Pei-Yao Hung
HCI Researcher

Researcher and Builder

Empower People with Information and Smart Environment

peiyaoh@umich.edu
      
Resume, C.V., Google Scholar


A Persuasive Poster to Encourage Children to Organize their Rooms


Background: This was a course project for Ubiquitous Computing. I developed and implemented the idea to use RFID to detect the presence of objects so that I could design a virtual world poster that parents can use to persuade young children to keep things organized.

This was the first time I created an application using sensors other than those used in consumer devices (e.g., accelerometers or GPS). Working with the RFID sensors and the antennas directly allowed me to understand the constraints and devised a solution for my project.


My role(s): Designer, Developer


Method(s):
Prototyping
Skill(s):
ActionScriptAdobe FlashC#RFIDIllustrator

Motivation: Facilitating the development of a good habit is difficult. Parents might need to spend a lot of time to educate their children to develop a habit such as keep things organized.

Problem Solving: I created Smart Poster, a digital poster that persuades young children to organize their stuff. The poster shows a virtual world, which can be affected by the tidiness behavior of a child in the physical world. The system uses RFID sensors to detect whether children' belongings, with RFID tags, are organized in the appropriate places. If everything is in place, the poster shows a sunny day and playful animals. Otherwise, the weather turns bad, and the animals get sick.


  • Brainstorm Design

  • Prototype

  • Iterative Design

  • Demonstration Video


Outcomes: The outcomes include a demonstration video and an interactive prototype that displays a virtual world where animals and plants' behaviors will gradually change depending on whether items (e.g., toys) with RFID tags have been placed in several sensor-augmented boxes.

Summary:


Date: 2007 Spring

Smart Poster shows a virtual world where animals and plants' behaviors or expressions will be affected by the tidiness behavior of a child. If objects are not placed at where they should be (e.g., socks in a drawer), the weather would turn bad, and animals would be crying and getting sick, as shown on the left. If everything is in place, the display will show a sunny day, and animals will come out and play (as shown on the right). The idea is to give children a display that could potentially persuade them to be tidy.

Outcome

A Working Prototype and a Concept Video Explaining the Design Goal

The digital poster can be displayed on a standard computer monitor or through a projector. The application uses an RFID sensor to detect objects with RFID tags.


Technology Employed


The digital poster features a virtual world with animals and plants.

Each object will be attached and associated with an RFID tag.

An RFID reader is used as the main sensor for detecting whehter different objects are in proximity, as an indication of whether objects are in place.

The signal strength of the antenna can serve as a threshold to determine whether an object is in range (and hence in place) or not.

/images/project/smartposter/smartposter_multiplexer.jpg
A multiplexer is used to received input from multiple antenna, to increase the coverage of object detection.



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