Chakra: Behavioral Prototype
Behavior prototype of a yoga-posture-correcting device. Collaborated & documented with Kristen Olson and Lauren Rakusin.
DESIGN
Our group was drawn to the wearable posture tracker, especially in the context of yoga. Initial brainstorms for such a device included sensory yoga pants, wristbands, and wrap devices, in addition to interactive mats. During the course of our secondary research we were impressed by the amount of existing technology designed for yoga and eventually decided to scale down the scope of our device to be more akin to popular posture trackers
like the Lumo.
Although we were excited about this idea we ran into some stumbling blocks in terms of how to mockup a convincing wearable device for testing. We felt wristbands, pants, and mats were too well known to be mocked up for a made up product so we decided to concentrate our efforts on a device that attached near the spine. Initial material exploration led us to get a sheet of pliable magnet to allow for flexibility and smoothness. To really make the device realistic though, we felt we had to get some sort of electronics involved. We ended up taking apart a usb drive to be the core of our prototype.
Our design consists of two parts, a wearable device and a laptop-side program to provide feedback information. Conceptually, the device contains an accelerometer to tell when the spine is deviating from the natural alignment. The program in the laptop collects information
from the sensor, and when the user’s posture is incorrect, it plays the pre-recorded audio feedback to instruct the user to correct the posture.
In order to make the behavioral prototype, we set up two laptops, one in the user testing room, and one in another room where the user could not see.
We looked into screen-sharing programs like join.me and TeamViewer, but neither of those worked for our needs during our test runs. Finally we decided to use Skype, which allowed Irene to view the tester remotely
and play the audio feedback according to tester’s action. The audio was pre-recorded to sound automated on Windows Narrator. Irene would play the recordings on her phone so they would come over the speakers on the testing computer, it took us a while to arrive at this solution.
EVALUATE
We were very successful with our user test. Our participant was a 6’1” CPA named Jonathan who has practiced yoga, but not for the past 6 months. He was cooperative and did not exhibit any suspicions that our product was fake. We felt that not touching any technology during the test helped the believability factor in addition to keeping the series of moves tested relatively simple.
With respect to the device itself we felt the fact that the exposed circuitry was key to making the test real to the user. Showing the device light up and “calibrate” through a simple program on terminal before attaching the device in a place that was out of sight/out of mind also enhanced the testing experience.
We would have liked to be able to feed Irene more camera angles to make the test that much more organic, in terms of the types of corrections we would be confident providing in terms of hand and foot position. However, keeping the moves simple and being lucky the tester did not deviate drastically from any of the movements allowed the experience to remain
authentic.
When asked if he would like a way to turn-off the feedback at any point, our user said he preferred ongoing feedback. We also prompted him about whether he preferred audio vs. haptic feedback and while he saw nothing wrong with vibration alerts, as a primarily at-home yogi he felt the audio was most effective for corrections. At one point after the testing the
user asked specifically about how the device knew about his shoulder positioning. Lauren and Kristen explained that we had been able to calibrate the device to his height range (5’10–6’3) so the average length of the spine was within range to detect misalignment in the shoulders vs. hips.
Overall we had a great time with this project. We utilized a variety of materials and digital tools to make a believable prototype/interaction. It was helpful to experience how you can test a concept without investing a great amount of resources.
PROCESS
PROTOTYPE
