Prototyping

We are now at the stage of prototyping! This is one of the most fun, creative and tedious times of the design process.
A throwaway prototype is useful in understanding the exact requirements of your brief and/or product and helps you work out if there are details which need further refinement.
For Pirate Ship I encountered several problems in the use of materials and began to understand that certain elements must be exact in order to make the toy function properly.
An example of this would be the decision to use a smaller polystyrene ball to ensure that the prototype is not too high. This made it look unrealistic and unable to be accessed by children who are 6-8 years old.

Materials that were used:

• Dry foam floral wreath (x2) 
• Polystyrene foam sphere (cut in half)
• Paddle pop sticks
• 600gsm white card
• Inktense Derwent Pencils
• Sequins/sequin pins
• Brown felt
• Foamtastic 
• Modelling clay
• Tiger Glue

The prototype was made to scale as 1/20th of the intended size of Pirate Ship. The prototype has a perimeter of 30cm with all model children having a height of approximately 4-6cm. 

Method:

• Draw circle on white card, colour in with inktense pencils to look like timber. Then wait to dry. Draw 'quadrant' guidelines.
• Cut out circle and glue onto dry foam floral wreath.
• Glue and pin sequins 2cm apart from the quadrant guidelines. The sequins represent the LED lights that we intend to use in the final product. Repeat this step for each of the quadrants.
• Place paddle pop sticks in around the perimeter of the dry foam floral wreath.
• Construct paddle pop plank (step that children will use to enter Pirate Ship).
• Cut polystyrene foam sphere in half. Cover with brown felt using sequin pins. 
• Place inside the dry foam floral wreath to make 'balancing' part of the product.
• Finish by creating the objects on the ship using modelling clay. These include the parrot, barrel, treasure chest and cannon. Follow this step by creating figures for demonstration using the same process.
• Finally create wheel for the ship and pirate flag. Now your Pirate Ship prototype is complete! 

Other design activities we've tried

Alongside the design activities being presented in lecture, our team has tried out some additional activities over the course of the past few weeks:

Pinterest board

• Intended to be used as an image or mood board. Our team has used it as a source of design inspiration, and to explore existing products.

Parallel Prototyping

• We tested out multiple concepts concurrently during the bodystorming activity in Week 5. To do so we made paper/cardboard prototypes to act out scenarios, as well as explain concepts to other team members.
• Later on we also used paper prototypes to explain our concepts to users during the user evaluation phase. We found that having something 3D in front of a person was much more effective than simply communicating our idea verbally, or just asking someone to read about it on a concept card.
• All in all, we made paper/cardboard prototypes for four of our concepts, excluding the final prototype for Pirate Ship: 'Grid It', 'Asobu Box', 'Pirate Ship' (paper version), and 'Barnyard Bounce'.

Design Studio Methodology

• See our previous blog post
• Based on a workshop conducted at a UX BNE meetup. More information on the method available here.
• Intended as an iterative way to generate, present and refine ideas by combining group and individual brainstorming in one session.
• Structure of the method (we ended up altering the time and structure for our own purposes)
• 5 minutes individual idea generation
• 3 minutes presenting ideas to a group and refining them through group discussion
• 5 minutes individual idea generation, this time borrowing from concepts that have been presented in the previous group discussion.
• Pros of using this method:
• Allows for cross-pollination of ideas without tendency towards group-think (one person within a group dominating a discussion)
• Fast & flexible method
• Allows team members who have different modes of expression to present their ideas. A team member who is a highly verbal thinker can present their ideas in the group discussion, while a team member who works better by internally going through thoughts in their heads first can take some time to do this before contributing their ideas.

The team hard at work

Planning our Video

Before filming our Kickstarter-style video, we brainstormed a couple of ideas and came up with a rough outline of what kind of story and narrative we wanted to use. We then wrote up the script and storyboard for the video simultaneously before scouting locations (and actors!) as well as a shot list and pre-production checklist to keep us on track.

All in all shooting took us a total of 3 days. Our video also had a fair bit of post-production, and Akanksha also had to work on animating a number of sequences to help explain Pirate Ship. Below is the final storyboard we used for filming, although a couple of the scenes were changed during editing.

What does getting better at a physical skill mean?

Maybe a provisional definition of how we determine "enskillment" or getting better at a bodily skill:

- First stage: learning a set of bodily skills that forms the foundation of a broader physical skill. For balance this includes adjusting your body weight, reorientating your vision & familiarising your brain with what it should see when you are off balance, changing your posture etc.

-Second stage: familiarising your body with the physical skill, making this taught foundation "your own" and almost second nature.

-Third stage: using this familiarised pattern of movement as a strategy to respond to different environments and situations. This is the (creative) application of balance to a variety of situations which require it: throwing a ball, staying still on a swaying or slippery surface, dancing.

How we organise our team

Over the course of the past 6 weeks we've had to make a lot of changes to how we coordinate as a team and manage our workflow:

• Weekly Monday meetings: including an agenda to structure meetings (decided in week 2), placing a time limit (2 hours max) and writing down a list of outputs we'd like to achieve at the end of each meeting we have (decided in week 3).

• Blogging: initially we agreed to have blog posts up by the Friday of each week, but this was changed to Mondays so we had the weekend to write up something. In week 4 we also decided to start tagging our blog posts so we had a better way of sorting and navigating through all the information we were contributing individually.

• Google Drive folder: used for us to store documents etc. We also upload more timely documents to the Facebook group.

• Minutes: previously we were uploading them to our team's Google Drive folder, but having them on the blog made them a lot more visible for us and they acted as a good reminder of the tasks we wanted to accomplish for a particular week.

• Google Calendar: instead of just having a paper copy of the plan we submitted with the team charter, we decided to have the calendar online and linked to on both our blog and Facebook group page as a reminder of where we are in the project time-wise. 

• Communication: we tried a couple of different things (WhatsApp group, Facebook group, Mobile numbers). Ultimately we've fallen back on using our Facebook group for most of our communication. We have use it to coordinate meetings, deal with admin tasks and discuss issues that come up in between our Monday meetings. 

Minutes 11-04-14

Minutes

Design Thinking Group Meeting – 11/04/2014

Meeting called to order at 2.00pm

Members Present:

Katie Moon

Bianca Pretorius

Hannah Biddell

Mahmood Khalfan Al-yarubi

Ann-Maree Chua

Srivastava Akanksha Hirokawa

Agenda:

1)   Evaluation matrix

2)   User testing possibilities

1)    Evaluation matrix

Evaluating top 5 alternative concepts (Pin the pixels, Grid it, Asobu box, Balance it, Hooping around) against dominant concept (Barnyard Bounce) on specific criteria. Criteria are:

Brief requirements	Interactive design principles
Skill building (overall) Targeted and specific Self sufficient, self explanatory (mapping) Original Physical and reproducible Fun factor Develops/improves a physical skill Social Usability Cost	Feedback Feed-forward Visibility & Constraints Affordances Feasibility

RUN 1

Balance it

Balance it came out as the most positive within our specific criteria.

Safety à rubber stabilisers under the edges of the foam board.

Make it more self explanatory/self sufficient

Have feet marked on the board for levels (i.e. put your feet here)

            Put a map/story/adventure/pictures on the board

Fun factor

            At a story to the board

Kids have to move around the board

Physical skills to be done at each level (stand on one foot, run on the spot)

Affordances

            Lights will guide to the centre of the board to start

***Earn your sea legs (pirate theme) – steady the ship to stop sinking***

***Blue lights -  water coming on the board/ship when it is unbalanced (feed-forward)

OUTCOME

à Improved concept – feet marks, board levels.

à New concept – Pirate Ship

Grid-it

Grid it came out the most negative within our specific criteria.

OUTCOME

à Not targeted to a specific skill.

à This concept has been put on hold for the interim.  

Asobu box:

Make it more targeted and specific

Add more sensory/touch elements so users know how to interact with/use the object

Click/stack/pull apart

Make it more specific and directional – give goals.

Add interactivity (NFC card)

Options for what you can do with each object – i.e. Pokedex

Goals to build specific things

NFC and journal in ipad

Add a modular element to the box

OUTCOME

à New/improved concept Asobu box 2.0 (NFC, ipad, additions)

Hooping Around:

It’s not a self-explanatory product; it’s a game with rules.

How to make it more self-explanatory?

Themed? Moving hoops?

OUTCOME

à It is a game, not a product. Making it into more of a product detracts from it’s originality.

à This concept has been put on hold for the interim.

Pin the Pixels

Make it more skill building?

Target practice. Reaction time.  Timer

Make the target smaller and more precise for each level.

OUTCOME

à Improved concept – increase difficulty over levels with more difficult target practice.

à This concept has been put on hold for the interim.

RUN 2

Comparing the original Balance It to new/improved concepts. Same criteria as above.

Concepts: Balance it 2.0, Pirate Ship, Asobu Box 2.0, Barnyard Bounce.

OUTCOME

Pirate ship came out as the best option from our specific criteria. Second was Barnyard Bounce, third Balance It 2.0, fourth Asobu Box 2.0.

2) User testing possibilities

Poppy

Kid’s church

Stall option

Secondary user testing – i.e. teachers, parents, etc.

Meeting adjourned at 5.00 PM