Thoughts on “Molly Steenson on AI impacts design” video: During her talk I was trying to jot down the notes about what made me excited about her talk. Moments that stood out to me was Mameline Gannon’s project Mimus. I saw this project in like 2018, and I thought it was so cool. I couldn’t figure out what exactly I liked about it though. Looking back now, i think it was the emotional component of the robot. I liked how the robot acted like an animal and looks like it almost has feelings. The fact that is “curious” is really interesting, it makes you forget you are looking at a robot. Robots that respond to people in these mannerisms are really exciting to me. I also liked the aspect of the talk when she mentioned uncanny valley. I think its interesting how robots really do cause such a visceral reaction from its users. I think this is an interesting area to explore as well. Like trying to figure out what makes us human and why we react to robots in certain ways is cool.
Thoughts “Anatomy of AI” reading: – Moments I thought were interesting in the reading. – Statua Citofonica – the “talking statue” this is so cool because theres so many layers to it. its an old example of how advances in tech are usually centered around the elite/ruling class. Its wild seeing that systems like dont change, people dont change. People now and then enjoy experiencing tech without really knowing why or how it works. – ”Looking from the perspective of deep time, we are extracting Earth’s history to serve a split second of technological time, in order to build devices than are often designed to be used for no more than a few years.” wow! This is so sad. How theres so much work and wonder behind creating products like amazon echo, yet only one person on top benefits. the comparison to the pyramids of Egypt is jarring. Like humans dont change, tech does. We still worship the elite, the gods, the ones with power and wealth and continue to feed them, sometimes at the expense of ourselves.
DIagram of Intelligence in the Home Environment
I mapped out the inputs and outputs of a potential system in a house. The objects in each room, the floors, and the lighting would all be connected through this system to create an optimal living space.
Brainstorming
We brainstormed potential problem spaces and areas of focus. Some research questions we derived from this was
– how might we use AI to assist people with ADHD? –How might we use AI to help people keep track of their chores? – How might we use AI to mimic human behavior and body language?
Insights Into Modern Systems
After we realized we wanted to make smart homes more engaging. We looked at existing smart home systems and had three main takeaways.
There was mainly a focus on efficiency
Products feel disconnected from each other
Limited interactions (mainly controlled by sound)
Research
We thought there was room for improvement in smart homes, by focusing on adding emotional qualities to smart home products.
We learned that emotional connections make experiences more engaging.
People prefer a visibly unified smart home system
Enchanted objects better engage the subconscious
Research Question
How might we make smart home experiences more engaging through emotive products?
Target Demographic We decided our target audience was young professionals who lived alone. This age group would most likely have a smart home system and may benefit from emotional interactions, since they are living alone. This age group may also benefit from utilizing a smart home system to organize tasks and chores in their house because they are newly graduated and often living alone for the first time.
Phase 1
We decided to create a smart assistant robot that would act as a mediator between the user and the smart products in the house.
We decided to focus on user’s morning routine for our enhanced smart home system. We storyboarded every task or step in this morning routine to see which area could be improved or could benefit from engaging more with the smart robot assistant.
Inspo
We looked at enchanted objects in movies and existing emotional robots to help us design our own system.
Physical Prototypes
We created physical prototypes of what the robot might look like. We decided that the robot would be small and would be able to move around the room.
System Overview
We mapped out the overview of the system to hash out the interaction points between the user and the bot and the user and the smart products.
Interaction Prototypes
We created storyboards of potential interactions. The first gif shows an interaction between the bot and the smart blinds. The bot would see that the blinds need to open and would hit a button to wake them up. The blinds would then yawn and move in a more natural way. The second interaction is between the user and the bot. This shows the bot helping the user wake up and start their day.
Shift in focus
After receiving feedback, we realized that we were trying to do too much with this project. We decided that we didn’t need the bot to enhance the system. We decided to only focus on using emotion and expression to directly enhance the smart products in the system.
Design Guidelines
Humanize the relationship between house and user
Product must work with existing smart products
Create a unifying smart home system
To clarify again, here is the research question & solution
Research Question: How might we make smart home experiences more engaging through emotive products?
Solution: Beamer, a smart ceiling mounted projector that adds emotive qualities to your smart home
Beamer prototypes
Our first prototype: We created a digital rendering and then 3D printed it. The object would exist on the ceiling of each room. and would rotate and project onto different objects.
Second Prototype: We decided to round out the model more. to make it look more uniformed. We stuck with white and silver because we didn’t want the object to be too distracting in the users’ room.
Beamer works as its own smart hub, integrating with other smart products.
Mounted on the ceiling, it tracks the user’s location in their home and projects onto the necessary products near them.
Multiple can be connected and placed in different rooms to encompass the whole smart home system
Initial Prototypes – Interactions
These are the initial prototypes we created to show examples of the objects engaging with the user.
#1 shows Beamer projecting hands onto the wall to signal that the light is being turned on.
#2 Beamer projects eyes onto the blinds to greet the user in the morning. Beamer knows when the user is awake through the system.
#3 Beamer projects hands onto the wall to suggest to the user that they are late. The smart home system knows the users schedule and can sense that they have not left their room yet.
Feedback
We realized that the hands were kinda creepy. So we decided to move forward with only eyes. We realized that this is the most emotive part of the body. We also decided to create personas for each object to better define the characteristics and personalities for each smart product.
Second Iterations
In our second round of prototypes, we only used eyes. we used different colors and expressions for each object to match the user personas we created.
Feedback
the interaction between the object and the user still seemed unclear. The expressions of each object made more sense now, but the story behind it still needed to be improved.
We created new storyboards to figure out the interaction more. We created four interactive storyboards focusing on the smart trash can, blinds, and clock. In these storyboards, we figured out the exact reaction and interaction between the user and the objects.
Final Interactions
Reflections
We struggling defining the concept and the purpose early on. In the future, I will make sure to have a concrete research question and rational from the start and stick with it. Also in the future, I will make prototypes sooner, so that I have something to continue iterating on. I also would like to further develop the visual language of the system and look of the Beamer prototype.
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