DO.U
An interactive scoreboard that allows users to reflect meaningfully on weekly activities and provide an opportunity to connect with oneself.
timeline: jan - march 2020
tools: arduino, laser-cutting, adobe cc, adobe premiere pro
prompt to develop and design an interactive scoreboard that raises awareness of personally significant goals and supports personal strengths
positive design framework
Developed by Desmet & Pohlmeyer (2013), the positive design framework takes a holistic overview of possible design applications for happiness. The framework consists of 3 pillars for which can be designed:
design for virtue
design for pleasure
design for personal significance
By combining these three different components and creating overlaps between pleasure, personal striving, and moral virtues, positive design enables and stimulates human flourishing. For this project, we were asked to design a product for ourselves that would address personal values, help pursue goals, and be a source of motivation for growth.
the idea
Before beginning the idea generation phase, I first needed to identify and understand my signature strengths and virtues. Based on the Character Survey provided by the VIA Institute on Character, my top 3 strengths were:
love
hope
appreciation of beauty & excellence.
As I began to brainstorm activities and ideas that reinforced my signature strengths, I quickly realized I gravitated most towards ‘love’, and decided to develop a design solution that would positively contribute to my idea of self-love, a reminder to always give myself a break and appreciate those moments of rest and play. As my dad always reminded me, “don’t spread yourself too thin”.
I then developed 10 different ideas and activities that I thought could reinforce and help remind me to take a moment during my day or week to do something I enjoy, savor that experience, and reflect on why it contributed to my character strength of love.
initial brainstorming based on character strength “love”
idea generation
rapid prototyping
After determining my character strengths and generating initial ideas, I bundled the ideas together and identified some of the common themes and key features that needed to be considered in order to advance the design direction of the product. The initial prototype I developed was a little box that would dispense a piece of colored paper based on the type of activity you did, ask you a question about the activity, and the user would able to write a small reflection of that activity and store it within the box to reference at a later time.
sketch of initial prototype process
rapid prototyping gif
design language
After the rapid prototyping phase, I wanted to better align the product with my vision so I developed a design language and a set of specific human goals that would further guide the design of the product. I chose the keywords shown below based on the intended quality of interactions that would be reflected when using the product, as well as targeting certain goals that would enable the product to deliver the intended qualities and characteristics. Since this is a product that I was designing for myself, I chose to focus on certain aspects that would be important to me as I used it. For example, I wanted the interactions to be meaningful and personal, so the reflective questions that the product would ask after I completed an activity would enable me to answer thoughtfully.
iterative design
Once establishing the design language, the human goals, and outlining the interaction flow, I wanted to pursue through my design, I continued to iterate on the design of the physical product and began to tinker with the Arduino board and the code. During this iterative design phase, I explored various physical forms, the types of interactions that could take place, and the various use-cases of the product. The photos below are pages from my sketchbook and images of the Arduino hardware to showcase my design thinking and process.
interaction flow
During the iterative design phase, I consolidated the interaction flow based on the previous designs I had developed as well as incorporating what I was able to code using Arduino.
final prototype
The final product is an interactive scoreboard, named DO.U, that allows users to reflect meaningfully on weekly activities and provide an opportunity to connect with oneself.
prototype demonstration video
In addition to the images of the prototype above, I created a video that demonstrates how to use the prototype. This was made using Adobe Premiere Pro and the clips were filmed with the help of a classmate (Claire Choi).
