My Reflective Journal

Summary!

Finally! Our project is over and I can frankly say that we had one of the best concepts and one of the best prototypes in our class. People had so much fun during our testing sessions and we got really good feedback from our colleagues and teachers.

I am really glad that we had a chance to simulate the design process this year. I learned a lot:

- that iterations are not only necessary, but encouraged,

- that designing is a complex process, not just a genius thought appearing in your mind,

- that asking people, research and user testing are mostly crucial, but sometimes can be misleading,

- that even a brick can be a prototype (according to “What do prototypes prototype?” by Houde and Hill),

- that you should trust your judgement and trust the process,

- that even if you don’t know what you are doing, you have to keep going and it will all be clear soon,

- that group work may be hard, but there is no chance to develop a good concept, nor a good product by working on our own,

- that I will meet a lot of different people, with whom I will have to work with and you always have to try to get along, because it is worth trying,

- that you don’t have to know everything and you must find your place in a design process and design group to get the best of your skills and experience.

This was a great experience and I am a little bit sad that it is over, but I am hoping that I will be a part of a design process not once and not twice in the future.

We decided to call our concept ‘Shake my leaves’ and this is the link to our final presentation.

This week we finish our work on this project. We got some good feedback on Monday coaching session. We also obtained answers to the questions that were bothering us and we are getting back to work. We planned our week in detail, hoping for the best outcome.

Wednesday, 17.03

Oh, what a day! We met at the uni with a few other groups to cross-test our prototypes and concepts. This was so much fun. This time, we prepared very well for the user testing and we got very decent and detailed results. It turned out, that testers are very hesitant when it comes to the meaning of our plant’s movements - whether it needs water or not. When the plant was launching the alert mode, meaning starting interaction with shaking to show that it urgently needs watering, testers tended to more hear the shaking plant than see it, so this is definitely the thing that requires more research. Last but not least, the short movement while watering, seemed as a clear indication to stop watering and all the testers agreed on this one.

This time, we chose a nicer pot to care about our testers’ experience and we arranged the circumstances properly. I was launching proper plant’s movements on my computer, using the interface with buttons, that Sanna created just for user testing. As previously, we connected everything using Johnny Five and Arduino.

Just for fun, we also managed to use our handtrack.js API exactly as the last time, except this time, we connected a portable computer camera and placed it on the rim of the pot. This solution allowed to track hand movements of anyone who comes up to the plant and also created a nicer and more efficient experience prototyping possibilities.

Friday, 19.03

Today we were recording videos for our final presentation. Our inspiration was the video prototype we did before, except we instead of fishing lines, we used our Arduino/Johnny Five prototype and decided to divide our concept and create a single video for each aspect of it:

Person starting an interaction

To check on how the plant is doing, the person starts the interaction by waving their hand.

Plant replying

As a feedback, a plant shows its state regarding its water needs, using two different optional movements.

Feedback when watering

While a user is watering a plant, it will make a short shaking motion to show that it has gotten enough water. 

Plant starting an interaction

The plant starts an interaction by moving itself to alert a user that  it urgently needs water.

While me and Patrycja were recording videos, Sanna and Carlo were working on our final presentation. We also had coaching with Johannes and we got some good feedback. We know that we are on the right tracks and we keep it simple: we show how it works, what was the process, what insights we got and what we need to know more about.

Link to final presentation videos.

I really liked the coaching this week. We had some time alone wit our teachers and could focus 100% on our project and their feedback. It seems like we have everything sorted out and we are definitely on the right tracks with our project.

Next step is to find a way to connect handtrack.js, Johnny Five and Arduino. Sanna is figuring it out as one of her API examples, since she is the best at programming. She also wrote down some scenarios, situations and questions for our user testing session, which me, Carlo and Patrycja, will be conducting on Wednesday.

Wednesday, 10.03

Today in the school workshop, we managed to successfully launch our prototype, using the handtrack.js API. We connected it through Johnny Five and Arduino, so if you wave at the laptop and camera detects your hand, the plant would start moving. We had three optional movements and if we wanted to use of those, we had to comment our the other two in the code. We were very proud of ourselves, however, the API didn’t work as well as we expected it to. It couldn’t detect hands effectively and sometimes it detected hands in other objects, so it launched movements randomly. We asked three people to try out our prototype and asked them about their feelings and experience, but we felt like it was not going in the right direction. We figured out that we have a lot to think through before the final user testing and also, we started wondering if we really should use the API to conduct the tests.

Video from user testing

API examples

This week, I also finished with my API examples. My first example, which I extended to prototype, is based on Victor Dibia's code: https://codepen.io/victordibia/pen/RdWbEY. I misunderstood the assignments directives and didn't copy it before extending it to the Prototype, so I added the Prototype folder afterwards and made some slight changes. I added a video of a shaking plant and made it play when a hand is detected by the API.

I had a lot of doubts about it. I didn’t know if the thing I would do, could even be called a prototype. But after reading “The anatomy of prototypes” by Lim, Stolterman and Teneberg, I learned a lot about what we can actually call a prototype and that prototypes differ when it comes to material, resolution and scope. And since I am not aiming to actually test anything with it, I can definitely call it a prototype and... it is my call ;)

My second example detects the hand position and logs it in the right column. I made some changes to the original code: https://codepen.io/md-azeem/pen/xxEZbrz.

I had fun with the API assignment and I didn’t find it very hard. We had time and strength to focus on our project too and I have an impression that other groups kind of ditched the main project for the sake of API Lab.

Link to our GitHub

The rest of the week went quick and it was all about our API presentation. During coaching, we showed Peter what we had and he was very excited about the hand tracking we used and the physical prototype we have built. We know that we are on the right track with the API assignment, but still, we doubt we are going to use it in our final prototype and user testing.

API Presentation

This week we continued work with our API of choice and also we started to build prototypes for user testing.

Wednesday, 3.03

We were a bit confused after our coaching, but it turned out, that we were not the only ones. There has been some kind of incomprehension between our teachers - Peter told us that our API doesn’t have to be used in our main project in the end, while Johannes and Clint insisted that it should complement it.

We decided that we will move on wit our API examples individually and also, after a long discussion due to a severe disagreement in our group, I started to work on the prototype. Building experience prototypes and finding users for testing are requirements from our Project Guide, however Sanna wanted to focus mainly on API. A big confusion exploded, especially after we talked to Taner, and finally, me, Carlo and Patrycja decided to meet on Friday in MAU workshop to start building.

We really wanted to use electronics, as suggested in the Project Guide, but we didn’t know if we would manage to do that as we are not that great with Arduino and programming. We went with “what the hell, let’s try it, in the worst case we will end up with fishing lines again” ;) I started thinking about how to use a servo motor to sway a pot and did some brainstorming with my sambo and then sketched the best ideas.

Next, I asked for some help with 3D modelling and I printed the device.

We assembled it and attached the servo motor.

With such a device, the only thing that was left was to program the Arduino during our Friday meeting. I found it quite difficult, because I couldn’t figure out where is the arm’s starting position, but with a bit of meticulous analysis and luck, it turned out to work. What is more important, we aimed for swaying (plant’s good mood), but I managed to fake this kind of vibrating motion which seems like a perfect indicator of plant’s bad mood.

VIDEOS:

Angry movement and Happy movement

We are very satisfied with our job so far. Now we need to recruit some people for testing on Wednesday and implement the API.

Lecture, 04.03

This week we had our exam and were presented to API assignment.

We presented our final concept to the teachers and got pretty good feedback. The only thing I remember seemed to be doubtful was why we presented a slide, which included a description of our concept works. We put the slide right before our video prototype and it explained all the features of our concept. Teachers couldn’t understand why we did that and we responded that this was a requirement in our Project Guide. We were asked if my doubt that our video explains the concept and its features, which we didn’t. Johannes drilled the topic for a really long time and that was the moment I thought that hopefully, this is the only actual criticism he has in mind right now ;)

Our presentation can be found here.

API Lab

Later this week we were introduced to APIs and API assignment. The term API ringed a bell for me before, but I didn’t really know what an API was. Two weeks before that we were introduced to GitHub and terminal, but it seemed surrealistic to me - I didn’t understand it even after watching Coding Train Tutorials. The  Eloquent JavaScript, Ch. 11, Asynchronous Programming seemed like black magic to me. I even had thoughts that maybe I don’t really know English, because I was reading the sentences one by one, but didn’t understand a thing.

I had fun reading two other papers: “The computer for the 21st century” by Bill Weiser was a little bit like a look into the past. The author in this article written in 1991 is trying to predict how people would coexist with computers in the future and to some extent, most of his predictions is pretty accurate.

In “Radical Atoms” by Hirosi Ishii et al., the authors are taking a look into the future? Or are they? The proove to the readers that the future is now and the things we cannot even dream of are happening, evolving and being developed right now.

Finally, we were introduced to our API assignment.

Since then our work started to revolve around which API should we choose and how to use GitHub. We settled that any API doesn’t really add anything to our project. We really wanted to go with Johnny Five, as we can and should use sensors in our project, but it turned out we couldn’t use, because it would be used during following workshops. We needed a lot of guidance on that and finally we decided to use the API that is the most relevant to our project - handtrack.js. We thought that maybe instead of using a proximity sensor, we could use hand detection and this might be just a branch of our project as we don’t know if we’re gonna end up using the API instead of the sensor. So, our API is chosen and mainly for the sake of the API assignment.

During our crit on Monday this week, we got the advice to stick to the motion and develop this idea according to the insights from our interviews. The Milestone 2 is approaching fast and we really need to make a decision what movement would be optimal for us, our users and the plant.

We decided that we won’t specify any narrow target group - our product is suitable for all the people who feel like connecting more and caring more for their plants and since the movement is crucial in this concept, they shouldn’t be afraid of their plants moving. At the same time, we aim for a natural, almost windy-like rustling of leaves, so this kind of movement neither is disturbing for a user, nor should hurt a plant.

We also figured out that the most optimal solution would be to create a moving pot - a plant’s stem wouldn’t get hurt while prototyping and on the other hand, we still can effectively create a specific and explicit motion.

Video Prototyping Workshop

Tuesday’s workshop was very useful - we were acknowledged with some techniques and tips regarding video making, but what is most important, it speeded up our decision-making. We started to share our visions of how our video and particular scenes should look like. We got to know our limits and possibilities and that was when I started wondering if we are not complicating things and exaggerating a little bit with the functions of our concept. Using different types of plant’s movements for communication would not only make it more difficult for a user to distinguish between them and memorize what they  mean, but also it will be more difficult for us to prototype the movements. I started the process of implementing this idea within our group.

After a long talk, we decided to stick to one type of motion, swaying, but with changing speed. We left this idea to sink in until Wednesday:

Happy state (slow movement)

Sad state (medium movement)

Alert state (very intense movement)

We also started writing down what situations we are about to show in our video. They have to be very explicit to specifically show the functions, possibilities and values our product has to offer.

We also agreed on the value that our product would hold for its users:

An owner of a plant gets to know plant's needs and mood and receives feedback from a plant. It develops a relationship between them. A plant draws a user's attention, so it is less likely for a user to forget about watering it.

= PLANTS ARE BEING TAKEN CARE OF AND USERS THINK OF THEMSELVES AS BETTER PLANT OWNERS

Engaging Others Workshop

I found the workshop very interesting, because we were working on each others’ projects. We could get familiar with what other groups are preparing and it was insanely interesting to listen to their insights about our project. The other group (7) gave us some nice ideas about how to prototype the experience of using our product and I believe we helped them a bit, too. I think the workshop left us with a pretty decent script for our experience prototype!

Wednesday, 17.02

Today we were playing scriptwriters and we started writing down and sketching the scenes for our prototyping video. As we learned on the workshop, we wanted to make an experience of using our product very feasible to an audience, without using narration, text or any vocabular explanation whatsoever. We also needed to stick to the time limit of 2 minutes, aiming for 1 minute or a little more in total. We had a lot of ideas and the work went very smooth. Some people had problem with the time limit, but for me it was convenient. I must admit I like to know my limits as much as I like to know my potentialities.

These are the scenes I sketched on our Miro board. They were very helpful while making our video and they were crucial when we were starting to record the scenes.

Friday, 19.02

Today we met at school to finally do some serious movie making! Me, Carlo and Patrycja found a cozy study room with a piano at Orkanen, while Sanna was recording her part of the video at home. We had so much fun!

I brought a tripod and my iPhone, as it has 3 lenses and the most possibilities to offer. I also 3d printed two pot-supporters, which we called ‘tits’, designed to enable an easier swaying of an inner pot within the outside pot. Patrycja brought two plants and Carlo was our leading character. There always occurs something which doesn’t go according to the plan. This time, I forgot an outside pot, so we needed to improvise - Patrycja found a transparent container in one of the university’s fridges and we adapted it to play a role of a pot.

I edited our video during the weekend using the InShot phone app. I had an option to add some animated effects and since we weren’t allowed to use narration or captions, I figured that such animation will make a terrific support for visualizing plants’ reactions. Carlo as an actor did great too and in the end, we were very satisfied with the outcome. I also showed the video to my family and they had no doubts about what we are trying to convey. I guess we can call it a success and

VIDEO

This week we continued developing our final concept. We put our focus on the plant’s movement itself as a crucial part of interaction within our project.

Wednesday, 10.02

After Monday’s crit session, we agreed on a following plan:

And this was the outcome of my interview:

These insights were very challenging for my group and me, because at first, they seemed to ruin the whole concept we have come up with. But we analyzed it and it actually helped us. We agreed that we don’t want to digitalize or impersonate plants - plants should remain plants and if they communicate, then the communication should remain as much natural as it gets. It confirmed our beliefs that we should stick to the natural movement as a way of communicating with their owners.

We decided to iterate on our interviews and insights. We were trying to find movements, which would be easy to distinguish, because we noticed that people find it hard to distinguish between various movements, and also their experiences and assumptions differ when it comes to judging which movement visualizes which mood or need. We were wondering if we should mimic human movements to express emotions of the plant.

We decided on creating another video and each of us chose one situation. This was the ‘script’ of the video:

I recorded a plant ‘waking up’ and ‘going back to sleep’ when the light changes. We put our recordings together to create one video, which we later showed to stakeholders, but what was important, without any captions. We wanted to see if people can read what plants are communicating in specific situations using specific movements.

VIDEO

Then, we set our plan for Friday:

Friday, 12.02

After showing to my interviewees (1 and 2) the video with plants’ different reactions which we prototyped, I obtained such answers:

The rest of the insights we got were:

Sanna and Patrycja also worked on videos iterations and produced another two of them. This week was all about videos and the video prototyping workshop is still ahead of us!

We were still left with the decision on which motion or motions to choose for our prototype.

Also, we wrote down some questions about the things we need to find out and also some questions for our teachers about the instructions they are giving us in announcements.

Yay, this week we finally decided on what our design idea is and it makes me feel great, because I have an impression that we have finally stopped to wander blind in the fog and have something concrete to work on.

Monday, 01.02

After today’s crit session, we decided to continue our work with ‘shake my leaves’ idea, which is creating an experience of plant moving in order to communicate with its owner. It combines two ideas:

- showing plants need by motion

- strengthen the communication by adding the need of interaction

How can the use of motion and the need of interaction strengthen the communication between the person and its plant?

Wednesday, 03.02

We started with brainstorming over various kinds of movement. We were writing down everything that came to our minds in terms of movement. Then, we were trying to distribute various movements to the needs and moods a plant could have. I really liked this part, the work went smooth.

We were talking a lot about the possibilities we have. In the end, we decided that each of us would prototype the specific kind of movement on their own and share it during our Friday’s group work. This would let us actually see how the stems and leaves behave during the movements. We already knew that we were aiming to achieve some natural moves, based on turning to the sun, wind blowing or raindrops falling, as well as more alarming moves, like bouncing and vibrating.

I felt like working with natural moves and I visualized this kind of tilting-rotating movement to fake them. I only needed a half-sphere object to put a pot on it and tilt it and move it along short paths all around the object.

VIDEO 1

Friday, 05.02

On Friday, we were preparing to our crit session. We were writing down what we don’t know about our project, materials, technical aspects. We also designed a test in a form of an interview with participants. We wanted to test how people would start an interaction with a plant and what would they expect as a response.

Material: Person, Plant

Test 1: What would be the natural way for people to start an interaction with a plant?

Test situation 1: Tell the person that the plant can interact with you but you need to start the interaction. 

Q1: How do you think you should start the interaction?

Q2: What do you think the plant reaction would be?

Test 2: What would be the natural way for people to start an interaction with a plant if the way of communication is through motion/movement.

Test situation 2: Tell the person that the plant can interact with you but you need to start the interaction with a movement. 

Q1: How do you think you should start the interaction?

Q2: What do you think the plant reaction would be?

Moreover, I also gave a second thought to the tilting-rotating movement I was working on earlier. I talked to my sambo, who is a mechanical design engineer and we brainstormed a little. I decided that I will change the movement so the pot doesn’t follow any path all over the half-sphere, but instead, it stays in place and is able to tilt to sides. The effect should be very similar, but the construction and prototyping possibilities seem to be more accessible and feasible.

VIDEO 2

I am really happy we now have a specific project and ideas to work on. Something is starting to emerge from the fog and it is really exciting. I am looking forward to our crit session on Monday.

Microcontrollers workshops

This week we also had Arduino workshops. Before ordering my Arduino kit, I didn’t really know what that was, although the name itself sounded familiar. I had never been into electronics and programming before the program started, but I somehow knew that I would enjoy the workshops and I was right! I had so much fun playing with the Arduino kit, joining cables and just making it work. I found out what the possibilities here are and I even had some ideas how we can use it while building our prototype.

During the second Arduino workshop, I got a little help from my sambo and I managed to create a quite nice prototype of Super Mario game controls, using the Arduino kit, some cardboard, plastic tape and copper tape. I struggled with adjusting the code, but it seemed pretty similar to Java Script. It took me around an hour of trying and I figured it out. I was really pleased with the effect and I noticed that I have possessed this magical way of programming-thinking. But a lot is ahead of me when it comes to programming.

This week we iterated on our design ideas. We dissected them and our design opportunities and were trying to decide on the ideas we like the most.

Monday, 25.01

After Monday’s coaching we ended up with some sort of an impasse. We came up with 5 design ideas:

1. Communicative sensor.

2. Shake my leaves.

3. Automatic feeder.

4. Info cube.

5. Smell the flowers.

During the coaching, Clint drew our attention to the fact, that all our design ideas are based on one thing: sensor. Moreover, we noticed that despite the fact that our design opportunities are about communication with a plant, our design concepts give mainly an opportunity to receive information about a plant’s state and we somehow lack the communication part itself. We decided to focus on creating an opportunity to develop a bilateral relationship between a plant and its owner.

Wednesday, 27.01

We did a lot of brainstorming that day. We tried different techniques, like random input, crazy eight and the one that Patrycja knew from her another course: each of us had 2 minutes to write down everything what comes to her/his mind about the key words: ‘pleasant communication’ and ‘unpleasant communication’. We decided to stick to the two design opportunities we had chosen earlier:

6. HMW make the plants suffering more tangible?

7. HMW make people feel more connected and dedicated to their plants?

However, we strongly felt that we reached an impasse, we had no new ideas and we couldn’t come up with anything new. I felt exhausted from brainstorming and lost my vibe. Suddenly, Sanna came up with this idea about the teaching pot for kids, but it also raised our doubts, because we don’t have any insights when it comes to kids taking care of plants. We decided on contacting Clint about our doubts.

Friday, 29.01

We iterated on our design ideas and as some new ideas arose during brainstorming, we decided on five new ones, which we will present to Clint on Monday. We came up with a new idea of the teaching pot, targeted to kids and a transparent pot with diodes, which show the level of humidity in the pot. We still don’t know if going back to research when it comes to the teaching pot, makes sense, but we really like our other ideas.

We were also working on frameworks, which was hard, because we couldn’t understand what a framework actually is. After a lot of googling, we decided to create a framework in a form a flow chart, which shows our work flow.

Lab Training

This week we had an introduction to MAU workshop, laser cutting and vector graphics. It was online and I have to admit, that I was very disappointed with its form. I know that MAU and teachers did the best they could, but this kind of introduction was kind of worthless, because I would need another, the proper one, when I find myself in the workshop one day.

However, I was really amazed by the size and equipment of the workshop and I am really looking forward to visiting it. I am quite lucky though, because I have a 3d printer at home, which I can use for our project. However, my classmates feel that because of covid, their possibilities are very restricted.

This week we started with our ideation process. I must admit I already had a notion of my perfect design idea, but this week, I had to let go of that.

Wednesday, 20.01

We were struggling with reframing our design opportunities. It was a very creative, however tiring process. I had an impression that most of the ways for reframing, give overlapping results and it made me confused. On the other, it helped me to look deeper into our hmw’s and notice that what we stated before, is not necessary an essence of our design opportunity and that we need to think about the issue from a different point of view. It was good in a way and I could cut off my image of a design idea and concentrate more on the design opportunities.

Our reframing work is here.

Friday, 22.01

During yesterday’s workshop, we further analyzed our design opportunities and performed a lot of brainstorming on them. On the one hand, it was a lot of fun to learn different brainstorming methods and you can totally tell, that making fun of things encourages creativity in people. I especially liked the ‘random input’ method, where you choose random words and base your ideas on those words. I got some really sick concepts, which were not only funny, but also quite inspiring. We did the same thing the next day to finish our ideation.

We feel like we are a bit lost, though. We have quite a lot design opportunities and I feel like we need to let go of a few of them. We have two overlapping design opportunities that we all especially like: 

6. HMW make the plants suffering more tangible?

7. HMW make people feel more connected and dedicated to their plants?

We will definitely try to work around them, but we feel like we lack time. We will have to work over the weekend and we feel a bit concerned about it.

Our Miro board is here.