Goals for Week 3:
- Have phone slot prototype ready for user testing
- Have 3 fractal visualizations for user testing
- Have sound and lights working with RFID
- Rough prototypes complete for user controls
- Scheduling / logistics for finding your users for testing
What We Accomplished & Learned:
Phone Slot Prototype
To develop a phone slot prototype, we constructed a phone slot out of cardboard and tried a few different sensors to determine what might be the best solution for detecting a phone being placed in the box. After experimenting with a pressure sensor and determining that it was too small, we pivoted to using the trigger switch that we had prototyped last semester. To ensure that the switch would be triggered every time regardless of phone size or weight, we added a second switch and a small piece of cardboard to equalize the phone’s weight on the bottom of the phone slot.
This configuration worked reliably and consistently, so we adjusted our code to trigger the next code block (turning on the RFID scanner) when either switch had been triggered. Next, we installed a small 5-pixel Neopixel strip on the phone slot, and built a base for the phone slot to stand on.
Sounds & Lights Working with RFID
The most challenging part of this week was getting our sounds working with the lights and the RFID tags so that when a different tag was touched to the scanner, it would trigger a specific light setting and play a specific sound. We started off by creating a p5 sketch that could communicate via serial with our Arduino Mega microcontroller, and running this sketch on a local server. We jumped right in to the p5.sound library and experimented with loading, playing and stopping mp3s. By the end of class last Thursday, we had gotten an mp3 to play on our webpage when a switch was triggered on the Arduino, but it triggered infinitely and sounded crazy. I realized after uploading these videos that the sound is pretty quiet, but hopefully you can hear something happening when the switches and RFID tags are triggered.
Later on, we fixed the infinite loop of song-playing and switched the physical trigger from being a switch to being an RFID tag in our code. We downloaded some sample beach soundscapes to test with, and finally got the webpage to trigger different songs/sounds based on which RFID tag had been triggered. Again, it’s a quieter video than intended!
Last, we had to find four more sound samples (desert campfire, underwater, forest with stream, and thunderstorm) and try to equalize them all. We discovered in user testing that a bit more equalizing remains to be done to get all of the samples to be around the same volume.
However, the samples were good enough to be inserted into our p5 sketch. Next, we assigned different colors to the screen based on which song had been triggered, and wrote some more code to get the sounds to transition between one another (using a gentle fade effect) when a new RFID tag was detected. You can see the results in the video of our prototype for user testing, in the next section!
Prototypes for User Controls
While we had most of the technology working at this point, we needed to do a few more adjustments before we were ready for user testing. We did some soldering to extend our switches and LEDs, and added a new circular row of Neopixels (physically and in our code) to light up the RFID scanner when the phone slot had been triggered. Last, we hooked up our phone slot and crafted some quick cardboard squares with simple pictures on them for our RFID tags.
You can watch a video of what our setup looked like at this point below. Ready for user testing! You can see that when the phone is removed from the slot, the sounds, lights and screen all fade to black, and the phone slot lights fade back to red – a bit of functionality also added this week. Again, sorry for the quiet video!
To start testing what the actual materials for the user controls would be made out of, we gathered four different materials (ceramic, stone, wood, and acrylic) for users to touch and prioritize (see below).
Fractal Visualizations
Another one of our goals for this week was to have three simple fractal visualizations to present to users. Since last week we made two other simple p5 sketches to show users and get their feedback! Here is the one we had for the Week 2 check in. Also we had a boomerang spiral animation, and a more geometric rotating circle. (While we aren’t strictly sticking to spirals found in nature, these sketches are important to build and learn more about combining this math, p5, and aesthetics!). After making these two other sketches we now are exploring other ways to create movements with shapes / points, with implementing functions like translate() and applyMatrix(). Also, we are excited to look more into making our visuals look more 3D as well as playing with size, speed of rotation, opacity, and speed of growth.
User Testing
User testing was quite successful! For this round, we had three primary questions that we wanted answers to:
- Is changing the environment with RFID cubes intuitive?
- Do people understand what to do with the phone slot?
- What do people like or dislike about the fractals?
We did user testing in two different sections. First, we wanted to test the user control setup to see if it was intuitive and if people knew what to do with the phone slot.
For this segment of user testing, we got 14 people to experiment with the controls. Since we wanted to see if our setup was intuitive, we gave the testers minimal instruction. We described the scene and the context, and then let them try whatever they thought was appropriate.
About 50% of our testers knew what the phone slot was for right away, and put their phone straight in. The other 50% were more confused. Some people tried to put the RFID tags into the phone slot, others tried to press on the LEDs, and many tried to scan the RFID tags before it was time. Once people did figure out the phone slot, they generally understood to place an RFID tag onto the scanner and instantly saw the results (the sound and light being triggered). After testing, all of our users seemed to enjoy the experience of being able to try out the different “environments”, and a few mentioned that they thought the phone slot was a good idea (minimizing distractions for ultimate calmness).
From testing the user controls, we have a few key takeaways. First, a small amount of instructions should probably be provided to users of our room in the real-world scenario. This should help to clarify things for the group of users that was initially confused by the phone slot. Second, when designing the enclosures for the RFID tags and scanners, the shapes of the scanner platform and the RFID enclosures should match (ie, circles and circles, squares and squares, etc.). This will help people understand that the RFID tags should be placed on the RFID scanner and not in the phone slot. In the real-world situation, our RFID tags won’t fit in the phone slot (as they did for this user test), which should also help to reduce confusion.
We also gave our users the different materials to touch while closing their eyes, to see which textures they most preferred. Most of our users preferred ceramic, while stone and acrylic were the next popular materials. A few people liked the wood, but it was the least popular material of the bunch.
Another important part of our user testing was having them take a look at our spiral visualizations! Hearing user feedback from individuals who had no idea what our project was turned out to be very useful and constructive. We showed users all 3 visuals, told them how to change the color schemes to their liking, and told them to spend as long as they wanted watching them. Afterwards, we asked these four focus questions: What did you like & dislike about each of them? How did the color selection enhance your experience? What made you stop watching? and If these visuals were combined with an immersive space, what would you want added on? (overall throughout these questions we tried to ground their answers in how they felt during the whole thing).
The feedback from this section was very helpful! One interesting takeaway was the concept of predictability. For example, once people felt they knew what was going to happen next with the animation, they were no longer engaged. Despite the fact that most people’s immediate quotes were about being entranced or calmed, they still lost interest once they figured out the patter. Which makes sense upon hearing it (to be fair these are pretty simple visuals), and led nicely into the question about immersion. Everyone said they wanted sound elements paired with the visuals, and that they wanted the visuals to be either huge or several small ones complementing each other. After hearing this I think a harmonic combination of several rotating visuals would be very engaging yet still calming. Also, the sketch from week 2 was described as “random” which was off-putting to some people, but others really liked the sense of falling into the growing circle. Also, the geometric rotating sketch evoked a sense of anticipation in people that we think could be combined with relaxing elements of other sketches.
With regards to colors, people generally seemed to find a color set they liked with the first sketch they saw and then stuck with it in the other two. Everyone spoke very highly of being able to choose their color preferences, and some even described feeling energized from one as opposed to calmed from another.
Nate and Elsa's Capstone 