Process

For the very beginning, we conceptualized our prototype’s real-time interaction based on the same time zone, and we supposed that both users would keep up with the same schedule. But when we began to test the device, we found that scenario is actually very limited - most users want more flexibility of their schedule. So for our iteration we expand the context to users who keep different schedules and are possibly from different time zones because of remote work. Therefore, we are able to develop two modes: individual mode and paired mode to enable the choice of users to join one another or not based on their personal plan/schedule.

During the prototype development process, we were initially going to use the 1 x HC-SR501 unltrasound Sensor to detect users’ movement of sitting or leaving but the sensor is too sensitive to detect the stationary status even though the user stayed sitting in front of the desk. So afterwards we finally decided to use the HC-SR04 Ultrasonic Sonar Distance Sensor to detect the distance between user and desk instead to determine the status of users.