Week 4 - Ideation

Questions:

What components are relevant to driving behaviour?

The steering wheel is a fundamental component of driving behaviour. Being able to steer into different directions is something that is core to driving and getting from A to B. The act of of steering also stems from vehicles throughout history such as sail boats. Other relevant components: dashboard to see the speed, petrol levels etc, footpedal to control accelleration.

What are the interactions of those components with the driver when driving?

Steering wheel - using hands to turn the wheel clockwise and anti-clockwise depending on the desired direction

Foot Pedal - as the name suggests, the user applies pressure with their foot to accellerate, and ease off pressure to decelerate

Dashboard - see lights/symbols that indicate different aspects about the current state of the car e.g low on petrol, speed etc

What would you test?

How each component responds to a given input from a user.

How would you test?

By testing each component independently of each other, and ensuring the input from the user (e.g push of a foot pedal, twist of a steering wheel) resulted in the expected output (car turns in the right direction, foot pedal is not too sensitive to pressure etc).

This week in the workshop sessions I have worked on finalizing the concept by first looking at the feasibility of each idea as summarised below:

Feasibility - Drunk Watch

• needs to detect blood alcohol level
• needs to calculate timing between drinks - when it’s safe to have another drink
• needs to provide feedback to user when over a certain limit - restrict movement?
• detect anger levels?

Feasibility - ZipperBan

• how is this different to other zipper locking systems? - maybe a bit easier for user to unlock themselves (less effort)
• facial recognition - if it detects the wrong face, it sets off alarm and deters thief, maybe takes a photo of thief which could be used for legal purposes
• camera that detects face - if right will unlock bag
• sends event to user - user gets notification and can approve/deny the other person from opening the bag e.g if user wants friend to get something from their bag

After further exploring these two ideas, I have decided to go with ZipperBan. The main reason being is that this idea would be easier to collect data as input, analyse this data and provide appropriate feedback. For example, if it uses facial recognition, it could use a camera to detect the person’s face and compare it with the owner’s face to determine if the person is a thief. A camera would be easier and cheaper to obtain than a device that measures blood alcohol level.