Week 7: Concretizing system

This week, my teammates and I started to throw questions and concretize every rule of our system so that not to meet any unexpected conflicts. Assuming that the users are using this system and product, we explored as many as possible scenarios among roommates and asked each other “What if…?” questions. It involves,
“What if one woke up unexpectedly earlier than he or she is supposed to, what kind of interface he or she should face? What kind of notification should the system send to other roommates?”, “What if one’s latest wake-up-time overlaps other roommate’s bathroom-use-time?”, “What if one gets annoyed with the system’s decision? In this case, what can the system do for users at most?” etc.

We discussed on tangible and intangible forms we’re going to utilize for our system. The system includes, 1) ‘vibrating pad’ that should be placed underneath user’s pillow or embedded inside the pillow (decided to use pad instead of pillow since people’s purchasing pillow is largely based on their preferences), 2) ‘ceiling display system’ that connects to one’s mobile phone and shows contents users might need right after waking up (we’ll be discussion on these contents later but for example, availability of using bathroom, remaining time of using bathroom etc), 3) ‘types and forms of interactions’ users might use when using the system, 4) ‘sensor embedded in bathroom’ that detects user’s motion and notifies others that someone is using the bathroom.

While discussing, we faced one possibility: if one woke up earlier than she or he planned and if there is enough time to do things except ‘have to do things’ what contents should the system represent to user? We all agreed there is certain amount of time that we need to use in order to do ‘have to do things’ such as taking a shower, putting on clothes, preparing and eating breakfast, and backpacking. But when one has enough time, she or he would likely to do things they prefer. We’ll figure out in later meeting.