Module 3 Activity Research

Weekly Activity Template

McKenna Crotty

Project 3

Module 3

Model 3 focuses on taking our prototyping process to a deeper and more refined level. Throughout this phase, we explored a variety of prototyping and testing methods and applied them directly to our own Project 3 work. The goal was to test specific ideas, clarify what we already know, identify what remains uncertain, and understand what challenges are holding us back. A major emphasis in this model was developing stronger project-management skills, recognizing what is realistically achievable, making informed decisions, and determining the best ways to move forward. These decisions shaped how we approached testing and discovering new insights throughout the prototyping process. We worked on creating more polished, functional prototypes that allowed us to test, redevelop, and better visualize our physical computing concepts. Workshops, hands-on activities, and continued research helped deepen our learning and improve both the technical and experiential aspects of our designs.This included advancing our interactive prototype, improving the user experience, and reducing risks in our design direction. We focused on resolving problem areas, conducting user testing, refining UI/UX components, and evaluating our Arduino–ProtoPie setup. All of this testing and iteration ultimately contributes to the main goal of this model: building a strong foundation for the development of our final prototype.

Workshop 1

For our bodystorming workshop we were tasked with creating a new interactive kitchen appliance with one of the examples being a stove. We had to think of packaging, the unboxing, set up process and the user using it.

For the unboxing we added a large note on the top with a QR code for the user to scan and they would be brought to a video they can watch on the proper set up with safety instructions.

We had two people acting as the stove and the new interactive feature, one person unboxing and setting up the stove, one person narrating and acting as the set up video and other person's video and cooking an egg on the stove top.

We tried different set ups for how the set up could go and found it went better having one person acting as the stove/oven and the other acting as the new feature that is an extension of the back of the stove. This way the other person's head could be the stove top where the other person would place the pan.

The new and improved stove we came up with can cook an egg for the user. It has a screen where the user can select the type of egg they would like to cook and it also lets the user know when it's up to temperature and when the egg is done cooking.

Workshop 2

Explaining about the ventilations system. It is important to remove harmful fumes that can irritate the respiratory system.

Soldering station. Showing the temperature on the digital display and the temperature you should be soldering at.

Using the magnifying glass to make sure the application is being applied precisely and to see small details. Which is attached to the helping hands stand. This is meant to hold the wires in a perfect position.

Using the gator clip to hold the wires you are soldering as it is more steady then shaly hands and the material is very hold and could cause a serious burn so its best to keep hand out of the way. Positioning the iron and waiting a couple of seconds to head the metal. Then adding some solder to the joint.

Final workshop result, trying it on our own. Soldering a circuit that consists of three lights that are attached to the arduino. It is important to not leave the iron on the part being soldered as it can burn and damage it. Unfortunately I was super sick this week and couldn't make it for this workshop which was such a bummer but luckily Aryan took videos and pictures of the workshop and I followed along with the lecture slides from that week.

Activity 1: My Research

Something that I knew was the final prototype from project 2 was working so far. The simple design is working at a low fidelity rate which doesn't include much text and is only presenting data on one page. At this point I also still had the button in the design which served no purpose to the function other than the fact that the data from the arduino would not show up unless the button was in the design in ProtoPie. This was definitely an unknown I was curious about even from project 2.

Testing the cardboard stove with a headed coaster with the temperature sensor and the ProtoPie prototype. We were seeing how long it took the temperature to change (increase) when the heated coaster was acting as the stove top. It took about 6 minutes to change temperature and the temperature change was showing up faster on the arduino than the digital interface on ProtoPie.

Then the stove temperature sensor data stopped showing up on the interface so we had to trouble shoot as to why. This is where working in a group is always helpful having more than one person to try to figure out what's going wrong.

Then we got it working again with all the data showing up but then we saw that something was off, that the stove sensor temperature had dropped even though the heated coaster is still on and that shouldn't be happening. So to get the data showing up again I checked to make sure all the messages being received by ProtoPie were correct and that the sensors were still connected properly to the arduino. It ended up being a wire issue that was easily resolved and when we reopened the Protopie the data was showing up again.

So why the data was showing up weird for the stove sensor was because the temperature sensors got switched some how and the code was sending a message to the opposite temperature sensor and the fridge temperature sensor data was going to the stove devices on the digital interface and the stove temperature sensor data was going to the fridge deceive on the digital interface which would explain the temperature change when the heated coaster was still running. So I just switched it around on the prototype design for a quick fix for now to keep testing the sensor and we will work on a better fix when I redesign the digital interface.

Here we were looking at the stove top cooling down with the fridge and stove devices on the screen switched with the slightly different design. It took a decent amount of time for the stove to cool down which is something we were testing and might have included in the final demonstration but then thought it would take too long to show a difference.

Now I was testing to see if the new ProptoPie design I came up with at the end of project 2 would work with the arduino connected. So right from the start we were experiencing some issues when testing it. It was cutting off half of the data that was being sent from the sensors and the light sensor data was not coming showing up on the design at all.

So we figured out the problem with the light sensor data showing up on the design but there was still the issue with the full number being cut off and I could not figure out why this was happening. Here I was also testing to see if a notification would appear on the screen when the light intensity would hit a certain point and it did end up kind of working where the notification was showing up.

I wanted to test the light sensor before doing the other two because it is the most sensitive and reactive so I knew I would get a fast response as to if it was working or not. With the light notification showing up one of the issues is it wouldn't disappear even if the light was turned off so i had to figure out what that meant. Something else I noticed when testing it was the off test besieged the light data number was not changing to ON when it was the light was on. For the notification I used a range trigger which was recommended when I was doing some research.

So I wanted to test to see if I could get the OFF text to switch to ON using the original design that I know is working properly to see if it was the new version of the prototype or if it was something I was doing wrong in the triggers in ProtoPie and it was still not changing in the prototype that was working meaning it was an issue with what I was doing in Protopie with the trigger and I need to find another way to get this to work.

Activity 2: My Research

The main testing in this activity was focused on the new design I came up with for the ProtoPie prototype. Creating more of a high fidelity design and testing the alerts feature that has been added. In this new design there is an energy usage page, alerts page that can be accessed from the main kitchen page. There are also multiple pages to the prototype that displays the sensor data. It was pretty frustrating to see for some reason whenever I made a new design it would cut off part of the data.

So I thought to resolve the data being cut off I would try using the same text from the original working prototype which was working for the light sensor data if it only stayed at two digits and was not working for the forge or the stove. So I thought it could be a special issue which was confusing me because it is project 2 and when we use the original design the data would show up fully but it would overlap with the other text and I needed to figure out why the other half was not being seen in the new design. The light sensor was acting up and when it was sensing light it was showing low numbers or zero and when it wasn't sensing light it was showing high numbers which we also had to fix.

Something that I was also testing on the page was a new way of getting a notification/alert by having the box change color to tell the user there was something happening. It was good news that it was showing up but after doing some user testing I realized it wasn't very clear as they would have to click on it to find out what they were being alerted of and some people may think that just the design and would not understand what that meant. The take away was the design was not very clear and needed some more work.

Here we fixed the light sensor data and it was working again and the alert was still showing up. Here you can also see that the OFF test was still not switching to ON when it was sensing light so I thought it might be time to look at some different ways to get this to work and stop using the range trigger because it was causing more problems then resolving them. Something to also note that is not in this picture was when the light number went to 100 it was cut off so I did have the text full working even for the light sensor data unless it was only displaying two digits.

Here we were testing the energy usage page to see if the data could be displayed on multiple pages which it can with variables that are set to multiple pages instead of one page. But I was also having the same problem with the numbers being cut off on this page.

Additional Research or Workshops

In the prototype for activity two this was the range trigger that I was talking about that I was doing some experimenting with to try and get notifications to show up and It was not working very well. When I tried adding multiple alerts the user could get it would only want to display the first one I added and it wouldn't change the OFF text to ON. I thought this was interesting because when I was looking up how to add a notification feature this was the recommended way but I was experiencing little success so I decided I need to do some more research into the different triggers ProtoPie has and find an alternative.

Something I discovered from the example from working with ProtoPie connect and Arduino in project 1 was these conditions that you could add under a trigger and I noticed they were being used under the receive trigger that was receiving data from ProtoPie connect and the arduino. They were being used to make the button feature work on the example design and I thought to myself I wonder if that would work for the sensors we have and if I could use the condition to make a notification show up when the data was at a certain number.

So I implemented this idea to test to see if the conditions would work under the receive trigger for each sensor that I wanted to have and alert for. To do this I started with the light sensor and then added it to the rest if it was working when we tested it. I sent the notifications opacity to 0 and then in the condition I said if the light sensor data was above 90 the opacity of the notification would change to 100 and then the user would see the alert. I repeat a similar process with the temperature sensors and the humidity sensors. If they reached above a specific number then the notification would show up and it would disappear if it went below that certain number.

So before I tested the notification feature I wanted to make sure the data was being displayed fully on the screen which I did end up resolving. I discovered there were a couple issues that were causing the problem. One issue was with the font being from figma and Protopie did not properly recognize it so I switched all the fonts in Protopie to ProtoPie fonts and for the second issue being the text box size, and the third issue having to do with the layers making sure the text was at the top in the grouped section. Resolving those issues fixed the problem and everything was displaying nicely.

Now for testing my notification idea. It ended up working! I was so excited at this point because it meant I could add all the other notifications and it would hopefully work the same way. So as you can see in the short video clip when the light sensor data changes to a number greater than 90 the alert pops up and when it goes below 90 the alert goes away just like I intended for it to.

With this condition under the receive trigger I also connected it to the ON and OFF text that I was struggling with and it was also working and switching to ON when the sensor was picking up light and OFF when it was not. After I got the light notification working I decided to test the stove next. I applied the same idea with the condition under the receive trigger that would make an alert show up if the stove temperature was above 38. Since the stove is more serious than the light I wanted to have two different kinds of alerts. For the stove it would have urgent alerts that would have a red hazard sign and the phone would vibrate letting the user know it is more serious. And just like the light alert the stove alert worked too.

After some user testing it was brought to my attention that it would be helpful to have a description of what each alert meant to give more context to the user and guide them on how to solve the issue. For this page it shows the user all the warning alerts they can get and it is color coded to match the devices.

Since the fridge sensor is more sensitive it was a lot easier for this alert to be triggered. But I repeat the same process as the light and stove alters. I decided to make this alert again as it can be costly if the fridge door is open for a long period of time, food could go bad which would be a health risk and wasteful. I also added a little arrow on the bottom of the alert to let the user know they can click on it for more information. You can also see how the light and stove are not triggering an alert because they are below the condition.

Something that is also happening when an alert is popping up is the device display is moving down on the screen to allow for more room and not overlap of the alert message and the devices for a more clean design look.

Here is the urgent alter page that was accessed by clicking on the alert the user was getting. An urgent alert brings the user to the urgent alert section and a warning alert brings them to the warning section. The user can switch between sections at any time and if there are no alerts the page will let the user know everything is running smoothly.

Project 2

Project 3 Final Prototype

So for our final prototype we did an interactive kitchen that focused on the stove, fridge and a light that all had sensors that are connected to the arduino that is sending the sensors data to a smart home app that was made in Protopie. The physical prototype was laser cut to give it a clean and more refined look. We use the Arduino IDE to program a microcontroller that reads data from the light sensor and temperature/humidity sensors. The Arduino streams live readings to the ProtoPie app, which displays real time states for the kitchen devices and triggers notifications, creating a full live example of the product working in a kitchen.

Here are all the pages of the final ProtoPie prototype

Here is a video of the digital prototype in action

Here is the physical part of the prototype, front and back