Week 14

So we've had our last normal class but today we had a special workshop with Yasu and Leonardo to help us all build our working models. This was a really great resource for all the groups. Not only were they able to supply us with basic bits and pieces of equipment that we might require but they were also really helpful in giving s direction for the arduino part of the project. I think a lot of groups got significant benefit out of this, and many of us would have been lost without this final workshop.

While all this help was available to us, our group has made the decision to attempt to programme as much as we can without assistance. In doing this, our model will be quite simple as to work within the teams basic abilities. We think this is a better way to go about it,  rather than designing a complex circuit with lots of different outputs and inputs and getting Yasu to basically do it all for us. We think our decision will be beneficial to our project and hopefully the markers at the end will appreciate his more.

Today of course we did some help. Leonardo helped simplfy our concept for our working model. From this we cut our plan to use lights. After thinking about it, they were kind of pointless. We had the vibrators to use and so the light and vibrators would be going off at the same time, which really was not a necessary part of our design. From the chat with leo we were able to make a much more easily understood plan of our circuit. We came up with a way to effectively communicate the workings and purpose of our electrical components. 




We will have three push buttons that are each connected to one motor with in each "ball". There will be three motors in each part which have different intensities. Pressing two or three buttons at once will trigger each motor connected. 


This working model we hope will communicate to the class how the two balls are connected. So if one ball moves then the other ball will move. It doesn't work exactly how our design does however i think it expresses the design intent quite clearly. 

Story Board

These story boards show the object, behaviour and scenario step by step. It is however not an effective way of telling the narrative and expressing the emotional experience, which is why we will be doing a video for that. 

To assist in communicating this sequence I will use 2 persona's; Mandy and Emma. 

1. The very first step to the process is a cause. The users firstly need a reason in which to purchase and have a need for our product. 
Mandy is moving out of the share-house she has been living in for the past 4 years with her best friend Emma. Mandy has just graduated and landed her dream job in Sydney. It is very sad for both of the girls to have Mandy move away.

2. Emotions trigger the initial decision to use the product.
Emma feels lonely living in the house without her best friend. She fondly remembers all the great times they used to have. They used to see each other everyday and never got sick of each other. They loved to watch scary movies together on Friday nights, playing in the same netball team and inviting all the girls over for dinner and drinks.

3. An agreement is made to use the product together.
After Mandy's great suggestion to get an InterBall, they both jump onto the Internet and order their products.

4. Within the week both girls have their InterBall's delivered!

5. The girls unpack their new gadget

6. Both users get back onto the website

7. The serial number which they received with their product is entered into the computer system

8. The girls connect their products and sync them. They are now ready to use!

For the Fridge attachment device.

9. The product is simply attached to the fridge door using the suction cap.

10. Emma is having some of the girls over for a small party. This is her first time entertaining by herself without Mandy. She is struggling a bit doing it alone and is not enjoying it as much as she used to with Mandy. Emma struggles to the fridge with her hands full of food and drinks. It was times like this she really needed Mandy around. the two of them in the kitchen used to be great, they were so in-sync with each other. Emma has difficulties getting the door open with Mandy to hold it for her. Then she realises her new InterBall is there. She gives the product a casual kick with her foot and the fridge door opens for her. Emma is very relieved and laughs at the thought of if Mandy had seen her struggle so much.

Over in Sydney Mandy is eating dinner alone. She suddenly sees her InterBall on the fridge light up and begin to hum. She jumps in surprise and then begins to laugh as she imagines poor Mandy trying to entertain all the girls by herself. She feels a little home sick wishing she could be there to help her friend out and enjoy the celebrations. But she loves it when her InterBall is activated when she int expecting it. It gives her a warm feeling, as if for a moment she was with her best friend. It gives her some assurance to be able to know occasionally what Mandy is up to.

 11. The day after the party Emma has a big sleep in and finally wakes up at midday to go and watch some tv. She spreads out on the lounge and unconsciously reaches for the ball sitting on the coffee table and begins to play with it.

Mandy's face lights up as her InterBall begins to move around the carpet widely on it's own accord. She watches as it speeds up and all of a sudden stops, then goes crazy and slows down. Mandy gets such a thrill out of this. She loves being able to see when her friend is playing. Mandy kicks her InterBall a little way. Emma, on the other end gets a shock as her Interball begins to hum and vibrate in her hands. The two friends have a great time playing together and influencing how each other interBalls react.


12. There are future instalment which can be purchased by users. A gradual network of products can be accumulated through time to build up a community of interconnecting, interactive products. The product line is highly complimentary and building the network will enhance the user experience.

Week 13

This week was our last week to be able to talk to all the tutors in a normal tutorial format. I think we had made some good progress since last week. I had done up a good chunk of the storyboard and Georgina had modelled up on the ball on solid works. It was good that we had these things done so we could get some feedback on them, but we are also able to use them for the final presentation so its good to get them done early so that we have less things to worry about closer to the due date.

First off we had a quick chat with Leonardo. We didn't have much to discuss with him  so he left us so we could continue working.

We worked on planning the internal components of the product. The required components are;
Motor
Battery
Off centred weight
LED's

For the lights, Brenden suggested using fibre-optics which I think is a good idea. It's very helpful for our team that Brenden knows a fair bit about this stuff so he can see all the ideas realistically and help us all understand how things work. We managed to spatially plan all the internals to fit within the product (15mm diameter).

After this we went through the planning of each; product, behaviour and scenario, and how we would be communicating these in the final presentation.
Product- Form model, solid works model, technical drawings, BOM
Behaviour-
Scenario-
Here was were I started to get a bit confused. I was having difficulties in separating behaviour and scenario. and i wasn't sure which one my storyboard was communicating. So we went and talked to Marienella and Leonardo. Marienella made things much clearer. They can be communicated in the same format or separately. One of them (now I can't even remember which! scenario or behaviour??) is a step by step process of how the product works. Every single action that must take place in order for it to do what it is meant to do. Where as the other one, (scenario?) is more about the user. Why the product is  important to the user and what impact does it have or what experience it offers. So we have decided to show this one through video. I think this will communicate it much more effectively than images and will be able to capture the experience more.

Summary

This word bank was put together on the internet using the url of this blog. I think it is a great overall idea of how the project has been progressing and shows all of the different things we have been thinking about along the way. It gives a quite broad indication of our scenario, behaviour and object. 

Interactions With Balls

It is interesting to look at the different interactions people have with balls. Each one plays plays a certain role, even if that is to be flexible and adaptable to different styles of usage. Different functions that balls can have are;

-to relive stress  through squeezing and applying pressure

- Specific sports equipment eg. balls to bounce, be hit and to kick

Shapes and materials play a very important part in the functionality of a ball and also work to add a sense of intuitivness.

Ways in which balls can be interated with:

• squeezed
• kicked
• thrown
• bounced
• caught
• spun
• tapped
• pressed
• dribbled
• shoot

Behaviour, Scenario and Object

At the start of the class we had addressed scenario and behaviour. By the end we had a good idea of our object as well! This was the first time through this project that we were actually thinking about a physical product which was good- we're getting some where!

The above diagram is how the scenario works for my team's project.

Week 12

Today we had a look at what we had all done for our 4 concepts. We all agreed that it was very challenging coming up with them. I think we just picked a hard concept to go with. But I think at this stage we need to move on with the concept and start thinking about the more detailed aspects of the project. So even if we don't completely nail the concept part but can do a good job on the technical drawings and presentation then that would be good.


After sharing our concepts amongst the team we all agreed that Brenden's 4 concepts had the most direction and had great linkage between the four products- which no one else's really had.


We spoke to Yasu about it and got some great feedback. He seemed to be quite happy with our progress and suggested instead of trying to design 4 separate products as part of a line, we focus on just two products in depth. This way we can make the designs more thought out and detailed and then just say that they are a part of a family, and more products can be bought and added to the network.

These 2 concepts are the ones we have chosen to move on with and develop further.


This week we spoke with Yasu straight away very early into the tutorial. This was very beneficial for us as we got input to work with straight away rather than waiting around. We decided that after this very valuable talk we would just work from that. In previous weeks we have been getting mixed messages from different people and so getting confused and often going off on the wrong track. So next week we will try and talk to more tutors, but this week i feel like it was a good thing for us to only speak with Yasu.


During the meeting we skyped with Bek as she was sick and unable to come to class. I think this was an effective way of catching her up to our progress. She was able to see drawings to understand what we were talking about and I think different people explaining the concept helps us understand it better. And also to realise effect ways of pitching ideas to make them look good.

We spent the time figuring out some of the "object" related issues. Such as materials and manufacturing. We're still at a very basic stage for this but at least we've started thinking about it. 

What we as a team worked out to be the steps involved in the process  We were able to as a team delegate different tasks to each member which will give us a good start on moving forward and hopefully allow us to have more progress to show for the next week.


Me: story boarding and narrative

Bek: Design brief

Georgina: Start solid working up one of the products

Brenden: Start working on the other product model, and email Yasu our plan for our working model

Once we have a solid works model done for each we can use the 3d printer to get our object model. This I think is the most effect way to do it. It is basically killing two birds with one stone, we have to do solid works models, so we may as well us these models to create our real life form model.