Superheroes in action!
Welcome back! We are the X- Fours as you may already know. We kicked Sprint 3 off by watching a superhero movie called Venom. It is based on the Marvel comics. What you don’t know, we are superheroes in a way. This is because we are solving a design challenge: “How do we use participant data to inform them of a frustration state so that they may release or reduce it in order to aid them in their reintegration process?”
Let me refresh your mind how we got to the design challenge. From our research in Sprint one, we narrowed it into three topics that can be tracked by data. These topics were based on participants struggle when they reintegrate back in the society: Finance, Isolation and Aggression. We got attracted by the fact that aggression is a measurable factor to track the data easily. At the same, you are in control of your data. No third parties are involved.
From Sprint 2 during the user research, we learned people feel more frustrated rather than being aggressive when they are in an irritating situation. This made our design challenge a lot more relatable to the society in an everyday life situation.
Our main goal in sprint 3 was creating prototypes to get out of the wearable idea. We managed to make five rapid prototypes.
Visiting another Exodus house in the Hague is very exciting.
We had the chance to meet Mike Wouters the team leader of The Hague. At the same time, we tested all these prototypes on him, a caretaker and Max a member of our target group. It was great to see the reactions from them. At the same time, we got useful insights into how the product should be portable.
What all superheroes do they involve people who can help them out. We contacted experts so that they could help us out with our prototypes during the translate session. A translate session is part of the SCREAM program where you involve an external expert that can help you out with the project. We were lucky to have three translate sessions!
Our first translate session was with Reframing studio: (made design brief with Exodus) Justus Tomlow & Eline van Galen (did her graduation project: Re-integratie na detentie) and Exodus (our partner): Roselyne van der Heul & Ed Deij. From that day the product should be portable, intuitive and preventing the frustration.
Our second translate session was with Kees Plattel, a freelance creative technologist. He brought in a lot of energy and a new way of looking at our design challenge. Kees helped us ideate from scratch. So, we let go of the five prototypes. We looked at our prototype parameters once again.
Based on that we mapped out different stress points in a day of a participant. Labelling low, medium and high. This creates an overview of the day. This makes a clear distinction to use the low-stress levels to prevent high-stress levels. In this case, it is frustration.
Our third translate session was with Frolic studio, an innovative product design studio. We showed our rapid prototypes to Andrew Spitz & Ruben van der Vleuten. The product should have a ritual or routine so it creates value for the participants. Another useful insight what we learned from Frolic studio was proof of concept. This means we do not have to focus on making the prototype to fully work. Rather have enough evidence that it is technically possible to make it work, if the project would get sufficient funds. This gives us more time and space to think of how to visualise our concept.
All the new things that we have learned. We updated our design challenge to make it clear:
How might we physically represent the participant’s stress level/emotional state in a way that makes them more aware of their frustration?
We diverged all our findings by using a design toolkit method called the MoSCoW Method.
To summarise our product has three parts. Part one
1. Wearable that detects the stress levels by GSR sensors
2. Data application storing data
3. The physical representation of awareness, feedback
Ending our sprint 3 we went to the Ton Ton club, an arcade bar. We played a game called Shit happens. It is a funny card game. We highly recommend it, if you dare?
What to expect in sprint 4
- Present our concept at the Internet of people event.
- Visualise the proof of concept.
- First steps of making the 3 part product tangible
If you want to follow our process through this project, follow our Tumblr page. If you have expertise in a field relating to behaviour modification, wearable tech, or anything you feel is related to our topic and want to help with this project, please don’t hesitate to contact us!
The Digital Society School is a growing community of learners, creators and designers who create meaningful impact on society and its global digital transformation. Check us out at digitalsocietyschool.org.
