Category: 03 Digital Health

By: Chen HAO
Keywords: Digital, Health, Tech, Animated, Joyous.
Final presentation poster: Click here

Design Goal and Interaction vision:

Creating a new way of interaction for chronic nail biters to enhance their biting experience, so that the can cope with their biting behavior. Interaction Vision: Showing off

Research Explorations:

My research exploration can be divided into 3 phases. The first phase was doing observation about the target group, which gave me the first impression of nail biting.  The second phase mainly focused on the literature research, which contained theoretical information (e.g. medical definition, how does this behavior come from, etc.) about nail biting and its relevant background (e.g. population, current treatments, etc.).

The information I collected from these 2 phases were mainly about the medical point of view, which made me believe that nail biting was a negative and self-mutilation behavior that needed to be prevented. However, my insights were changed after doing a series of face-to-face interviews, collage making and staying close with nail biters in the third phase.

I found that nail biting was not as negative as the doctor said; it was actually a kind of comfort that provides nail biters lots of supports. Therefore, how to enhance the biting experience was defined as my final direction.

Design Explorations:

Since my design goal was refined and clear after the research phase. I came up with several initial concepts and chose best 3 of them for the further exploration. The brief instruction and corresponding test are introduced below.

Concept 1: Let nail biters create personal rhythms and music while they are biting. Tested with a role-play video.

Concept 2: Just like playing a game with your nails, ‘a nail factory’ provides some small monster and scissors patterns on the nails, which kindly reminds the biter that he/she should bite by obeying some rules. Tested with a scenario and a rough prototype.

Concept 3: Nail biters can create personal paintings while they are biting. Tested with a detailed storyboard.

Most of the participants love these concepts and they were really appreciate that my concepts are in such a positive way. However, they wish the final concept could be personal and unobtrusive.

Final Design:

My final design was based on the Concept 3, which is a digital frame can record biter’s biting status everyday through an unobtrusive interaction. The original content of the frame is an animated image with a little boy standing on a balloon in the sky. Biter can choose different color balloons to represents each of their nails.

During the day, more and more balloons would popup and grow on the relative position in the image in accordance with the time biter bites the nails. Each balloon on the image indicates the time and frequency of certain nail that was being bitten during the day. A time line can help the biter to interpret their one-day biting status when needed.

By: Andre G Taris
Keywords: Digital Health, Transitional sleep object

Design Goal and Interaction vision:

To provide a better sleep through the use of a transitional sleeping object [added comfort and reassurance]. The object assist in maintaining the optimum body temperature and position during sleep.

Research Explorations:

After formulating a solid research goal, data collection began where the experience occurs. In the bed room context observations of users going to bed or waking up (re-enactment). Go into people’s homes, talk to them while they are sitting on their bed.  Follow-up interview included the re-enactment of key interactions with the bedroom environment. Participants were actively engaged, collecting the required information in cultural probes. Stimulus session sheets were used to understand how the ideal experience translates into solutions. The final research stage involved a multi-sensory experiential prototype. Two participants were asked to use it for the night. Insights were documented in a follow up interview. Participants used the device in a small scale evaluation study, testing all relevant interactions. Observed participants setting mode and basic charging usability evaluation.

Design Explorations:

Initial concepts were generated from the cultural probes and other early research explorations. The first stage of design exploration involved a low fi mock up of the initial concept. Concepts were evaluated against the drivers discovered in the first research stage of the project. The data gathered from these sessions was analyzed and used to create a second experiential prototype. The two separate iterations of the concept allowed for further development of the temperature aspect of the design. This evolved into the final concept of which a final small-scale evaluation study was conducted. Insights gathered from the final model allowed for the development of a tandem online application that helped monitor and improve key interactions of the sleep experience, sleep and comfort.

Final Design:

A physical companion, Sleepmate provides reassurance through object companionship. Like your favorite pillow, through the act of washing the cover, it ages over time. Able to regulate body temperature, the final concept learns the users optimum sleeping cycle temperatures and is operated in either winter or summer mode. No cords in the bed, it simply charges while you are awake. The Sleepmate is a smart device able to relay information on your sleeping pattern to an online application. Contact with the device warms the lower body using built in warming segment and thermostat. During the night the device keeps the body at optimum temperature and wakes the user with a natural reduction in temperature.