha

Video 1: Showing the Interaction Principle; how the user interacts with the product, what behaviour aspects are provided

Video 2: showing the Design Narrative; how the product would be used in context and scenario, and what the scenario/problem was without the product

Week 15 - Model Making and Video Production

Continuing on from the last entry the group turned their attention to our interactive model and videos for the presentation.

Steve had completed his task of drawing up the two products in SolidWorks and images of their form are shown below, including our projects logo of 'bubbles' and the decided name of the product - GroupIt;

This image shows the intended display of the wristband as seen by users

This image shows the shape and form of the Syncing Hub that will be located around the grounds

This image shows the bubble producing components at the top of the product as well as the upper dome that will light up during the syncing process

This image shows the shape and form of the wristband - including the added features of the solo syncing buttons and LED + examples of advertisement used by the respective festivals

From here we set about producing some prototypes and models of the products to show in class come week 16 for the final design and discussing the best materials and methods to produce these products. Unfortunately I had work this evening and I was unable to take part in the model making process.

But fortunately for me, and the group, Hannahs Dad is an Architectural model maker, meaning her home is full of potential raw materials to be used to produce our models, and boy did Hannah do an outstanding job.

Below are images of Hannahs models made from the supplies found/stolen from her dads stock (haha);

Hard at work with some very oily modelling clay trying to achieve a shape for the wristband model

The upper dome with the products logo and name stuck on

The wristbands with the appropriate display screen as designed in Steve's SolidWork files

The hub standing solo in all its beauty and glory - note the scale of the model is 1:1

The beauty of having these models made and to scale was that we could include them in our videos used to explain the user context and scenario as well as the concepts OBS and functionality. 

So, we together we set about filming the Videos on site at QUT KG campus, we decided on a storyboard of events for the film and practiced roughly the intended scripture, before our director Steve set about dictating and controlling the set that would evidently lead to the masterpieces that were out Video Productions. 

Below is an image showing the potential story-boarding of the Videos;

Basic storyboard for the video

Scene acting by us

Director Steve in is typical pose on set

Hannah testing the 'product' before filming commences

After the storyboard and rough scripture were agreed on we started acting while Steve started filming. We did a number of takes across all the scenes to ensure the right shot was captured for our film.

Joey and Steve then went away and began editing the films for the presentation next week. 

After this meeting we each went home with our respective tasks; Joey and Steve would be editing the Videos and the Presentation Boards while Hannah and I tackled the brief and report.

Hub Concept Exploration and Logo!!

I Continued to develop potential designs and concepts for the hub syncing system and trying to include the use of bubbles or something fun along those lines like light and sound. 

Below are images of some of my conceptual drawings;

Still including a hole to place ones wrist through - breaking the barrier initiates the syncing sequence and bubbles are again emitted from the top of the hub station

providing a shading to the individuals as they huddle around the syncing hub. bubble are emitted from the top but are directed outwards so as to avoid possible contact with eyes.

As we had decided the Hub would release bubbles out of the top of the product each time a sync was successful; to keep with the festive surrounding and help keep festival goers in the happiest and most positive moods possible; we decided this aspect of our concepts was one that could lead to our logo.

Getting a little deep in regards to how bubbles can float seamlessly and in any direction, together with their ability to join together and merge into each other while floating lead to the group agreeing bubbles were a great metaphor for our group and were also highly relevant to the festival context and scenario of our project.

Below is an image of our logo as designed by Hannah in InDesign that is the epitome of our concept and its intended interaction properties;

 

Week 15 - Final Designs Definition

This week was a busy week with the group as we looked to lock in our final design requirements and begin our work towards the presentation and final deliverables next week. 

As a group we discussed some major aspects of the both the hub and the wristband that we felt we necessary to ensuring a good interaction with the user through seamless understanding and context and relation to the scenario.

To finalise our hub design we decided that it should be appropriate for the 99^th Percentile male and the 1^st percentile female to ensure a range of users could interact with the product comfortably. With these size considerations in mind it was also decided that although rare at most festival settings there are still a number or limited users who would attend such events, and that in considering this we needed to ensure the measurements used allowed the limited user to also interact with the product easily and comfortably.

We found that the opportune height for the section in which the users place their wrists at to sync the devices was 1200mm from the ground. Now this height allowed the 1^st percentile female and the 99^th percentile female to interact with the product without any strain or discomfort. However, this height wasn’t exactly ideal for the limited user of say someone who is wheelchair bound, the user could still interact with the product but they may need to stretch slightly in order to.

Below are some concepts of our developing Hub design

Hub Shape and form consideration

Further Hub consideration with the inclusion of bubbles and the syncing buttons

 We continued to develop these shape ruling out the need to have individual 'Fist holes' for the user to place their wrists through for the syncing process. We deemed this aspect unnecessary and potentially awkward to interact with as well as difficult to address all size variations while remaining aesthetically please. 

Due to this modification of the syncing section on the hub we looked at more anthropometric data to determine the gab required for the 99th percentile males wrist to fit comfortably in the space in any position. This measurement was found to be 150mm. Applying the modification allows the hub as an object to not only interact better with the user but to also allow a more freeflowing and seamless sequence of use.

below is a conceptual drawing of the new perceived look of the hub;

Ergonomic considerations influenced the shape and form

As the form started to take shape in our heads, in order to progress with the project at hand we decided to move on to the wristbands and the aesthetics of them for context and functionality.

Orginally we had a few basic forms and shape considerations that more or less looked like modified wristwatches. Naturally being design students we wanted to steer away from this simple look and aesthetic and consider more industrial futuristic designs. 

Below are some concepts found online that we used to help influence the shape and form of our wristbands;

The images above provided some much needed inspiration for us to progress with the design and development of the wristbands shape form and display. before we decided on a shape we felt it necessary to lock in the functions and features of the wristband to ensure its relevance to the OBS for this project.

the wristbands main purpose was to display the activity of the fellow wristband users within the synced group. This was to be displayed through the LEDs located on the products display and the actions they were carrying out;

Fast, Frequent flickering of the LED = someone dancing and having fun

Stable, Idle LED light = someone relaxing and chilling

These features were measured by an accelorometer built into the wristband that would read the users movements and output the necessary information to the other wristbands. These features were deemed the most important to display and understand by the group as they best related to the behaviour of the object and its place in the overall scenario of our concept.

Other features the wristband housed was the ability to track a fellow group members location via direction and distance. Distance would be indicated on the screen by the varying changes of the LEDs colour;

RED - Far

Yellow - Medium

Green - Near

The direction of a fellow group member would be indicated on the wristbands display, using a Compass influenced layout, by lighting up an LED on the display relating to the direction they are located. 

Below shows a conceptual image expressing these designs and feature inclusions on a possible interface; 

Features and functions expressed by the wristwatch display

while brainstorming potential needs for other features of the wristband and while looking at the CRA, it was decided we needed to include an actual physical interaction with the wristband to produce an interactive transfer of News. 

One of the ideas discussed was squeezing the product that would cause all other devices synced to the one being squeezed to vibrate. This could be interpreted as sending a mass message, be it an SOS or a predecided meaning by the group before they synced, 

I.e. mass alert = meet up at Grill'd burger stall on site.

Then Steve had a brilliant application; he suggested we provide an alternative method of syncing devices to account for the scenario of a lone group member running into an old friend and wanting them to join their group, or wanting to join their friends group. 

This scenario led to the design of the side buttons located on the edges of the wristband which, when pushed, intiated a solo sync sequence; the users would then touch displays until an extra LED light located on the side of the wristband illuminated a colour to indicate the syncing sequence was complete.

From these group discussions it was agreed we had enough detail and understanding of the hub and wristbands features and functionality, and Steve took it upon himself to begin CADing up the models for us to use in the presentation. Although this did mean Steve was left to predominately design the aesthetics of the product himself; we as a group had full faith and trust that not only were we all on the same page of how it should look and feel, but also that Steve was the best man for the job with his wonderful SolidWorks skills.