Back to Parent

Reflection & Next Steps

NEED TO BUILD ON THIS: Reflection and Next Steps: Discuss what you achieved with the project, what you learned about fostering social relationships and what you would do if you took this project forward. Include considerations as well - what should we be careful of (worries, hot button issues, problems for design) in making a connected device (privacy, etc). 200 words max

Learnings 

  • A calm notification is difficult to create.
  • There is fine balance between alerting someone and startling them.
  • The best solution will allow user(s) to intuitively understand how to use device to achieve their goals.
  • LED with light could enhance the experience – using different colors for different teams and people; would also be interesting for design
  • Form factor -> really key decision to understand; given emotional state it should look and feel sturdy
One of the most important reflections we had was on our success in creating an actual serendipitous moment, recognizing that what we thought of as "serendipitous" pre-COVID may now be different and that our task is to really think about what digital serendipity can be. Our prototyped experience is still working towards that goal of happenstance. As part of this exploration, we also would like to think about how to limit the need of the actual user to start the action - how to make it more of a "bump into" moment. The suggestion was made to perhaps use LinkedIn's degrees of separation to have the cube create random interactions with strangers who have reach and connect who have some commonality -- maybe a 3+ degree connection. 

Challenges

  • Prototyping a connected device is difficult when physically distanced.
  • Tilt sensors are very sensitive and can cause unintentional alerts.
  • Vibration motors easily disengage from leads.
  • Neopixel rings are beautiful, but fragile as a light source.

Next Steps

  • Communicate with collaboration tools such as text, Google Calendar, Slack. Microsoft Teams, Whatsapp (use IFTTT, webhooks)
  • Auto populate an invite with Zoom info
  • Light notifications to convey conversation readiness - openness

Bold Vision

Serendipicube has animation abilities!  ~ waving to get user attention (Paper signals)

As of now, we have prototyped the basic tilt and vibrate interactions, but our proposed next steps would be for the devices to communicate with collaboration tools like Slack and Google Calendar and populate Zoom meeting invitations to a user’s preferred messaging system. We would also imagine the addition of a light component on the devices to convey an ambient notification of conversation readiness. An even more ambitious vision would be for the device forms to have animation abilities, like waving to get a user’s attention.


Content Rating

Is this a good/useful/informative piece of content to include in the project? Have your say!

0