Saturday, September 6, 2008

"Good, good, good vibrations, I'm talking about good vibrations" - Beach Boys

Hi all

So after speaking with Robbie, where he clarified the input/output part of the assignment I have chosen a clearer path. Before I had ideas to use vocal, lights and vibration to stimulate the consumer to concentrate at the task at hand. The vocal aspect was going to be dealt with a voice recognition software, where a small microphone within the wristband device would receive human inputs e.g. "I'm annoyed at this work!" then the wristband would respond with a pre recorded message depending on the level of concentration. It may suggest to "take a break" or "focus". Yet once discussed it was clear that part of the measurement theme was lost because the device would act on the measurements not the consumer (the device tells you to take a break instead of you realizing based on the measurements that it's time for a break). So I have decided to drop the voice recognition idea.

I will focus on lights and vibrations. I could have a device that display the concentration levels in colours as mentioned last week in my other blog entry, red being the lowest concentration, blue the highest. So after time and concentration loss, your levels will be shown from blue and morph into red. Once red is shown a central circular light will flash, to warn the consumer of the very low concentration levels. Then it is up to them to decide what to do with this information.

I will combine a sensor, like those used in step-o-metres, to record movements. The more you move the higher concentration and vice versa.

I was also thinking to combine the lights with a vibration system that once the lowest level of concentration (red light) is activated, vibrations would 'awaken' the consumer.

The device will be worn on the wrist (if your doing work, reading, typing etc.) on your ankle or leg (if your exercising, to stimulate you to train harder) and around your waist with a belt where the device clips on (if you are sitting and you begin to slouch and lie down, will go through procedure to 'awaken' you)

I hope that is clear enough to understand!

Have fun peeps

- Chris

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5 comments:

Student Contributor said...

Hey there Chris
If I have guessed correctly from what you have in the posted here, you are doing concentration as the title of the assignment and you are using movement as a measuring factor… Now imagine yourself in an exam room, with enough sleep, fully aware and alert, gracefully answering every question perfectly with plenty of time left. Would you consider this person “a blue person” or “a red person”? Obviously the answer would be dark blue but since most of the time during an examination you are as solid as a rock with virtually no movement due to the stress of the exam environment I think your wrist band might disagree with you…
Jeff

Student Contributor said...

Hey chris!!

I like this idea, it sounds like a gud idea as a concentration device/measurer. however i believe that it needs to be further investigated into how we concentrate harder or even how we lose concentration. this may allow you to come up with variations in your inputs and outputs to come up with better readings. gud idea though!

- Kieran J.

Student Contributor said...

Hi Chris,
I think for concentration, you need to look up on how people lose it and get it back on. great idea though-you need to explore further!!Different colours-good to indicate the concentration levels!!

have a good one!

-Lisa

Student Contributor said...

I see what you mean Jeff, but I doubt most exams let you take your time to answer questions. If the user is finished they could just turn the device off. I also doubt you could bring it into an exam due it possibly distracting others.

I researched a bit on concentration and personally I find that when I loose concentration I do no work, i slouch in my chair, i sigh, and generally do nothing just stare into space. Based on the idea of no movement the sensor would react. There would be a set time between movement recorded to calculate what concentration level you have. For me the best research is based on me because I know what would work, obviously I have to consider the rest of the population!

- Chris

Robbie said...

The user-configuration is a strength of this concept - being able to locate it on an appropriate part of the body is what makes it more useful.

I don't think you'd wear it all the time, maybe just when studying to improve your concentration span?

Communication is interesting for this sort of device, good work so far - lets see some more options on tuesday.

-Robbie