IoT Update — Week 5

Following the presentation this week and from discussions with our coach Justin, our plan moving forward has changed in some ways. This post will outline some of these changes.

Old ideas we will continue:

• LED strips in communal area. The LED strips are simple to manipulate and will create an interesting and effective atmosphere that can be linked to the overall theme.

Old ideas we will discontinue:

• Survey. This idea of asking a question of the users to stimulate their thinking regarding stress was a bit too simple for us. The idea is quite simple and won’t encourage return users. The interaction was always going to be clunky and forced.

New ideas:

• “Breathing Pavilion”. Controlled breathing is a method that many use to relieve stress. In collaboration with the fabrication and materials groups, we want to create a kinetic facade that can create a point of interest for the pavilion’s users, with the focus on raising awareness of issues related to stress. This facade will most likely be fabric, which will be controlled with motors, giving the impression that the pavilion is breathing. Users may be able to control the breathing in some way — this will be explored later.
• Working with AR. Augmented Reality will be a powerful tool in our pavilion for communicating with users. It is also a discipline that IoT can easily work effectively with. Initial ideas include data collection and visualisation. More research will be done this week, particularly into the interaction of Unity and Arduino.

Quite a bit of editing was required this week, however, we feel that our path forward is more defined and stronger.