Outcome

PROBLEM

With parents working over time and numerous of them being consultants, many parents are away for the entire week and only get to see their children on the weekend. Hello From the Other Side allows for non verbal interaction between the parent and a child to help build relationship across distance. 

OVERVIEW

Hello From the Other Side (HFOS) is a interactive tool in connecting parents and their children when they are unable to see each other. The interaction takes place with either party moving the right hand with a flex sensor. This reflects with a left hand wave for the other person. The face of the tool is a white board on which the kid or parent can customize the product. 

PROCESS

1. We identified 3 different areas: 

 - connecting parents with new borns that are in intensive care and the parents can't be there due to other responsibilitiess

- games: tic tac toe and connect 4 playing board 

- collaborative sketch - drawing together

2. We further explored the opportunity to play games and create a moment of delight in a persons monotonous day. We ran into a few complications with LEDs. Not enough digital/analog slots. We couldn't find enough LEDs. There were time constraints. We weren't confident in our coding skills. There were just a number of different issues. So we decided to pivot 

3. The pivot was towards creating a tool that was inspired by a smiley face with insanely large hands. The idea being that a parent and their child can communicate from a distance. We initially only had one hand.

4. We decided to add two hands. The right hand would be the flex sensor that would trigger the servo on left hand of  the second product. 

5. We drafted out our storyboard for a the video of the product. 

5. The final leg of our project started with us laser cutting our all our pieces from the acrylic. After which we constructed the product and did on final test to see if all the pieces were working. 

OVERVIEW (Quick overview, Material Part, Diagram, code)

Material Parts: 

2 breadboards

2 particle pros

jumper wires

wires 

2 servo motors

2 flex sensors

1 2'x1' acrylic sheet 

REFLECTION

It's been an interesting journey of going back and forth between ideas and figuring out what we would actually go through with. Even though it was a little difficult to plan out how to create our project with individual schedules, as a team we are super excited with the product we built. 

We also struggled in the final stages to get all the flex sensors to work. The flex sensors seem really sensitive and stopped working. 

All that being said, it was fun, delightful and creates a beautiful connection between the parents and child.