This past week did user testing on our prototype, and updated things like the bill of materials and the timeline for the project.  We also had a wonderful meeting with Anita Perr, PhD and Clinical Associate Professor, and Kristie Koenig, Chair of the Department of Occupational Therapy at NYU.

User Testing

On Monday we had the chance to do some user testing is class, which was a great opportunity to see how people reacted to our project in real time. We tried to allow as much free exploration as possible with giving instructions, and observe the engagement from the outside without interfering. After the user played with our prototype, we asked a few questions:

1. Does the interaction seem engaging?
2. Are the colors exciting?
3. Do you know how to interact with the Silophon? Do you need guidance?
4. How does the fabrication feel?
5. What do think about the slight angle?
6. What do you think about the size? Good / bigger / smaller?
7. Does it seem durable for children?

Here are some answers we got:

1. The interaction is very engaging, people just seem to want to play with it.
2. Colors, good and fun
3. Most people know what the interaction is (from previous use)
4. Fabrication seem to be getting a good response, especially from the professionals.
5. The angle is good and necessary
6. Most people seem to say that the three notes we made as a prototype should be the middle of the Silophon.
7. It’s not durable enough for children yet. Needs to be more sturdy and especially pay attention to the mallet! Also, make more than one mallet.

Meeting with Professionals

Meeting Kristie and Anita was great. We showed them our progress thus far, and they we very excited about the project. They both immediately expressed desire to interact with the Silophon and had a lot of insights to share with us about one of our key target audiences, children with Autism.

They assured us that indeed many people with Autism are hyper-sensitive to sounds and that they engage well with music. However, higher pitch sounds in particular are especially unpleasing for this group, but perhaps by being able to control these sounds, children with Autism could find sounds to be a point for engagement and not neglection.

We were also encouraged to visit this blog by Paul Kotler, who has autism himself.

Paul shares his personal experience and interaction with the world as an individual with autism. Here’s an excerpt of one of his posts describing the sound of rain:

“Rain means different sounds. Sounds out of the ordinary of daily and sounds that are utterly fascinating. I have heard people say that no two snowflakes are the same. Well, I can also say that no two rain storms are the same. They each have distinctive sound. It is like a symphony and it is delightful. Rain falling on a flat roof sounds different than rain falling on an angled roof. Rain hitting windows of different thickness makes different tones. I can almost hear the glass ringing with the sound. The way the wind blows absolutely changes the music of the rain. Overall, it is a wonderful sound that I wish I could share with others.”

Kristie mentioned that we might also want to consider:

• A visual model / visual feedback that might go along with the Silophon. An idea for visual feedback could be incorporated with color coded music notes that would teach how to play songs → Guitar Hero model.
• A headset connection
• A different form for the dowel of the mallet. It seems that it needs to be more sturdy and easy to grip.
• Knobs for controllers

One of the most important things we learned from this meeting were the key elements to successful design for autism:

Two other resources Kristie pointed us to:

Karla’s ASD Page
The Thinking People’s Guide to Autism

System Diagram

Ideas we had for wiring/electronics:
Use a resistor ladder as an DAC to output nice sounds (thanks to this guy’s videos)
Possibly using a different processor. Tested ATTiny84, a ATMega32, and an Arduino Mega

Lessons we learned // Fabrication
Covering an entire piece for material with felt will not look good (as we tried on our prototype). Instead, we we have a thick wooden piece be the note and a layer of industrial felt over that piece of wood. The sensor will go in between.

Updated Bill of Materials

In this week’s prototype we experimented with materials to create the physical object of the Silophon. Felt seemed to be a good material to work with for two primary reasons:

1. Felt is a relatively soft material, hopefully encouraging children with autism to engage with it.
2. Felt has a sound-proofing attribute, since it absorbs sound.

For the prototype this week, we used foam core as a base, felt, and wooden dowels.

Here’s our shopping list! (Bill of materials for the prototype):

For a prototype to experiment with, we thought that three note of the xylophone would be a good number to begin with. We started of by cutting 6 panels from the foam core, 2 for every note. These panels were then connected with three connecting pieces, giving the notes a slight angle.

The pieces of foam core were all glued together, but the ensure they would be sturdy enough, we reinforced the connections with small pins (I guess you could call these prototyping nails).

Once these notes were completed, we examined a few possibilities for connecting the wooden dowels. The solution the seemed to be the best was to drill sockets in the foam core which would perfectly house the wooden dowels.

After calculating the sizes and distances, we drilled the same holes in the base. Once we got our model to stand we detached the notes from the base and covered them with felt.

The felt-covered notes do absorb sound the way we assumed they would. However, there is definitely place to rethink the fabrication aesthetically.  Jacob recommended considering industrial felt, which may be a good solution but will require us to rethink how we might house all of our digital components within each key.

Silophon

Project idea

To design a soft toy / musical instrument that is physically silent but generates sound digitally.

Background

It is well known that some people on the spectrum of Autism are hypersensitive to sound. The characteristic of wanting full control can be very frustrating when it comes to situations with sound where often there is no control. Traumatic experiences with sounds as a child could evidently lead to not wanting to engage with music and sound as an adult. We believe that by creating an instrument/toy that will allow the child to control sound, combined with an engaging level of user experience may help break the potential friction between hypersensitive children with Autism and sound.

Some links we found:

• What It’s Like to Have Autism
• Managing Sound Sensitivity in Individuals With ASDs
• PDA (Pathological demand avoidance syndrome)

Object

• Xylophone = Silophon
• Felt
• Additional materials (explore soft conductive options)
• Fabrication

Circuit

• Pressure-Sensitive Conductive Sheet
• Fritzing

Here’s a circuit Louis built on Fritzing:

User Experience

• Fun
• In control
• Appealing and engaging

Questions and Thoughts

• Should this be a one-on-one experience (earphones) or a surrounding sound experience (speakers)?
• Should the object be something you hold and grasp or is it placed on a surface?
• If we use felt as an exterior what material is optimal for using as a base to wrap the felt around (i.e. plexiglass / plywood / blue foam / others)?
• Hiding wires and making the object as lightweight as possible
• “Magical” experience
• Size and scale: remember the audience is children, make sure they can grasp the instruments well and access freely.
• Visual representation for the sound (?)

People to meet outside of class

Over the next few weeks we will try to meet with:

• Dr Anita Perr from Poly who is my professor in the Developing Assistive Technology course
• Kristie Koenig, Chair of OT at Steinhardt and an expert in working with people with autism
• Christie Leece, also a teacher of mine in Developing Assistive Technology
• Michelle Temple, research resident, much experience with designing for assistive technology

This project will be dedicated in loving memory of my friend Nadav Shoham who was recently killed in the vicious snowstorm along the Annapurna trek in Nepal just a few weeks ago.

Nadav was a talented engineer who dedicated every spare moment of his to volunteering with children having special needs, including handicapped children, deaf children and children with autism.

Here are some photos that document the final prototype of Hydrate.me. To view the making of this project, please click here.

For our Physical Computing midterm, Abhishek, Songee and I paired up and designed a hydration device called Hydrate.me. The device is an electronic coaster that works by sensing the amount of liquid remaining in your bottle and providing a corresponding graphic representation. According to your timer setting, you will be reminded once every so often to drink, and when need to refill your bottle.

We worked well together from the very beginning, and started out by brainstorming around this idea and making very abstract sketches.

Arduino prototype and exterior

We decided that the sensor we should use for our prototype would be the force-sensor, and we also decided to use LEDs to allow visual feedback on the device itself (apart from the interface we designed in Processing). We started out by prototyping the actual object in various materials in order to understand size and dimensions.

Since the topic addressed is water, we decided the final prototype should be made out of organic materials. Plywood seemed to be a good material we could use to cut the layers of the coaster and stack them on top of each other. Each layer was crafted to house and support the various components. The top layer was made by cutting a silicone mat (originally made to be used as a baking mat!).

After carefully crafting the exterior we inserted the different components, which included the Arduino microcontroller, a shield connected to the top of the arduino, LEDs, the force-sensor, and of course, all of the wiring. This was done, and could have only been done, with super-extra care!

Programming the sensors in Processing and Arduino

We used both Arduino and Processing to sense the weight on the coaster which is represented in a graphic interface. We designed and enabled a timer that allows the user to select increments of time in which he would like to be reminded to drink. The values that translated as the weight were mapped according to the specific X and Y locations on the interface. You can view the code here and here.

Graphic Interface

The interface we created is a widget built to live on the desktop of a personal computer. The user may set the timer to increments of time in which he would like to be reminded to drink. The water animation is mapped with the data from the pressure sensor and responds accordingly.

That’s a brief summary on the making of Hydrate.me. View the final product on the next post or click here.