meet the food you eat

Beyond the Desktop:Networking the EverydayTangible User Interface Course, Heather MartinProject Process

Adam Little, Siddharth Muthyala & Eilidh DicksonJanuary 2009CIID/DKDS Pilot Year

The Brief:Design a pair (or series) of networked objects that illustrate digital information (bits) in a physical form. Your objects must be manipuable by your specified user group (i.e. they should not just be ambient physical objects that only reflect and display digital data) but must enable people to interact directly with data through your objects. Your concepts can be of any scale (i.e. jewelry-like, hand-held devices, interactive lighting, interactive furniture, interactive environments etc.) but your final concept must be physically interactive, contain no display or screen (LCD) and be produced as fully working electronic prototypes by the end of the course. You also need to consider what physical interactions, affordances, attributes and metaphors are appropriate for your user group.

Key Resources: 2 Books that proved to provide us with great inspiration regarding using computing within everyday life to provide new and meaningful experiences.

Statement of Intent v.1:Given a world in which everyday objects are networked through an internet of things and pervasive computing helps augment our lives, how can this technology help us gain insights about our daily routines? How can these insights be delivered in an emotional way that encourage us to reflect on the way we lead our lives and the affect it has on others in our society?

We believe one of the greatest values of this new technology is the ease in which it can provide information about specific products and help us gain new perspective on our daily actions. We feel if we could motivate people to take make these small changes to their lifestyle, the collaboration could have a greater affect on our society.

Brainstorming: Thinking different contexts for our project. Some of these included Health, social responsibility, use of technology & media and sustainability.

Context: We decide to explore how people can access information about the food they buy to make informed decisions about their actions and help build a sustainable world.

Idea Generation: Sketches of initial ideas and thoughts. Generally get everything on paper!

Feedback after Week 1:As a group we were trying to design A TUI that would allow you to see the impact of the food you are buying is having on the environment. Our initial idea was to give the user an overall (good/bad) rating of how their purchases are effecting the environment by using the metaphor of a scale, and weighing your weight in “Food Miles” The technology used for this is based on the idea that in the future, everything will be tagged and have a database of information about that product. We want to pursue the idea of Personal Informatics and how these can provide people with meaningful and relevant data to help make more sustainable and socially responsible decisions. After a Feedback session on Thursday with Heather, Christopher and Durrell Bishop our approach has changed slightly.

We were given positive feedback on our context and approach towards social and sustainable responsibility, but we were advised to provide a deeper and more meaningful experience for the user, so it becomes more of an exploratory and useful tool for the user to see the differences in their purchases and understand how they can change their daily routines if they wish to do so! The following week was to focus on making rapid prototypes to develop our idea further and to do user testing. By building prototypes in the following weeks we gained great insights from doing so as we were able to engage with the user and get feedback

Initial Prototypes: A portable device that you take shopping with you, to see rating about different products. It doesn’t give you rich enough information without a GUI.

Initial Prototypes: Exlporing the metaphor of a scale/balance to see environmental impact of different types of food...trying to work out the logic!

Initial Prototypes: Exploring how two scales can be network to provide comparisons about two different products ie. the amount of chemicals used in their production.

Initial Prototypes: Building a scale that you can compare two types of fruit, with re-gards to the distance they travelled, amount of water used and chemicals used.

Initial Prototypes: Developing the previous idea so you see the environmental impact of the product by adding weights which represent a rating system.

Developing Prototypes: Refining our idea of the balance to see the environmental impact of the food you by. Starting to prepare for midway critique.

Developing Prototypes: Whilst User Testing this idea we found that our rating system we had developed was confusing when combined with the scale metaphor.

Developing Prototypes: Prototyping ways to select the information that you want toexplore. In this case we look at how a slider can be used to select questions.

Statement of intent v.2:The rise of network and RFID technology and the emergence of products like CueCat and Mir:ror are pointing to a time when everyday objects will be connected to an untold amount of information. We are interested in how people can access this information, especially when connected to consumer products, to make informed decisions and help build a sustainable world.Our project is a hypothetical grocery store shopping tool in the form of an installation piece. It is a balance scale that allows people to measure the environmental impact behind common food items from the grocery store’s produce section. It will allow people allow people to explore environmental issues and discover that the ingredients in a simple salad are sometimes better travelled than most people they know.

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Our aim is for the scale to be hands on and fun! As an exploration tool, the intention is not to provide answers about organic agriculture, carbon emissions or the global food economy. We want to raise questions and to let people look at the food they eat in a different way. We believe this is important information and remains hidden to most people, but hopefully for not much longer.Our scale works like a traditional analytical balance that compares objects placed on one arm to weights placed on the other arm. Using RFID, the right side arm on our balance will recognize food products placed on it. The balance will download specific data related to that product. This data will represent weight and the balance will adjust accordingly. To measure this data, the user will place objects that represent weights on the left side arm.

weight sensor on this arm will determine how many objects have been placed there and will adjust the balance accordingly. Once the arms are even, the user will know a relative value of that data.Prototyping, user testing and the need to satisfy a particular brief have led us to where we currently are. We originally intended to create a product for the home but found little desire to see the environmental impact of a par-ticular food after it has been purchased. On the other hand, a portable or in store device to compare different products based on thesefactors was desirable but needed to be compact, efficient and to the point. Through making quick and dirty prototypes we were able to get Instantaneous feedback that provided meaningful results especially with understanding the mental model and metaphor of the “scale” Whilst user testing different conceptual elements of our experience, conversations led to a co-design approach.

Midpoint Presenation: Adam talking during our midway presentation. During this we got vital feedback on our conceptual idea.

Dinner Meeting: A night of reflection after our midway crit. During which we iterated our concept taking into account the feedback we were given.

HOME(Scale is in idle state with no

fruit or weights on it.)

User puts either a fruit or weight on the

scale

The scale doesn’t move or calibrate

WEIGHTUser adds a weight

represented by a tree.

They user starts to add the weights to the other

side of the scale

Scale detects weight and moves as more weights are added

When both sides of scale are

Balanced a light comes on

The user can now see the environmental

effect by the physical amount of weights

needed to balance the scale

FRUITUser decides what fruit they want to explore and places it on the

scale

Scale calibrates, as if reacting to the weight

of the fruit

The user keeps adding or removing weights in

till the scale is balanced

User decides what fruit they want to explore and places it on the

scale

User decides to change the fruit over?

HOME(Scale is in idle state with no

fruit or weights on it.)

NO

YES

Flow Diagram:

Flow Diagram:

Electronics: Hooking up the RFID reader and the first stepper motor to the arduino board .

Electronics: Hacking a digital scale to retrieve the load cell from it so we can then use it to sense when weights are being placed on our scale.

Developing Final Concept: Building a 2D foam core model of how a mechanicalkitchen scales work, finding out which points should pivot and which are fixed.

Developing Final Concept: Building a full scale 3D scale mechanism out of foam core before embarking on our final prototype.

Developing Final Concept: Our completed Foam core model, with acrylic plates torepresent where the product and weights will sit.

Developing Final Concept: AutoCAD drawings for the final scale mechanism that had to be laser cut

Developing Final Concept: Sid and Eilidh working on assembling the scale after we had laser cut the pieces out of acrylic.

Developing Final Concept: Assembled scale mechanism ready for the electronics!(the structure was build in a flatpack style so it could easily be Disassembled)

Data Collection: During our concept development we calculated the number of tree’s required to offset the CO2 emissions created during the transport of specific products.

Building final prototype: After the scale mechanism was build we had to design a custom bracket to mount the motor in place which would drive the scale.

Building final prototype: We custom cut gears on the laser cutter to attach to the motor and the pivot point of the scale. When they engaged they would move the scale.

Building final prototype: We wired up two limit switches under each side of the scale to prevent the scale from going to far and breaking. They act as a safety switch!

Building final prototype: Soldering a new power supply to the motors driver board to try and increase the voltage going to the motor. We hoped it would give it more strength.

Building final prototype: The motor and driver wired to the arduino board. After testing we realize our driver is not producing enough Current to lift the weight we require.

Building final prototype: Experimenting with the weights for the scale. Each piece will represent a number of trees required to offset the CO2 emissions used in the transportation of a specific food product

Building final prototype: After we got the new driver board attached to the motor, the weight was far more powerful. The next problem we had to over come was to find stronger gears. We slavaged some from a printer and custom built fixtures on the lathe to attached them to the stepper motor.

Time to Print: Unfortunately this book has to be printed now, so this is the last photo of Sid, Adam and Eilidh hard at work two days before the final hand in!

References:Books/papers

Everyware, The Dawning age of Ubiquitous Computing,.Adam Greenfield

Shaping Things. Bruce Sterling

Alternatives, Exlporing Information through Conceptual Design Proposals. H.Martin & B.Gaver

Environment based websites

http://www.alonovo.com/

http://www.ethicalconsumer.org/home.aspx

http://www.sicamp.org/?page_id=21

http://www.carbon-label.com/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/food_matters/foodmiles.shtml

Inspiring Projects

social Mobiles by Crispin Jones & Graham Pullen: http://www.ideo.com/work/item/social-mobiles/

Greenwich Emotion Map by Christian Nold http://www.emotionmap.net/

Carbon Diemhttp://www.carbondiem.com/product.html

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We would like to give special thanks to the following for all their help and support during our project.

Heather MartinDavid Mellis

Vinay VenkatramanDavid Cuartielles

Alexander WiethoffChristopher Scales