Team Nutella
Ana, Joy, Magnolia, Ben
Ana, Joy, Magnolia, Ben
Introduction
For our Physical Computing Final Project, we are creating an assistive device for a member of the Pittsburgh community. We are partnering with an organization called CLASS that fosters community inclusion for people with disabilities.
Last Wednesday, Oct. 23rd, 2024 we went to the CLASS facility to meet Glenn, a person who had a traumatic brain injury. Our team, Nutella, is comprised of Ana, Joy, Magnolia, and Ben.
Meeting Agenda
Introduction
We started off our meeting by introducing ourselves and asking Glenn, our client, to introduce himself. Some notes we wrote down for a few team member’s introductions are below:
Joy- Hi I am Joy, a sophomore studying Design! For our last project in this introduction to physical computing course, I made a pomodoro lamp that reminds you to take a break after a certain amount of time when studying or doing something that requires a lot of sitting! I learned how to 3D print and lasercut which was really fun and new!
Ben - Hello, I’m Ben, a senior studying Computer Science! For our last project, I made a device that would dispense candy if you solved a Rubik’s cube within a certain amount of time.
We then asked Glenn some questions to get to know more about him and his interests!
We are super excited to work with you! What is your name and what are some of your hobbies?
Why did you volunteer for this project?
What drew you to wanting to participate?
Explanation and clarification about project goals
To make sure we’re on the same page, we want to first talk about what we’re trying to do with this project. We are trying to build a device that can support your wants and needs! Throughout the process, we will be building prototypes of your device and will gather feedback from you around the midpoint of the process to make sure that our device fits your expectations. Because we are college students in an introductory physical computing class, we will not be creating professional products and will not be designing a totally novel piece of electronics.
In terms of the process, our timeline will span across the next 7 weeks and by the end of this time frame, we will have a high-fidelity final product! We also will be documenting our process along the way.
Do you have any questions?
Understanding needs and thinking of possible technological interventions
We would like to ask if you have any specific activities in your daily life that you find frustrating or difficult to approach that you would like us to consider when creating your device. The device we will be making can be seen as a “convenience machine”, or a gadget that can reduce little annoyances in your life.
Is there anything in your daily routine that frustrates you? Perhaps some tasks in your morning routine could be more efficient with an assistive device.
Is there any hobby that you once enjoyed doing but has become harder to enjoy recently?
Could you demonstrate an example of this to us?
Why is this task important to you?
Questions
Thank you so much for giving us part of your day to have this conversation! We are excited to work with you and apply what we have learned so far in the class to support you and your needs. It would be great if we could receive your contact information so that we can reach you if we have further questions. Please let us know if you have any questions at all!
Notes From the Meeting Glenn 10.23.24
Background/Get to Know You
Likes house plants, fishing, cooking
Lived in Pittsburgh for 30 yrs
‘94 Brain injury and leg injury, eye sight, diabetic
Likes Sci-fi and Halloween, worked in a haunted house
Red, Blue, and Green are easist colors to see
Favorite color is Purple
Godzilla and Aliens
Contact Information:
Phone number: [redacted]
What happens during the week
Tuesday and Fridays School
Structured Day in Bakery Square
Spelling and Math
Device Requirements
Portable
Pocket size preferred, laced around, attached to the walker, or around the neck
Wall charge, rechargeable
Name and contact info on the device
Wants user input and voice recording
Already has
CCTV
Magnifying glasses
Potential Ideations
Short term memory
Medicine reminder
Appointment and task reminders
Specific Reminders
Change sensor every 11 days
insulin is taken 3 times a day 8am, noon, 8pm, pills taken everyday in afternoon and evening
dog feeding in the morning 8am and night 6-7pm
call Access or cousin to drive to appointments
where is the doctor and what is their name?
Birthdays
The day of and a couple days before
Where did I put things?
Transportation
A few days to a week to call for transportation and reminder a few hours before
Reading aid
Eyes
Scan texts, read out loud, make the print larger
Eyesight is not consistent, magnifying alone always effective
10/28- questions to ask Glenn
How often is he home? Would he prefer having a portable device or is it fine to have a device at home
Stick with reminders that he needs at home- meds, feeding dog,
Ideas- each category is a sci-fi character, Glenn can pull it out when it is time to remind him of an event with blinking lights (either a few days before or the day of depending on the event)
Each character will have an E-ink screen that has the hard-coded events in it while a speaker will say it
Hardcoded:
Pills
Insulin
Feeding dog
birthdays
Meeting Summary and Major Takeaways
After going through some introductions, we started out by asking if he had any challenges in his life that we could help with. This began our discussion on his need for a device to help him with being able to read things like the prices at the grocery store. This allowed us to learn more about both the technology he currently uses while learning about some shortcomings of specific experiences in his life. But some of our team realized that what we were exploring might not have been possible do to the complexity of devices needing to interpret what it see in a camera. We had to explain that it wouldn’t be possible in the scope of this project and start exploring other potential devices. This leads us to explore Glenn's struggles with memory and needs to be reminded of regularly occurring things. Once we decided to go down this path of memory, we asked questions about what sorts of events or things he would like to be reminded of and some questions about the mobility of the device to get a better understanding of the constraints.
Some of the major takeaways were that it is essential to set expectations of what we are technologically capable of doing at the beginning, as it would have saved some time and built up excitement both for Glenn and the team. Another takeaway is that it might have been more beneficial to ask more broad questions at first and get a sense of his daily life before we put it on him to explain what he was looking for cause it, from the very beginning, narrowed the scope of the project. However, while going deeper into the conversation about his schedule for the memory device concept, we were able to get much more insight into his current life and areas for intervention.
Thoughts on Holding the Meeting and Discussing as a Team
While we did have some fruitful discussion with Glenn, we didn’t have nearly as much time as we would have liked. We spent a lot of time talking about Glenn’s first idea which ended up being far out of the scope of this project. He was so enthusiastic about it that we had a hard time changing direction. At the beginning, we had a bit of trouble breaking the ice but we got into the flow eventually. There are a lot of questions we wish we’d had the opportunity to ask. One of the big ones was testing what font color and size was easiest for him to read and his fine motor skills. We are thinking of adding buttons and knobs so getting do see how those would feel in his hands would have been helpful. Ana feels like we didn’t get a good enough idea of what his daily life is like. Most of our discussion was to the point and directly related to the problems we were trying to identify and solve.