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This is a part of a larger project work in IDG4112 Tangible Interaction Design for Health Promotion, where we are tasked with designing and making a tangible and interactive prototype for services that address the problem of social isolation and passivity. Project aim is to strengthen social relations and activities by using the knowledge and practises from Health Promotion.
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Fredrik Veland -
Social pillow/ Social Sofa -
2021
This is a part of a larger project work in IDG4112 Tangible Interaction Design for Health Promotion, where we are tasked with designing and making a tangible and interactive prototype for services that address the problem of social isolation and passivity. Project aim is to strengthen social relations and activities by using the knowledge and practises from Health Promotion.
Fredrik Veland -
Social pillow/ Social Sofa -
2021
Social Sofa is a part of a larger project work in IDG4112 Tangible Interaction Design for Health Promotion, where we are tasked with designing and making a tangible and interactive prototype for services that address the problem of social isolation and passivity. Project aim is to strengthen social relations and activities by using the knowledge and practises from Health Promotion. Our project does this by focusing on verbal and non-verbal communication.This is a sofa/sofapillow that makes people/elderly feel less alone, and more connected, through the use of lights and sensors and communication with twin sofa (A seat in one sofa light up when someone is sitting in a seat in the other sofa/pillow. Possible to communicate with person in other sofa/pillow) To make the final prototype we have used a a variety of methods and techniques, materials and technologies. On the technical side we have an Arduino thats controlls all the sensors and the lights in each pillow. The communiction between the arduinows is handeled by a Rasberry Pi.
Interaction:
Pillow/Social Sofa that makes people feel less alone and more connected trough lights and sensors and communication with twin sofa/pillow. The users interact with the sketch/prototype/project by interacting with the pillow. this coud through eigther sitting on it laying on it or just holding or hugging it. Then the "Twin/other" pillow will light up/glow when somone is sitting in both sofas. Possible to communicate with person in other sofa through verbal communication.
Step 1-2-3:
User Reaserch: The first thing we did in this project, was to conduct a bitt of user reaserch. We did this in the form of conducting 3 interwievs with potential users. This helped by gaving us some ideas about what they liked to do, and tought about social isolation, and how they delt with it currently during the pandemic.
2: Ideation and brainstorming with different gamestorming methods: Next we used the Knowledge we had gained in the interviews to conduct some ideation methods. These included Methods from the Gamestorming book like "Post it-poker". And just general drawing and trying to come up with an idea. we ended up with 3 and selected 1. This one. then we continued brainstorming around that idea until coming up with this idea. We also used a method called "State of the art" in order to se what other products exist in this space today.
3: Sketch a concept: here we sketched our concept and tried to get an idea of how it woud work.
Sketch/draw technical solution: Next we started figuring out how to make our idee on a practical level. As can be seen on the picture bellow we had 2 versions of the technical solution. In the end we ended up going with V2
Making and prototyping the final prototype: The last step was to actually make the prototype itself. For that we used two pillows. We used an Arduino to controll both the light and the sensor in each pillow in order to make it so that when a person is sitting on or holding one pillow the other lights up/glows. The code for the arduino in this project is relativly simple: We have used Arduino seriall communication to send information between the Arduino and the Rassberry Pi. (Rassberry Pi code:https://github.com/Burning-Panda/Interactive-Remote-Touch-Sensor)We are using Server / Client setup because we are running on a local network.One raspberry is running the server.py and the other is running client.py. Optimally we would need another machine to handle the server, and both raspberrys would be clients, but that's a task for another time. Seriall communication is used to make the two Arduino communicate with the Rasberry Pie.
the arduino code works as follows: Depending on if the sensor inside the pillow is activated or not, the arduino sends a different number to the rasberry pi. And if the ardiono recives a spesified number it means that somone is using the other pilllow and the light innside shoud turn on and if it recives a nother number the lights shoud remain off.
