Concept Ideation and Detailing

June 24, 2020

Lockdown

The final touches of Project 2 have been made, and we now turn our full attention to the final project - Project 3! In this project we will develop a product that makes use of the new market opportunities that appear along with the global Corona lockdown situation. It should be an IoT “Smart Product” that satisfies one or several needs created by the corona lockdown.

What could this “something” be? We went into full brainstorming mode on miro.com to try to figure out what lockdown problems/needs we can come to think of. Later, we brainstormed on how these problems/needs could be solved by an IoT-product. At the end of this session we ended up with several different concepts and chose the three that we thought seemed best for the project. These were

A friendship lamp. A flower-shaped lamp that blossoms (opens up) and lights up when someone approaches the twin “flower” somewhere else in the world - to let the other person know that you are thinking about them
A pingpong ball launcher that can be controlled with an app by someone else somewhere else in the world. This is a game that can be played by two people who are distanced, but it is still a physically active game.
An interactive map that moves different regions in the world up and down to visually illustrate the spread of corona. The user can interact with what the map shows through an app. This is more of an art installation.

We brought these three concept ideas up to discussion with our mentors before choosing. Finally, we all agreed on moving on with the friendship lamp concept.

What is this concept all about?

Problem Area‍

During the corona lockdown a lot of people are distanced from loved ones. Especially people in covid-19 risk groups refrain from physically meeting others to minimize the risk of contagion. Examples of this could be grandparents and grandchildren that are not able to see each other, especially if the grandparents are living in a senior home where visitors may not be allowed. Social distancing does minimize the risk of covid-19 contagion, but feeling lonely can severely contribute to mental health issues. There are already plenty of social media products out there, such as Facebook, Skype, HouseParty, etc. But especially older people are not always used to these technologies. There is also an issue for younger people that social media in themselves can contribute to mental illness and feeling lonely.

Vision

We wish to create a product that can minimize the feeling of being alone by letting you know that someone is thinking about you right now. It should be easy to use for all age groups and give the user a direct feeling of contact.

Concept Description

The concept we imagine is a twin friendship lamp. One lamp is placed in User A’s home and the other object is placed in User B’s home. They are connected via IoT. The lamp we have in mind has an abstract flower shape that can light up in different colors and that can “blossom” by moving its petals.

User Scenario

When User A wants to send User B some love, he/she approaches the “flower” and possibly strokes or touches it. The other user’s “flower” then begins to blossom and changes color.

If this user is in the room and sees the flower blossoming, they will know that User A is thinking about them right now. If not, he/she might notice the change in color when returning. Since the two “flower lamps” can only send signals to each other, the users will hopefully feel a more immediate presence than from a SnapChat picture that could potentially have been sent to many friends.

A user might wish to have several “flowers” so that they can connect with several loved ones and attaching a photograph to the flower lamp will help to recognize who corresponds to which “flower”.

Initial Mood Board

Link to our first mood board (with GIFs): https://miro.com/app/board/o9J_ksmxEIM=/

Function Means Tree

The functions we wish to have in this product can be incorporated by different means. In our function-means tree these functions and means are organized and planned. In the 3-week period, we will, through prototyping, figure out which means are best for this product.

Prototyping

As with any engineering project, we need to test our concept. To make most effective use of time and to get the most out of our testing, we will be using Prototype Planners in the upcoming 3-week period. They are a tool for planning and documenting the prototypes we need to create in order to test and validate our product.

The first Prototype Planner can be seen here: