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Around the World
An interactive checklist that helps kids to develop consistent bedtime routines.
My Role
Design Lead, Physical Prototyper, Researcher
Team
Larry Tian
Minchu Kulkarni
Emily Shu
Timeline
: 10 weeks
Background
Around the World was a grad course assignment for Prototyping Studio. We were tasked to come up with an interactive digital-physical artifact that mediates care in the home. Over the course of ten weeks, we explored numerous concepts through ideation, research, and prototyping.
We showcased our final product during the class’ public event at the end of the quarter and received high praise its execution. We were commended for creating an appealing product and environment for our target audience (kids aged 5-8).
As a result, we saw the opportunity to
Develop a product that would aid parents in helping their children to complete their tasks before going to sleep.
Challenge: Parent-Child Care
Just like adults, children follow bedtime routines of their own. Children, up to a certain age, have to rely heavily on their parents to complete these routines.
The Solution: An Interactive Checklist with A Reward System
We drew inspiration from a conversation during our testing phase with one of our participants. His mother mentioned that a daily routine checklist greatly helped her eight-year-old son stay organized and on track.
The video below highlights the outcome of our explorations and the impact our product had on people.
Hypothesis and Brainstorming
We hypothesized that children didn’t want to use the bathroom before bedtime because the overall experience is not fun for them. Additionally, we speculated that children are more motivated to learn new habits when rewards are involved.
We jumped immediately into brainstorming and creating a plan for testing our hypothesis through roleplaying, prototyping, and user testing. We wanted to focus more on getting real user feedback instead of relying on research articles.
Brainstorming our intervention for stopping bedwetting
Roleplaying and Two Story Concepts
To promptly assess our ideas, we prepared two stories and assembled props to roleplay the concepts that we came up with.
Emma is still bedwetting
Emma refusing to use the bathroom before bed
Making props for our roleplaying
Emma, the kid in our story, is still bedwetting even when she’s already potty-trained. Her mom has tried everything from making her use the bathroom before bed to even using a bedwetting alarm. Alas nothing has worked.
Emma’s mom buys a product that motivates Emma to use the bathroom before bed.
With Under the Sea, Emma is incentivized to use the bathroom so that she can learn a different fun fact about a sea creature everyday.
The theme of our second idea involves traveling around the world on a train. After Emma uses the bathroom, she’ll be able to hear a folk story from a certain part of the world.
After roleplaying our concepts and consulting the teaching team, we chose to advance with Around the World, believing it would better engage the children.
Wizard of Oz: Building the Props
For this round of testing, we conducted a wizard of oz which allowed us to ‘fake’ interactions before building them out completely. We built four props to help us run the test.
A Set of Bird Friends
We placed speakers in both birds (Bonnie on the right, Billie on the left) to emulate voice assistant technology, using them to guide children to the bathroom and back to their bedroom.
Interactive World Map
We chose Russia as a country to interact with because of its size; we believed that the kids would easily notice it lighting up when returning from the bathroom.
Picture Book
We selected a Russian folktale and created a custom book with no words for children to look at while listening to Billie narrate the story.
Wizard of Oz: Learnings
After conducting the tests on the participants, we realized there were many things that we overlooked.
About our idea...
Bed wetting is a more complex problem than just using the bathroom before bedtime and needs a more holistic approach to address the issue.
About our prototype...
The kids were intrigued by the use of characters, audio, and lights. We carried over these features into our next iteration.
Billie the bird took on a new form in the next iterations.
The world map analogy is more difficult than we expected. Our 4-year-old participant did not even know what a country is.
The world map was changed to land masses in our next iterations.
Interactions in two separate spaces created complications. The third participant had a hard time understanding where he should go next.
We decided to have the prototype be used in one room only.
Participants were not engaged during story time. Participants had a hard time using the picture book to follow the story.
We chose to get rid of the picture book for the next iterations.
Reframing Our Problem Setting
The team determined that the design did not satisfy the needs of the users in the context of the problem we sought to solve. However, we wanted to stay within the realm of parent and child interaction before bedtime.
To learn more about parenting that takes place before bedtime, we held two user interviews with parents and asked them about how they interact with their children before bed.
The sleep routine, there’s a routine. For my son, you can’t just pick him up from whatever he was doing and take him to the bathroom...
Pivoting Our Prototype
Based on feedback from parents and after hours of discussion, we pivoted to developing a checklist that helps kids structure their routine.
We wanted to pivot to a checklist because saw the opportunity to...
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Alleviate parents’ efforts in initiating their children’s bedtime routines.
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Keep the parents involved in the process, unlike our previous prototype.
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Create a highly interactive checklist, one that would have light and audio feedback.
The final ‘bedroom’ space
Evaluating the Impact
Our design received great responses from our participants during the user testing. Parents were able to help their children write up the tasks they had to do. Children were able to perform those tasks showed delight when seeing and hearing a fun fact as the reward feedback.
Desk Setup
Parent & child listening to the fun fact
User feedback used in finalizing the prototype...
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Cut down the board. Parents felt that the board was massive. They were not sure if they’d want to hang up a board of this size on their wall.
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Create our own set of fun facts for each tile. Children didn’t want to learn the same thing twice. So we needed to add more than one fact for each tile.
Around the World
Around the World is an interactive checklist designed to motivate children to finish tasks. We’ve integrated an audio-visual reward system that is revealed once a task is completed.
Parents and children can partner up to write tasks on the board for the kids to do. Once the kids complete a task, they can put “Billie the bird” into the corresponding space of that tile and learn an interesting fact about that country.
Billie the Bird
Children can play with and use Billie to activate the reward feedback.
Point of Contact
When Billie's magnet meets the metal strips, it triggers light and audio feedback.
Whiteboard Tag
Parents and children can write tasks to be completed on this erasable surface.
Light & Audio Feedback
When a task is completed, the LED lights turn on, and the prototype plays a fun fact.
Problem-Setting: Causes of Bedwetting
In the beginning we wanted to explore an intervention with helping potty-trained kids to stop bedwetting. We looked into the causes of bedwetting which included genetics, disturbed sleep, stress and more (link).
We pinpointed a bedwetting cause that we wanted to intervene in: children's lack of motivation to use the bathroom before bedtime.
Initial Design Challenge
How might we motivate children to use the bathroom before bed to prevent bedwetting?
Wizard of Oz: User Testing
We conducted the prototype testing with three participants: two were 4 years old, and one was 8 years old. We also devised a plan for structuring our usability testing sessions.
1. First, we set up the world map, Billie, and the picture book in the bedroom. We also set up Bonnie in the bathroom.
2. Then we asked the participant to play in his bedroom as he usually would before bed.
3. We played an audio through Billie asking the participant to tap the bird’s head. Once he taps Billie, Billie instructs him to use the bathroom.
4. In the bathroom, Bonnie instructs him to go back to the bedroom because a new folk story has been unlocked.
5. After coming back from the bathroom, the participant notices that Russia has lit up. He comes up to the map to tap it and the country turns from green to blue.
6. The participant is asked to grab the picture book and follow along as Billie narrates the story.
Finding the Form Factor
We wanted to agree on the features our prototype will have before deciding on a form factor.
We wanted the prototype to initiate the following...
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Parents will write a task for the children to complete.
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Children will “check off” the task after finishing it.
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There will be an audio and light feedback after the task is checked off.
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There will be a distinct feedback after all the tasks are completed.
1. At first, we thought of having a linear storyline where a bird would travel through different destinations. The bird would only move to the next destination once a task has been completed.
2. However, we wanted kids to have more freedom in choosing which task to do first. We were inspired by tabletop games like Catan and wanted to utilize the form factor of tiles. Each tile represents a ‘stop’ in the journey around the world.
Initial idea for the form factor
Tile form factor
Mid-Fidelity: Building a Minimum Viable Product
Our two priorities for our mid-fidelity prototype included:
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Learning how to make the light and audio feedback work when a toy (a bird in this case) touches the point of contact on each tile.
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Testing different materials to use for the tile design.
1. We used different shapes for the tiles in reminiscent of land masses. We just made sure that the tiles would fit into each other.
2. We added LED lights to the border of each tile and used cotton to diffuse the lights. We attached the end of the LED lights to a CPX to control the audio and light feedback.
Cutting out the tiles
Coding the light and audio feedback
3. We created three collages with objects that reminded of the countries we chose to represent in our prototype: Japan, France, and Egypt.
Closeup of the France tile
4. The last two pieces we had to make were the bird mascot (with a magnet to touch the point of contact) and three pads that will act as the point of contact on each tile.
When the magnet on the bird touches the copper strips, the light and audio feedback will play.
5. Once all the pieces were made, we tested the whole prototype together.
Testing the mid-fidelity prototype
High Fidelity: Using Final Materials
The biggest changes that we made in our high-fidelity prototype were the materials we used and the shape of the tile.
1. We decided to make the tiles uniform in shape so that they can be easily interchangeable or appended with other country tiles in the future.
2. We used a plastic tube to diffuse the LED lights. This plastic tube would go around the circumference of each tile.
Planning the shape of the tiles
Putting the LED strip inside the plastic tube
3. The tiles were lasercut out of wood. The slits on the tiles aid in securing plastic tubes with zip ties around the tile's perimeter.
4. Another set of tiles were made out of felt. The elements on these tiles were filled with cotton to create a three dimensional effect that is found in many children felt books.
Making of the Egypt tile
Lasercut tile piece
Tube attached to the tile
Closeup of the Japan and France tiles
Felt tiles attached to the wooden tiles with velcro
Checking the light and audio feedback
Finalizing the Interactive Checklist
The last finishing touches for our interactive checklist include cutting and painting the backboard, creating a home base for the bird (Billie) to return to, and creating a bedroom space to put our prototype on display for the final showcase.
The final ‘bedroom’ space
Newly painted backboard
Home base for Billie the Bird
Closeup of Around the World Prototype
Our space & prototype garnered a lot of attention and many people came over to take a look.
Above, a person is writing a task on the erasable card.
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