At that time, there were multiple posts linking to a variety of news articles that were all chemical related. After discussing the findings with Joanna, we settled on narrowing our core to avoiding contact with chemicals that have negative affects. Using health and chemicals as a guide, we did an affinity diagram to briskly explore a variety of angles that we would use as starting points for a research phase.

Through our research, we found that those most susceptible to the harmful effects of chemicals were infants. Infants are still developing, so the beginning few years are critical. The risk of chemical exposure extends to pre-birth, as the baby absorbs everything the mother is exposed to. Because we couldn’t ignore the importance of these insights, we decided to choose expecting mothers specifically first-time mothers.

Our design core was to provide expecting mothers with guidance to prevent exposure to harmful chemicals. The design comes in the form of an application that guides the mother throughout her pregnancy. Trying to mitigate decision paralysis, the design provides straightforward options on several things the mother needs to plan for throughout the pregnancy. The application is aware of the pregnancy term, providing time-relevant suggestions. Our slow-change goal is that the mother learns throughout her experience with NewLife and will continue to use her knowledge post-birth and with any future children.

Not only did we design a product for an expecting mother to use, we also considered the interaction between the doctor and the expecting mother in the form of a brochure. It was built to informate about the dangers and negative effects of chemicals, which transitions to an explanation of NewLife & its benefits.

This short project was to be an exercise in scenario development and presentation. We still needed to design something but it had to be presented in the form of a poster-like scenario. Our objective was to design a social learning tool for children 5-10 years of age. Our final design was to be a game (iPad/web) or a wearable computing device that aids in learning, an interactive book, or anything you feel can empower and engage kids to learn. Because our task was essentially to become a better story teller, we decided to get creative and used an old dollhouse to act out the scenario.

Final design description:

We live in a digital age where every student could potentially be using a tablet to study and do homework. This connection to technology opens up a myriad of possibilities. The intention of this application is to assist adults who may have very busy lives, in staying continually involved in their child’s studies. Study Buddy will provide parents with an accurate depiction of where their child is struggling, and provide parents with suggestions on how to make improvements over time. Our goal is to empower students to develop soft skills on their own by overcoming their own challenges. Parents can confuse children if the teaching techniques they use differ from those used in the classroom. Additionally, too much involvement can cause interference if parents complete the tasks that the child is capable of completing alone. [1] However, leaving a child completely alone is also not optimal; decades of research show that when parents are involved students have higher grades, test scores, graduation rates, motivation, and self-esteem. [2] Research shows that taking interest in your child’s education can spark their enthusiasm and lead them to understand that learning can be rewarding. [3] Study Buddy is intended to serve as a tool primarily for parents to monitor, track, and learn throughout their child’s education. Some feature possibilities include; statistics of progress over time, sensing emotional outbursts & the corresponding homework problems, attention duration, and tips to facilitate their child’s development of soft skills. These soft skills could include time management, organization, communication, critical thinking, persistence, and motivation.

[1] http://www2.ed.gov/parents/academic/involve/homework/homeworktips.pdf
[2] http://www.michigan.gov/documents/Final_Parent_Involvement_Fact_Sheet_14732_7.pdf [3] http://www2.ed.gov/parents/academic/help/succeed/succeed.pdf
[3] http://www2.ed.gov/parents/academic/help/succeed/succeed.pdf

The Team:

Brian Oppenlander
Kai Wang

The Poster:

]]> http://oppenlander.net/design/study-buddy/feed/ 0 http://oppenlander.net/design/fridginator-5000/ http://oppenlander.net/design/fridginator-5000/#comments Wed, 04 Jan 2012 14:43:09 +0000 Brian Oppenlander http://oppenlander.net/?p=1313 Our particular topic for this project was hoarding. We started off the project by exploring the space with a bit of secondary research and then a two-hour ethnography session in the home of three IU students. Through our ethnographic study and secondary research we found that food hoarding was a big issue. Our team felt that the food hoarding issue was a reasonably-sized problem space to tackle in the allotted time. After narrowing our problem space to food hoarding, we did a mood board to illustrate our direction to the class. This project emphasized usability testing, we created an extensive testing document and plan which you will find at the end of this page.

Final Design:

We wanted to design a tool to help the user mitigate the waste of food. With current refrigerators and our busy lifestyles, its quite easy to lose track of the foods we have. Its also challenging to utilize the right foods in cooking before certain ingredients spoil. We spent some time sketching, generating concepts and finally creating a prototype out of foam core and paper. The Fridginator 5000 concept had finally come to life. The Fridginator 5000 is a product that helps food wasters mitigate the waste of food. The system tracks food within the fridge in real time, providing the user with information on which foods are spoiled, about to spoil, and suggestions on which foods to use first – and how. To test our design we visited a home of three male students who all agreed food waste was a big issue in a shared space.

The Team:

Marie Bautista
Austin Toombs
Kamlesh Jain

Affinity Diagram Report:

Usability Test Report:

Project Summary:

Tidylandlord.com was created for property landlords. We specifically created the web site with the small landlord in mind; landlords who owned 1-20 or so property units. Small landlords typically have full time jobs as well while the property business is a side occupation. The problem landlords are faced with is the management of information, keeping track of all the data floating around. Large-scale landlords usually have employees that manage information, or expensive software to keep track of all the data. Our solution is simple; we have essentially created a free, lightweight and easy-to-use web site that the landlord can access from anywhere. We provide the landlord tools to manage property data, tenant data, staff data, financial data, and their documents. The landlords can run specific reports within the site similar to those reports created for business meetings.

Property Data: Here the landlords can keep track of their properties; addresses, the amount of rent, number of units if it is a multiple unit building, number of bedrooms, bathrooms, security deposit amount, and any relevant comments.

Tenant Data: Tenant data will be stored here with full name, contact information, when their lease starts and ends, late fees and grace periods, rent amounts, etc.

Staff Data: Some landlords will hire employees or contractors to get work done for them, in some cases; just a plumber or an electrician. In this section of the site, the landlord can manage contact information for all vendors or staff.

Financial Data: Financial data is very important to keep track of when running any business. We give the landlord some tools to properly manage their business finances. The landlords insert income and expenses into the site, along with some other important information such as the date received and the category of income/expense. Using this data we can manipulate the information to allow the landlords to run reports. For example; the landlord can run a report to find the total income for a specific month of a specific year.

Documents: There are several documents needed to efficiently run a property management business. These documents include: rental applications, lease agreements, late notices, general notices, maintenance notices, etc. We have designed an area in our site where the landlord can upload documents and download them later from any location.

In order to find and rank the top player killers in all of Tibia, so I created Tibiafrags.com (site no longer online). This niche site provided stats on the most ruthless player killers on each server, as well as overall. In addition I created content including videos, photos, and guides directly related to PvP (Player vs. Player) battles. The second iteration was Tibiatome which focused more on game history and carefully written guides made to assist players in their adventures.

I could no longer sustain the time commitment of keeping the sites alive, but I still have fond memories of my experience creating the sites.

Development:

Tibia displays character pages that list deaths for each player, this is where I had to get my data from. The script (written in Perl & CGI) essentially scrapes web pages searching for character deaths – which would be input into a database and a +1 score added to the killer’s “score” or “frags”. The data quickly added up, amounting to several hundred thousand records in the database.

Target Group:

We chose orphan children (age 9-11) in the US who have lost both of their parents in an unexpected death. We were interested in learning about the methods of coping with death at very young ages.

Target Group Tasks:

• Write a letter to your parents and explain how you feel.
• Draw an image of your family.
• Mold the clay to show your favorite memory had with your parents. Then take an image and glue it on this page.
• Use the camera to take a picture of one of your favorite places to go with your parents, then glue it on this page.
• Use the camera to take pictures of things that remind you of your parents, then place those pictures in the journal.
• Create a memorial to your parents using the memory box, paint, clay, pipe cleaners, and whatever else you would like to decorate it with.

All of the above tasks would be recorded / input into the included journal which we could then study. The child would allowed to keep the box and artifacts within for participating in the study.

The Team:

Brian Oppenlander
Marie Bautista
Austin Toombs
Kamlesh Jain