Week 14: Form study and model making

We did some form study to decide on a mouth, to try and find one that wasn't creepy and hannibal-esque:

This is the model making, we figured out some the form through this process. The beans part with the fabric cylinder is the weighting beans for the bottom that we gave it for weighting , so it sits upright and so it sits properly on the dock:

Decided in the end that a beak was the least creepy mouth possible that we could muster.

Week 13: Narrative and finishing design

We stoaryboarded everything up and through this were able to figure out the flow and the system. We'd added in a storybook part to the system where the children can learn about the pebbles, get a backstory and be subtly trained on their correct use and give them emotional connections as to why they should do it that way.

We established that this pet was to be a way to initiate them into the classroom on the first day too. The first day can be stressful and nerve-wracking on the child and the parent so this was a way to tie in with the early years learning framework:

Belonging: created a little community within the classroom that they belonged to, and initiated them into the class formally with a common ground with the rest of the children. A kindergarteners icebreaker.

Being: Makes non play related things become play involved too. This framework is about PLAYING.

Becoming: At 4 years old the chlidren are just starting to reach the part of their development where they grow out of their egocentric behaviour. This helps train them as it gives them something to look after and they have to start seeing the world from the pet's point of view. It also gives them a sense of behavious. This moves them along into the journey of becoming an adult.


Playing is learning: Chlidren demontrate what they learnt through playing so correct use of the pet shows the teacher that they are learning and starting to lose their egocentric behaviour.



The inputs and outputs were finally finalised too:

There was no change with the toilet station.

The eating became a seperate dock (like the toilet one) that sat on the wall in the form of little fruits that the pets mouth could be pushed up against. The output was a "tk tk tk tk tk tk tk tk" eating noise and after a 5 minute delay (so the kids didnt fed the pets all day) the stomach would slowly glow on and then slowly off again to indicate being full.

And the sleeping became a large leaft ear that folded down over the eyes to give the outputs of: a little shudder/ vibration, a little 'weeweeweweweweweweeeewwwwwwewewe" sleeping/snoring noise and a soft on and off glow (once on once off) of the stomach to represent falling into sleep.

The data is then sent off to the online database (for teachers or parents without a smartphone) and to the parents app.

The pets rest on the docks overnight at the kindy.

The fruits give the walls in the classroom a cheerful fruite and vege decor.



Felicity this week took a little hand held squishy pink toy to a couple of kindy aged kids and got them to play with it seeing what they did.
After seeing their general abuse of it (including it 'helping' do the washing up) we decided that it had to be indectrustable and waterproof and childproof. We realised that before but it just reinforced it. BUt this did bring up the issue of data transfer as we wanted this to be USB data collection which you could access by taking each kids pet and connecting it to the teacher's computer.

Week 13: Furby, Figit and scout

We kept looking at toys.

Here is an example of what i've previously mentioned with the swearing furby:

Here is the 'Figit', like a female Furby. Again, a little creepy:

and here is (god only knows why) a re-design and re-market of the Furby! We enver thought we'd see the day:

One sneaky thing I hate: it still has no off button, and to get into the back you need a screwdriver. Clever of them I suppose. And like the guy said: "surprisingly charming". This time around, the eyes arent creepy and the voice isn't as bad. They've definately improved on the crrpy factor which is lovely to see.

Week 12: Inputs and Outputs

We started refining our inputs and outputs so Will could figure out the Arduino side.


We decided on a toilet dock near the bathrooms in the classroom so it made sense to the children that that was the toilet.  We decided on the input of a downwards shaking motion as if you're forcing it to pee, but in a cute way?
The toilet we decided to make a grass pot as these were now sort of artificial pets and pets go to the toilet outside on the grass.
The outputs and feedback to the child are a vibration (like a little shudder) to show that it is happening and a 'Ahhh!' noise to show that the action had been completed. When this happened, the data would be simultaneously sent to the computer/app.

The eating we abandoned the food stuck on the front of the tummy idea as arduino wise we were finding this a little complicated and form wise we couldnt quite make it right. We decided the eating should be a placement of a slot inside the mouth but with a big fruit on the end that visually shows that they have eaten. We did it this way because after discussing what we could do with Arduino we saw that we could make the slot an automotive fuse that sonected the circuit up that would send the information to the computer/app.

The sleeping we decided that the input was to fold the animal in half (like making it curl up on itself) and placing back on dock home so it's like it's curling up and going to sleep.
We did this because we were able to have a flex sensor running up through the toy.
The outputs would be a little 'Weweweweweeeeew' cute snoring noise to indicate sleeping and the completion of the action.
We also decided that this would only activate the outputs and data sending when on the home dock.

We worked on our design trying to work out a cute form, while keeping all these elements working together.

At this stage we did storyboarding to work out the flow and make sure this worked. Throughout the storyboarding the design began to finalise and manipulate and resolve.

some physical design:

We went with induction charging (like the simple kind on a toothbrush) because obviously an excess of wires and children do not mix.

Week 12: That bloody Furby

We recognised that what we were making was very similar to a furby. We brought in a furby, played with it, analysed it, took note of it's inputs and outputs and used that to give us an idea into what to do.
Pushing a little tounge down continuously was feeding.
Stroking a set of back sensor button things made is like purr and be all happy
Pushing a tummy button quickly made it giggle because it was being tickled
Covering a sensor on the head made it sleep.
Tipping it upside down made it react but we're not sure what that was.
It speaks in a language called "furbish" and slowly you can teach it english by doing various things like repeating a sequence of actions of it's inputs then repeating a phrase. If anyone could even figure it out they just made it swear and say dirty things, which gives an indication that really people don't us things how you intend, and the only people old enough to figure it out were so old they could teach it rhymes with swear words in them.



But one thing is obvious: the damn thing is creepy as all hell, annoying and brings back not so fond childhood memories. I definitely grew up with these and for something so wildly popular I can't seem to find anyone who really liked it? I hear stories of (as children) people smashing these things up because they would just go off at midnight, babbling away in a creepy language. Others just confined them to a cupboard so deafen the noise until eventually giving up and taking the batteries out for good. I sold mine after a couple of weeks to a boy like 6 years older than me for $25 bucks. Selling it was a very happy day for me and for a young kid to be happy to part with a toy that's gotta say something right?

I sure you guys know about these things but here it is for your viewing pleasure:
(i think we were discussion who would have to take it home- nobody wanted to.)

Week 11: Investigating final design

All physical designs we had come up with thus far were creepy.
 Prime example- imagine children having these, creepy or what?:

  

 We started talking about making a 'new species' of animal. Some sort of imaginary creature from space or something that looks really cute and nice.

We talked about just having some sort of blob that didn't represent anything. Just an avocado shaped blob that could be squeezed, touched and manipulated to record that data we needed. Then we decided to  pick the data.

 There was a framework within the EYLF that the kindy teacher told me about and that was the 'spider-web' program whcih was basically where they recorded everything the child did during the day on a piece of paper and it was given to the parent at home time. We figured what with everything being done on the computer nowadays (saves the trees!) that  we would make the data send to an app and an online database that ensured the parent had constant access to the history of information (paper is easy to lose).

With the EYLF we could see that there were three physical activities in particular that the parent would want to know on a day to day basis and three things that the teachers would no longer have to note down anymore if this device did it for them (the sensing the news aspect).

Eating: the time they ate, how many times they ate.

Sleeping: whether they had a nap during rest-pause time

Toilet: how many times a day they went and if they were toilet training still- whether the attempt was sucessful or not.



We wanted these blobs (which we named pebbles for the time being) to be induvidual toys, one per child that they could love and manipulate and personalise and then also there would be a distinction as to which child each set of data belonged to.

We thought that perhaps these could all be programmed up with the childs data at the beginning of the school year and given out to each induvidual child.

The pebbles would live in the classroom so as not to get lost and we thought that it would be nice if the pebbles kind of created the decor for the room. Bright a cheerful and cute little animals lining the walls sounded ncie to us. How do they fit into the room though?
Ann-maree thought of little docks against the walls that looked like trees or something and this could be the pebbles home.


Now we just had to figure out arduino wise, what we could do with interactions.

We went right back to INPUTS and OUTPUTS and with Will's growing Arduino knowledge we started figuring that out.

We initially thought pushing food onto the stomach for a visual representation that they had eaten,
lying it on it's side on the dock for sleeping and shaking it below the dock tree for toilet time.

Week 11: Go Animate

Guys, i'm sorry to say this program is not quite what we need to make a narrative video.

We wanted to show movements with the interactions and you can't seem to move characters on it? And they kep making me want to pay money.

We had no success with it! Made a few bizzaro videos though, it was entertaining and way too distracting- awesome procrastination!


http://goanimate.com/videos/0Raqkppewmvk?utm_source=linkshare


However, this did open us up to thinking about how we were going to represent our story of use.
For the meantime, we decided for work on paper using drawings.

Week 10: Interview

During the week, I went and I talked to the local kindy to get an idea about the environment, the kids and the whole kindy thing as we had realised throughout development that we didn't have a CLUE about kindy anymore. It had been so very long since we had been that we needed to re-live and re-investigate it.

I went to Cubbyhouse Daycare in The Gap and they told us all about the new structure for Australian Kindys.

The Early Years Learning Framework .

This was a framework being introduced in all Australian kindergartens currently and should be the standard in the next couple of years.

The Early Year Learning Framework is about ‘Belonging, Being and Becoming’, and about learning through playing.

Belonging: is the basis for living a fulfilling life. Children feel they belong because of their relationships they have with their family, community, culture and place.

Being: is about living here and now. Childhood is a special time in life and children need to just ‘be’- time to play, try new things and have fun

Becoming: is about the learning and development that young children experience. Children start to form their sense of identity from an early age, which shapes the type of adult they will become.

Play is learning: When children play they are showing what they are trying to understand. This is why play is one of the foundations of the EYLF.

 


It's a framework that put's the kids more in control.  It lets them dictate if they have a nap (there is mandatory 'pause-rest' time though, in which they must be calm and quiet but they can draw if they want.

It's about bringing the home into the school environment. About water play, bringing the environment and nature indoors and about playing.

We were a little worried when there was no structure to the school day, that the kids decided what they wanted to do and when they do it (with gentle persuasion from the teachers so they don't do the same thing all day long). We wanted to record very set things, even the role call was an electronic system now so there was no need to have an office/classroom link.

We decided however, to use this to our advantage and to design in cooperation with the framework, to design to compliment it. We took the info in and used it to our advantage

http://www.deewr.gov.au/Earlychildhood/Policy_Agenda/Quality/Pages/EarlyYearsLearningFramework.aspx

http://www.deewr.gov.au/Earlychildhood/Policy_Agenda/Quality/Documents/EYLFFamiliesGuide_A4_170909.pdf

http://www.deewr.gov.au/Earlychildhood/Policy_Agenda/Quality/Documents/EYLF_Ed_Guide.pdf

http://www.deewr.gov.au/Earlychildhood/Policy_Agenda/Quality/Documents/Final%20EYLF%20Framework%20Report%20-%20WEB.pdf

Week 10: Assessment reflection + final project ideas

We took in what we were told in our formative assessment and started trying to really work behaviour in and try to make it something appropriate for children.

We definately moved to designing for purely kindergarten children. We knew that the older the child, the less effective a toy would be with it.

We were looking at induvidual toys for the kids. We discussed things like whether they went home or not, whether there were any docking systems or pidgeon holes for the to be stored in. We heavily discussed the educational aspect but mixing it in with fun. 
     Some of the original ideas involved a set of animals and you got assigned a certain animal, or a blank canvas and a part of the daily routine was coming in and 'constructing' your animal. So it could be some sort of monsterous creation that was fun and silly to them and everyday they could personalise it and make weird and wonderful, wacky creations.

We kept bringing back the fact that this can't be scarring for the child. It can't be creepy, harmful, fostering the wrong behavioural characteristics. It's so hard to make sure that idea you come up with aren't in the slightest CREEPY. It seemed that everything we thought of involved some element of weird.

We wanted to steer clear of the judgements on behavioural activities and thought about times of eating, and whether they slept during nap time, or if they sucessfully made it to the bathroom or not. Or just in general what activities they completed that day

Having trouble with the physical side of the design, we did more investigation into our users.

We chose kindergarten children aged 4 years. We looked into exactly what they can do and what their stage of delvelopment is up to.

According to Piaget, they are in their egocentric stage but at 4 yeard old they are beginning to learn and head into understanding other peoples points of view etc.

Here are some sites on a 4 year old's developement:

http://raisingchildren.net.au/articles/child_development_4-5_years_-_cyh.html/context/567

http://www.pbs.org/parents/childdevelopmenttracker/four/index.html

http://www.simplypsychology.org/piaget.html

http://www.simplypsychology.org/cognitive%20development.pdf

http://www.simplypsychology.org/preoperational.html

The data side of the design had to also be accessable by the  teachers and we thought perhaps the parents too- as they are interested and concerned with their childs development and education.