The Busy Buoy

This is one of my better ideas at the moment.

The Busy Buoy measures busyness (yes it's a word) or workload.

-Imagine you're a VCE student smashing numerous exam papers within the confines of your room, in order to get 99.99, to study medicine......... at Monash of course. OR
-Imagine you're in an office, its Friday, and your boss wants a hero shot, exploded view and developmental sketches for your new product by the end of the day. OR
-Imagine you're a uni lecturer scrambling to correct piles of assignments in his/her office so you can have at least some free time over the weekend.

These individuals are very busy. They do not want to be interrupted/disturbed.

The busy buoy is made up of a desktop control unit, to which you can manually input your busyness level (Unit = BBs (Busy Buoys). Or the desktop unit can automatically detect busyness via space movements (IR sensor) or sound spikes (>x dB etc, microphone) to gauge busyness.

The busy buoy also has a mountable buoy unit, which you stick outside your room, office, cubical etc. It displays yours BB level. Colleagues, students or family members can use your busyness to decide whether to interrupt you at that point in time or wait till when you are less busy.

Other applications include wireless network input, so the boss can monitor employees, determine the best time to call a meeting etc.

Yeah that's the product really, some issues i need to consider are: everyone's capable workload is different, how do other gauges your busynes level from the BB unit value & privacy issues i suppose.

What do you guys think, suggestions? Thanks.

Daniel Dob.

Week 7 post: Safety, Delegation, or Spending

i'm still a bit unsure which direction i want to go so keeping all the options open... first idea i had was to measure the safety of any given space, in particular large buildings or campuses. it will be mostly focused on the ease of evacuation if a emergency were to occur. i am thinking of little R2D2 like robots that constantly run fire drills to rate the safety level of any given spot in a building while maping out the most succesful escape routes. they will also act as "escape guides" during a real emergeny, and more of them will be stationed at the most dangerous spots of the building, which is also an indicator to the safety level of any part of the building.

second idea, delegation, has something do to with the amount of ownership one user might have to any system. for example, you own a car, but not the roads and you pay for the gas on a subscribion fee system, so only a very small amount of the whole road system is delegated to any user (which might be a good thing). samething with things like mobile phones.

the last idea is more of a backup, that is to measure the amount of money (or time) one spends on him / herself in relation to that spent on others (family, work, friends, pets... etc.). the goal is to help the user balance between being too selfish or too generous. no solid product idea at this stage...

Wei-Pai

Pain Scale???

So here's my concept.

In the medical profession it would undoubtedly be extremely difficult for a doctor or nurse to truly understand how much pain a patient may be suffering. If there were a way to measure the pain of a patient, this would greatly assist the process of diagnosis and prescription of drugs. Powerful painkillers such as morphine is expensive and sometime dangerous. By measuring and quantifying a patients pain doctors and nurses can be more efficient and accurate in their jobs, and would be an invaluable tool for anesthetists. In addition, with the growing drug problem today, there are many addicts to painkillers. Addicts often fake pain suffering in order to gain access to dangerous prescription pain killers. With a pain measuring device, you could tell if a someone is really suffering pain, or just a junkie. It would also be useful for measuring how much pain a certain person can take. May be useful for selecting members of the SAS? I dunno. The device would have to analyse the inputs to determine the perceived pain.

 

The inputs would be to monitor certain aspects of a patients body that would be affected by pain, physical and physiological responses to pain. These could be measured with existing technology. Heart rate, blood pressure, brain waves etc. With new facial recognition technology, a camera observing a patients facial expressions could determine how genuine and how intense a patients emotions are. A bit like a lie detector test, but more comprehensive and analyzing more physical responses.

 

First thing I will need to do is research the effects of pain on a human being, and what natural responses occur in a persons body. Something that can be measured that is accurately proportional to inflicted pain. Then we can go about designing a scale to quantify someone's pain and nice user friendly interface to view the information.

 

>WILL

 

Measure

The image above shows algae in tubes being tested at the university of Minnesota, they are used at waste water plants and the algae can be:

"

• Cultivated and harvested as a source of energy
• Used to remove carbon dioxide, phosphorus and nitrogen from waste water
• Used as a carbon offset to meet anticipated greenhouse gas emission requirements

"

With this brief i have considered the situation of a household wanting to measure the environmental impact of their waste water. I am hoping to use a visual comparison method or colour scale by grass or algae. I am planning to make the measuring product practical and applicable in a household capacity, eg as an item of furniture. (see above)

Who: home owners, small businesses
Why: personal environmental concern, government regulation, novelty
Where: houses, small businesses, public spaces (acid rain)?
What: effects of household chemicals and processes on wastewater and therefore environment



image from:

http://www.metrocouncil.org/Directions/water/water2007/AlgaeTubesNov07.jpg
http://equitygreen.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c58f653ef00e55396e4768834-500wi
http://inhabitat.com/wp-content/uploads/mattgagnonnomad.jpg

Andrew van der Merwe

Laura

So I think I'll design a product for measuring a person’s level of Loyalty.
I've been thinking about this and have decieded to break down a person’s level of loyalty based on three factors. The duration and the nature of the relationship, the person’s level of judgment and ability to discriminate and their level of self control
The level of loyalty is dependent on the level of the above quantities and a lack of one quantity can be compensated by an excess of another. Because of this a device that measures loyalty can also measure levels of its contributing factors if some of the other factors could be estimated. That is; you can substitute in known values to reveal unknown values. So, this device could also be useful for testing someone’s judgement and self control.

I had several ideas of how this could be useful but I think that I'll make a device for employers to measure potential employee's loyalty, and I'm also thinking about including an option to measure someone's ability to discriminate... but it's still early days.

But now I figure it will be used in an interview or performance apraisal situation. So now I know it has to be a fast process. Also... there are privacy issues to consider, and also how to make the potential employer feel comfterable being tested this way.

-Laura

Project Two...

Hey guys,

It seems that alot of people seem to be going along the path of measuring stress (an indicator of how we are all feeling maybe?!) and i think im heading down that path as well.

However, i want to focus on how the physical and mental health of soldiers can be better dealt with while employed on the front line or sent into hostile situations. In the midst of combat, general health and the psychological affects of situations can be pushed to the side whilst soldiers are forced to concentrate on a specific operation or situation. It is crucial for the general welfare of these people that they and their superiors are aware of, and recognise the effect which these situations have on the individual.

Im still working out how im actually going to measure this, but i was thinking along the lines of a personal device issued to all soldiers which monitors elements such as heart rate, brainwave activity and pulse, to come up with some assessment of the soldiers personal wellbeing.

Seems like i have a lot of medical-journal reading ahead of me!!

Jessica

Measurement idea

Im having a lot of trouble finding where one emotion finishes and another starts, they all seem to have a connection in one way or another. Everything seems to lead to happiness...
Measuring how happy someone is would be such a helpfull tool, it could be used to prevent suicide or depression. However it would be a fine line between diagonising and paranoing patience. Still looking in to it.

-Sarah

Project idea

Well i have had a bit of trouble with this project, trying to think of a good brief. I started off with the ideas of measuring awkwardness or stress. Awkwardness was a bit awkward and stress just freaked me out at the amount of work i needed to do. so i was back to square one, when it happend. i jump off my chair and twisted my ankle, (not good you might say.......wrong!!!!). It hit me....... 'pain'. It is something that is so important for proper medical treatment but yet it is so individual and different for everyone. The old "say your pain level out of 10" the doctor tells you could be different for everyone. By measuring pain not only can you treat medical issues properly but it will enable sportsmen to know when the can play or not play, see if you really are throwing a sicky and cant work and a whole host of other wonderful and fantastic ways. In terms of the understanding of how i will measure it i am still working on.

Ryan

i am currently woking on a device that measures distance for use on public transport.. so you can sleep on P.T and you dont have to be worried you will go past your stop. it works on either GPS or syncing with a already stored digital reading of public transport maps. it notifies the user of there stop by vibration/ music chosen by the user. it is a pocket sized device and i am working on getting the price down, GPS system could be expensive so another form of measurement could be used like counting stops.
phoebe .L

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My latest idea for the new project is 'Potential'. However the word potential doesn't describe the process very well. It is more like measuring a small child's skills and putting them into different skill categories.

The idea is to devise a toy and a small book for parents of young children. The toy is given to a child to play with, and depending on how the child uses the toy determines what skill area they will be good at. The toy will be able to be used many different ways for many things. The skill categories and how to determine these will be explained in the book. The categories are- Music, Visual Art, Language, Mathematics's, Sport and Social.

The parents will be able to determine the skills of their child and nurture these skill's.

The idea still needs alot of thought, but this is my idea so far.

>>>Tim.

Project direction

My initial ideas after reading the brief have been to try and create mind maps of potential problems that could be measured. So I tried coming up with potential problems in our society such as pollution and other dangers but these did not really get me that excited.

Then I thought about something I am passionate about 'Travel', so then I identified many different problems that can occur while traveling, such as measuring the danger level of an area and comfort level while travel or enjoyment level. Then I thought about another passion of mine, food. I then combined these two and thought that to an unknowing traveler, the food in another country could be a big threat in terms of making them ill, seriously ill or even potentially death. So I thought a very good solution to this problem could be a devise that measures the temperature, bacteria level and other potential things in food that could make someone sick.

This devise would be very discreet to use and also compact in order to be easily carried while traveling. My ideas then started branching out even further to other potential uses for this product such as a devise used by food safety officers to check the unseen hygiene in a kitchen. It could also be used by campers to check the food they are cooking on the fire is properly cooked and even around the house by mothers worrying about their children's environments and food they are consuming.

Paul P

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Time management measurement (prioritizing)

hi everyone,
after thinking for quite a long time and read a couple of time the guidelines given from Robbie, i ask myself a question of what device that i really need.
the answer for that question is how do i prioritize my activities(time management).
so i came up with this device in which it will ask a couple of question about your profile such as profession.
so if your profession is a student, the device will prioritize your school work first but it will balance it with your other activities outside.
so you can just simply put your work or assignment or activities that you get and put the due date.
it will ask question about the activities that you input such as how long will u make it, how important is it from the scale 1-5, do you want to complete the task with one go or multi tasking, etc etc.
then the device will make the schedule for you to follow.

i think if this device exist i will absolutely buy it since there are still a lot of people need their time management.

-yani-

Measurement : Boredom ... or cleanliness?

At first I though I might deisgn something that measures how clean something is, like a car or something. But then i thought this might be a bit pointless as one can also just look at the car to tell how clean it is. But then again it might not be all pointless. It can be hard to tell how clean a car is a night sometimes. Or how clean it is under hidden areas, which no one can see, but must be cleaned regularly for the car to operate smoothly?

So then i decided i might measure 'boredom' if the cleanliness thing doesnt work out. Measuring boredom might be useful for determining how bored a student might be in a class or lecture or something? I have yet to think of a way to measure this. I will start thinking now...

Marco

Measuring Idea: Patience

Hey everyone, my initial idea was to design a device to measure potential, but that was just soo broad and consisted entirely of a large powerful computer which asked questions like a long survey haha. so that was scrapped pretty quickly. Since then I have really been fascinated with the idea of measuring someone's patience. Patience is being able to endure under annoyance or waiting for long periods of time. Currently I am playing around with the idea of having a game which tests peoples patience. Maybe having a plug in controller which somehow measures, heart rate, blood pressure, sweat etc to control aspects of the game. Like say if you were doing a puzzle under timed conditions. Stress levels would increase along with blood pressure which would cause the time limit to drop etc.. Having a button to increase the time again would serve as a measure of impatience. Its all a bit complicated but what do you guys reckon?

Thanks

Jonathon

Discipline

My initial idea is to test a persons self discipline. Obviously there are many forms that can be used to get a idea of a persons discipline .The key to this device will be the variables such as motivation and reward. A person who has to start work at 8:30 sharp every morning or he will be punished may show up on time every morning, but take the threat of a punishment away and would he still turn up on time? A person who continually shows up on time despite the threat of punishment would perhaps be considered self disciplined.
Other minor forms which may be used is posture and concentration can also be used to measure discipline.
My plan create a device that would test a person when there at their most vulnerable, waking up in the morning, perhaps testing ability to perform a task by a certain time.
A device like this could be a reality check for a anyone hoping to reach a goal in life, as we can not advance and improve ourselves without a little self discipline.

-Kyle

Measurement

Measurement

Okay, so after spending class thinking about specific mediums to measure i came up with a few different possible concepts. I considered measuring temperature for the reason of deciding what to wear, or measuring feelings such as happiness or sadness. But none of my ideas really captured my imagination so i left it for a few days.
Having a normal conversation about getting burnt in summer i decided this was a brilliant idea. Therefore i will design a product that will measure the amount a person has been sun damamged in a particular outing. I liked this idea because of the scientific ease i can design a product, i was thinking something like a disposable patch, which can measure amount of UV rays absorbed. This is where i am now but there are so many aspects i want to explore.
-Nev

Project 2

After spending some time trying to figure out what I could possibly measure, I came up with the idea of measuring anxiety levels. Through my research I've found many ways to tell if anxiety is a problem for someone. I've decided to create a handheld product that would measure heart rate, trembling, sweat, and muscle tenseness. This would all be measured with simply holding the product.

Rather than answering a lot of questions from quizzes or doctors, which may increase levels of anxiety, this product would tell the user ways they could relax depending on how intense their anxiety is at the moment. This product will hopefully make the user aware of when their anxiety levels are rising and ways to cope with them before they get out of hand or become a panic attack.

Emily C

white post????

dont ask me how i made the post white...... because i dont know either... its not that i dont like black... i mean black is just as good as white :P....
im not trying to stand out either but it seems my computer likes me to be singled out.... haha anyway have a good weekend.. cya monday/tuesday everyone

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Task 2 Direction

 

With the growing prominence of heart disease among the working population of Australia i thought that although this growing percentage has many factors contributing to the growing figure that stress in the workplace has become a major issue in today's working environment. My initial idea is a device that measures and responds to the stress, anger and volume in someone's voice to passively(as not to cause more stress) draw attention to their growing stress or anger which can be the trigger to a potentially fatal heart attack. to make the user aware passively i was thinking that the device could change colour or form, or both to make the user aware that they need to calm down to lower their risk of a cardiac arrest. Some minor details of this may change but this is my basic idea so far.. Have a good weekend guys!!

 

Nick C

 

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