I think that we managed to produce a good presentation for our game, because I believe we managed to explain our concept and game in a way that was understandable, as well as how we approach the task, such as design process and user testing. We got some good feedback from the peers, for example that they thought we had implemented the scent in a meaningful way, the scent dimension felt like a natural part of the game.

Simon mentioned as an advice, that we could have looked into the cultural aspect of the game. He said that it could be useful since people in different cultures around the world play Dominoes differently, an example mentioned was that somewhere (forgot where) people slam the Domino brick down on the table. What I believe he means is that this is something to consider while creating the game, thinking of how make it manipulable so that it can be used in many cultures.

We let both Simon and Henrik (teacher present at the pres.) play the game. They both mentioned the same thing as the participants (and ourselves) – that the visual stains of the scents were quite easy to differentiate and remember, thus could be used for cheating. Henrik thought that the Domino bricks were too big, since we used intense scents we wouldn’t have needed these large bricks – which is a valid point, the intensity of the scents could have been easy to distinguish with smaller bricks, however, we did not try this. Henrik mentioned that he had to lean over the table to smell the first brick. I understand his point, we didn’t mention that it was possible to grab it, but actually it was possible to reach for the brick and put it to your nose. This could be something to consider, to remind the players of in the tutorial.

Last but not least, Simon mentioned that the intensity of the scents varied a lot and that some scents keep their intensity better than other. This was probably due to fact that we had put the scents on the day before, when user testing. We did not think of this before the presentation.

Something that was discussed frequently during all presentations was the use of different material. Before our group had started prototyping, we thought of using MDF for our bricks, but we figured that the burnt would be to intense and blend into our scents. The use of any processed material is difficult to use when using smell, since they don’t have a neutral smell. We used cardboard and paper, which both are processed and have no neutral smell. However, the intensity of their smell is almost zero compared to MDF for example. One of our peers that used MDF, explained that they had neutralized the burnt smell by using vinegar and baking soda, clever!

To conclude, creating game interactions with the use of smell first felt really weird, but with time, learning more about the topic, it became really fun to work with. It was a completely new topic and field for interaction for me but that also made it more interesting to work with, and I’m happy about the result.

• Look into the cultural aspect of the game. The game can be played differently in other parts of the world.
• Visual thing was of an issue – the stains of the scents were quite easy to differentiate and remember, could be used for cheating.
• Intensity varies a lot – some of the scents keep their intensity better than others
• Domino bricks were too big, since we used intense scents we wouldn’t have needed these large bricks.
• Using processed material is difficult to use when using smell, they do not have neutral scent. MDF for example smells a lot since it is burnt.

We decided to user test our game and prototype. What did we conduct user testing? The reason was to try out if our game actually worked, if it was too hard to play, i.e. if it was hard to differentiate the different smells. Also wanted to see if there were any flaws that we could improve on.
To prepare before user testing we had to put the scents on the bricks which was done by dropping the liquid scents on the cardboard circles and writing the abbreviation using the UV-pen. This was easy to do since we already had created the combination system and had put the post-it notes to them all the day before. During the preparations we actually made some important discoveries, some we fixed before user testing and some not.

When we dropped the scents on the cardboard circles, we realised that they were visible, compared to the neutral domino which had no drop signifier. This made it very easy to distinguish which ones were neutral and not. At first we discussed that a smart way to make it look like the others, would be to use rapeseed oil, since it barely smell anything. However, we did not have rapeseed oil at the time, so for the user test we decided to put a water drop on the neutral one’s. For tomorrow we’ll get the oil before the presentation, since the water probably will be dried out.

We also discovered that after a little while, not only did the oil had different sizes and shapes, but also they dried in a different pace, which potentially could make them easy to identify and memorize while playing. We weren’t sure the participants would notice this, but I think a solution could be to put something on top of it, such as a bit of paper. Another idea of removing the visual stains was to put cotton pads to soak up the essential oils, however, the oils could have different colors which would then be visible on white cotton.

Before the user test we decided to use 4 scents instead of 6 and to use two people, because we thought it would take too long time to play the whole game considering our time constraints. In the workshop we found two people that were willing to play our game. To introduce them to the game, we explained the rules (they had forgot the domino rules) and asked them to pick four bricks each. One brick was used as a staring point. They also got a period of time to smell both their own bricks and the starting brick. During the seminar Simon had talked about how important the initial learning period of the game was, to let the players know about the rules as well as to familiarize themselves with the scents to be able to play it.

• 

• 

During the game one of the participant actually pointed out that the stains could be quite easy to differentiate, which we initially had thought of but didn’t fix for the test. We had also made a big mistake in our preparation – while playing, the participants got stuck with one of the bricks which they couldn’t combine with any other. When we smelled it and checked it with the UV-lamp, we realized that we had put a fifth scent to the game by mistake. They also mentioned that it was easy to differentiate the scents, but also that it became confusing after a while (too much smell) so they wanted to smell coffee in between to neutralize the smells. This made me reflect that we maybe had chosen too intense scents and additionally, playing it for a longer time could become an issue.

• 

• 

• 

One observation we did was that the participant would pick up the bricks to smell the bricks, rather than leaning down towards the table. Reason for this could be that the table we used was rather large and that the bricks were placed in the middle of the table, making it hard to lean down.

The participants actually managed to combine all the scents during the entire game, which was actually kind of a success, as it meant that the game was playable and not too hard. In contrast, it could also be interpreted as it being too simple, but the feedback from the testers didn’t say that. The feedback from the participants was that the game was frustrating but fun to play. One of them mentioned that ”It was challenging in a good way”.

Some important learnings and insights from user testing:

• Giving the participant a tutorial of the game and letting them familiarise with the scent is useful, so that they understand how the game is played. Thus, the participant will be able to play the game fluently.
• The essential oils leave stains on the cardboard in different shapes and sizes, which could make them easy to memorize and visually distinguish from each other. Additionally, they dry in different pace which make it even more prominent. Therefore, another material could be used or even put something on top of the cardboard.
• The game was simple enough to play. Both participant were able to answer correctly on every brick. However, it was not too simple, since participants mentioned that the game was “frustrating, but fun to play” and ”challenging in a good way”.
• Use of intense scents can become an issue. Players can become confused by the smelling if playing for a longer period of time. Thus, the use of a neutralising scent could be useful.

This week’s seminar was a lot more casual than the previous, it basically felt like a critique/feedback session. We got to ask questions and discussed it with Simon. I wrote down an important note from the session, that our group could use for the project:

• Tutorial is important, i.e. what happens before the game can start. With smell games, there should be a period of familiarization. Simon mentioned that with the Spice Chess game, the players had some time to smell their chess pieces, in order to set up association with the scents and chess pieces (the players have to smell the chess pieces to remember which one is which before they can start playing). This is something that our group could think about creating, a tutorial where we explain the rules, let the players smell and familiarize with their own Dominoes before the game starts.

This week’s design assignment is to modify a game and add a scent dimension to it. The player should use their sense of smell to understand the game, meaningfully integrated.

We started with a brainstorm session, coming up with boardgames that we liked and had played before. Rather quickly we found interest in Domino. Domino is a classical game in which there are bricks (dominoes) with numbers, ranging from 1-6 plus some with no number, that are to be combined with matchin number. Each brick is divided with a line, and each end is marked with a number of spots. The opportunity we saw in this game was that we could easily apply scent instead of the numbers.

The traditional Domino set consist of 28 dominoes, featuring all combinations of numbers ranging from zero to six. The game can be played with 2-4 people and depending on how many players are playing, each player receive a certain amount of dominoes to play with.

We were able to use the same rules as the original Domino game, which was great as it saved us time. Scents are not visible so the challenging part was to come up with a simple system of how to correct the answers. We want the players to be able to fluently play the game by themselves, not having to need a judge. There were some different ideas that came up for this, such as:
– One idea was that the player should put their name or color (every player were assigned a color) on the bricks when they have played it out. However, this would afford cheating, since the answers would be checked afterwards.
– Another idea was that the player should put an abbreviation of the scent on folded post-it notes that were put on the bricks. The problem with the post-it notes was that it was quite easy to see through. An iteration on this idea was to stick the post-it note in under the cardboard circle.

We didn’t want the scents to be too similar. We chose to use six different scents that were easy to differentiate from each other, making the game simpler. As seen in the picture, we created abbreviation for the scents that later were put on the bricks. The scents we had chosen were quite intense which made us realize that we could not create our domino bricks in the same size as the original. To prevent possible mix of scents, we chose to make the bricks quite large, so that the player easily could smell each side of it. At the same time, larger bricks require larger space to play the game on which could be problematic in some situations.

• 

• 

In the workshop we divided the work, me and Nefeli cutted the large bricks, Martin and Jesper cutted the cardboard circles and glued them on the bricks. The idea for the cardboard circles was that they would soak up the scents that we would drop on them. The white paper material wouldn’t do that in the same way.

To make it easier for us to create the scent combination system, we found a picture showing the original game (Domino) combined the numbers and applied it to our game, which probably saved us a lot of time! Every scent had a number between 1-6. It also felt great to use the same rules and structure as Dominos since Simon asked us to modify a game and add the scent dimension to it. For someone who have played Dominos before, it would be really easy to play our game since our game is about the same, but instead the challenge is to us one’s scent instead of numbers. On every brick, we put a post-it note with the abbreviation on so that we could remember what scent should be put on it.

• 

• 

Tomorrow we will finalize the prototype and user test the game! Exciting!

Simon started of by going through the different game examples that were in the paper to get our minds set into smell-based games and to show how we can implement smell into games. Before we got our design assignment, we did a couple of experiments in the workshop – recreating two smell-based games and shooting scents with vortex cannons!

Recreation #1

Rosewater “bombs”: A seventeenth century play where eggs were emptied and then filled with rosewater. Then the ladies threw them at each other to erase the unpleasant smell of their cosmetics (Niedenthal, 2012, p.7).

We were given an empty egg to fill up with rosewater, orange water amongst others, using pipettes. Simon had already prepared the eggs to be filled, but we had to seal it ourselves. It was made easily with some paper and wax. After this our job was to recreate this play! The “bomb” (egg) suggests some different forms of affordances such as being tossed, rolled, smashed, spinned etc. Our group decided, as we were four people we could toss it each other. The play was about standing together with one feet connected to the others, then we tossed the egg to each other clockwise, when one circle was done, we took one step back and so it went on. It was an ordered play as we applied some rules to it. 

• 

• 

• 

The play created both excitement and anxiety as one wanted to be able to catch the egg without breaking it, and this sensory impression became even more increased for every step we took backwards. I think this tension of excitement and anxiety is what made this play fun to experience. Also, I was afraid of getting smelly, if the egg would crack in my hand I would get all the orange water on my arms and possibly clothes. If there would be water in it, then I would instead be afraid of getting wet. So the difference is that when having a liquid scent inside, I was more afraid of getting smelly even though I would get wet. This also makes us kind of invested in the egg, we only have one and we don’t want to break it because then one of us would get smelly and the game would be over.

I assumed the egg would break when catching it from a longer distance but it held better than expected. I enjoyed recreating this play but it would be even more fun to throw at someone ;). However, this showed me how fast we can make simple recreations of plays/games using scent.

Recreation #2

The second recreation was of a simple ancient smell game called Kobo. The game is about correctly identifying scents and testing the ability to remember similar scents. We were supposed to identify three different scents, the first round was in one order, and the second round the scents came in another order.

• 

• 

I thought the scents were actually quite different from each other and therefore it was easier to distinguish them. Also, we were told to close our eyes while smelling since the scent liquid could be identified (e.g one were more yellow than the other). When he revealed the order of the scents, I had managed to get it right. I was also able to identify 2/3 scents, success! However, there was one scent that I couldn’t identify – nutmeg. I like these kind of games because it makes it is testing my personal abilities and therefore I want to do the best I can.

Vortex cannons

For the last experiment we used vortex cannons to deliver scent at distance. Vortex cannons are used to project smell in a targeted way from distance, and I was surprised over how great they worked! It was easy to aim for specific targets, it was possible to control the pace of the vortex rings (i.e how hard you pushed them out of the cannon). From this, I realised how easy it can be to deliver scent at distance in a playful way. We could just put a couple of drops into the cannon (filled with smoke) and shoot it.

• 

• 

Yes, it all got mayhem as the entire class wanted to shoot vortex scent rings all over the place!

• 

• 

To what sort of game activities does smell lend itself when mediated by a vortex cannon?
Our group thought of using it for a dodgeball-like game, if you get hit you have to guess the scent. If correct, you become the shooter!
Another example could be to try and steer/lead a blindfolded person through a room or anything, by shooting scents at them. By applying each scent to a specific direction, the person would be able to know when to go straight, left, right or backwards.

I think that these activities are really nice to have before being given a design assignment, it helps me to get in to the mindset. Also, I feel that it helps starting of my creative process by being able to think of ideas while doing things in the workshop.

Simon introduced the lecture by showing us Google Nose which caught my interest for the topic. I hadn’t seen it before but I kind of quickly realized it was fake, and later Simon told us it was an april’s fools joke. It got me thinking of a similar april’s fool joke that I saw a couple of years ago, where a company sent out text messages saying something like “Click here to be able to send smell text messages”, which fooled me!

Google Nose video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFbYadm_mrw

I thought it was an interesting lecture as I learned new things about smell and the olfactory system that I haven’t even thought of before. It is such an untouched area and very different from traditional interaction design areas. Simon mentioned that when there’s not a lot to draw on, we have to expand our way of thinking which also allows us to approach new questions, opportunities and challenges. A thing that made the lecture fun but also challenging, was that we were able to do scent-tests. For some of the smells it was really hard to put a name on it, even though I could recognize it. Further Simon explained that people identify 15% of what they smell, which also clarified why I only answered correctly on 2/8 scents. 

We also got introduced to some of the challenges there are in designing for smell. Some of the examples are that people have a negative attitude towards smell, most people would choose to throw away they sense of smell ahead of other senses. Smells are slow, irregular and born in airflow, and there’s no system for classifying odors such as RGB value for light or color, therefore it is hard to design for.

However, humans can resolve “one trillion smells” which makes smell one of our most nuanced sensory. We think that we can’t smell very well, but actually we can, and it is possible to train the sense of smell. Also, smell has a relationship to memory and can give us access to a set of emotions that function as mechanisms of attraction (arousal) and avoidance (disgust). Therefore, there is an opportunity in smell training games, as smell training also can lead to cognitive enhancement. Not only can smell be useful for a greater sense of immersion, but it can be used to create smell-based games that are useful for stimulating memory and train the memory. 

It is important for designers to consider the space when designing for smell interaction. Scent is slow, persistent and difficult to contain because it is constantly moving depending on airflow. How do we then control it? – bigger space can be a problem, therefore we have to think of the proximity of interacting with smell. Also, scents might overlap or blend together. Some examples of how to tackle these problems were shown during the lecture, for example encapsulate the scent in bubbles, or shooting vortex rings. 

• 

• 

The design challenges of the materiality of smell is to collect scent materials. Also, scent go away with time. As Simon said, miniaturization (i.e small artefacts) is a problem because they are very limited to the physical scent materials and therefore hard to design for.

Some questions to think of for the project:

• what is the space of scent interaction? 
• output, delivered? output devices
• Am I going to work with liquid or solid? 
• how will the material be vaporized? bubbles, scratch?

Literature

Beyond Smell-O-Vision: Possibilities for Smell-Based Digital Media

The authors, Olofsson et al. (2017), argues for if and how smell training can be implemented and utilized in games, both in terms of improving olfactory ability and boosting capacity for other cognitive tasks, such as stimulating memory and accessing powerful emotions.

I haven’t thought of smell in terms of gaming, especially not within interaction design, which makes it more interesting for me. The provided examples of game concept and what to think about in terms of smell and cognition is interesting and inspiring. The paper is quite new and uses many references to recent research which make it feel very relevant to us during this project. However, the paper mostly discuss challenges (technical & psychological) and promises of olfactory-based games.

The two experiments with the different game concepts seem reasonable as their overall goal was to see if people could improve their cognitive function. Also, I think that these examples can be good to keep in mind as guidelines in how to design smell-based games.

The paper gave me some new insights in how important olfactory sense is, which I haven’t thought of before. For example that it could help decreasing depression and alert illness such as dementia and parkinson. However, that smell and memory is linked to each other wasn’t that much of a surprise since I’ve experienced olfactory memory, which is an interesting phenomenon because it can unlock memories that almost take you to the place in a realistic way, almost like a dream. A certain smell can be linked to one certain memory and place.

The authors suggest that smell can be implemented to games not just as a layer of immersion but rather as a core challenge of the game. In the text they state that an important feature of difficult games, is that it is available for everyone but also that it can adjust its degree of difficulty to the skill level of the player, thus creating a balance (not too hard or too easy) to keep players in the sense of “flow” and keen to continue playing. Relating it to my own experience of gaming, I would say that is exactly what I feel, to be able to outplay others that are on the same skill level as myself is really rewarding. I wouldn’t be eager to continue playing a game if it wouldn’t adjust to my skill level, it would become too easy. Me and a couple of peers discussed about this and asked ourselves how hard it would be to implement smell stimuli to the core challenges in a game. How do we adjust smell and the level of difficulty?

Skin Games: Fragrant Play, Scented Media and the Stench of Digital Games

Niedenthal offers a couple of examples where scent might be applied to engage players. One example is “Scratch Me, Sniff Me,” which plays on the possibilities of bodily intimacy and smell that often is connected with social anxiety. Another is called “Sillage” and involves a mission to look for characters who are never directly seen—the game relies on the inherently sad and nostalgic character of smell that is too often neglected. Finally, he points game developers toward “abuse, power and transgression” as a promising area.

The paper offers various approaches and ways to explore potential ways in how to utilize smell in game design. I like that there are many game examples, which could be used as inspiration for this week’s assignment. Also, the use of pictures make it more graspable. Some of the game examples were fun to read about.

References:

Niedenthal, S. (2012). Skin Games: Fragrant Play, Scented Media and the Stench of Digital Games. Eludamos. Journal for Computer Game Culture. 2012; 6 (1), pp. 1-3

Olofsson, J. K., Niedenthal, S., Ehrndal, M., Zakrzewska, M., Wartel, A., & Larsson, M. (2017). Beyond Smell-O-Vision: Possibilities for Smell-Based Digital Media.
Simulation & Gaming, 48(4), 455–479.
https://doi.org/10.1177/1046878117702184

Brainstorming and ideation progress:

To start of our project we had a brainstorm session to find out how to represent glanceability in a meaningful way. We needed to decide what devices we wanted to use, for example a smartwatch and a phone. Also, in what context we wanted the displays to be used in. To come up with concepts we did another brainstorm session, the goal for this to write down as many concepts and ideas as possible, where glanceable feedback could be utilized. We wrote on post-it notes, with a 10 minute time constraint. After some discussion we chose the three best scenarios, which were:

• Cyclist delivering food
• Architect / engineer
• Chef

Then each person had three votes, to vote on the one we liked the most. The concept we decided to work on was to design glanceable feedback for a home cook, to support multitasking while cooking and following a recipe. We tried to map out a user journey but couldn’t figure out how to design the smartwatch UI without many interactions with it. Just having glanceable feedback for following a recipe didn’t feel intuitive, how would the watch know when the person was done with one task, would it be set to a timer? Wouldn’t that just be stressful?

However, after discussion we found that we couldn’t really come up with meaningful glanceable feedback for this scenario. Therefore we changed our direction into helping chefs multitask with the use of a smartwatch and tablet, as they’re working in a hectic environment and have a lot of things going on at the same time. The reason for choosing these devices is because it’s easier for a chef to glance at a smartwatch, compared to for example a phone that the chef would’ve had to pick out from the pocket all the time in order to look at it. Also, tablets have become a more common tool in restaurant kitchens instead of using printers that print out the orders.   

Having this done, we mapped out a user journey on how to help aid a chef with their work. We sketched out the situation in steps, together with some UI sketches for both the tablet and smartwatch. This was the part where we spent most time, which was good. We discussed it thoroughly during the process, questioning our design choices and the possible improvements we could make.

We also created too many notifications for the smartwatch, for example incoming orders, expected time, order done and order overdue. This would become a few more when having many order at the same time and would not support the chef with multitasking and communication with his team, instead it would probably become very annoying and strenuous. We decided to give only two different notifications that we thought would be the most important for our design.

How would the glanceable feedback be implemented and designed in the smartwatch?
We also spent time on discussing and sketching ideas for how the UI would look, we looked in to colors, shading colors, numbers and the interaction for the tablet. Each order will get their own color (same color as in the tablet), so that it is easy to distinguish orders that should be prioritized. To visualise time in the smartwatch, we first thought of having shading color according to priority (each order have a specific color), but when putting ourselves in the chef’s perspective, shading color wouldn’t be easy to interpret or even see by just glancing. We tried this by having Nefeli showing me, Martin and Jesper the sketch in 5 seconds, so that we would glance at it. Instead we changed it to solid color that increases with time, which was easier to understand when glancing. We took some inspiration from Google’s design guidelines (https://designguidelines.withgoogle.com/wearos/) which helped us during sketching and designing, like the example above where we changed the shading color to a more clear, solid color.

Prototyping and sketching

After deciding how the prototypes would look like we divided the work as we were four people, in order to be as effective as possible.

Me and Jesper started working on the physical prototypes (smartwatch and tablet) and Nefeli sketched out the UI for the devices. Me and Jesper chose to make a MDF frame with the laser cutter for both the smartwatch and tablet, as it was the fastest way for us to create our prototype. We wanted a solid frame since we would pull the interface through it and also to have a good representation of the prototype. We made a few prototypes for both the tablet and smartwatch, with different measurements in order to get a good feel of how it would feel and look if it actually existed. We also had to consider how the paper interface would be pulled through it, but eventually we found a way that worked great!
When having the knowledge of working with the laser cutter, it is nice to work with. It is really fast and it is possible to make really detailed and real-like looking prototypes. I would definitely use it again when making hi-fi prototypes.

Throughout the prototyping phase we met up to discuss the progress and the possible ways to visualize and implement the physical prototypes together with the interface. This was a great way to keep up with each other’s work and if changes had to be made. For example, when creating the interface for the smartwatch, the first idea was to have the classical clock face, having the clock face we had to put hour-numbers to signify the time. As we wanted the order numbers implemented as well (so that the chef knows which order is coupled with the color and time) we found that we had to put the order number inside the order timer. It felt to cluttered and hard to understand when glancing at it. We wanted the order number to be on the clock face, outside of the color indication but still coupled with it, using the same color so that it is easy to distinguish and understand. 

• 

• 

Here’s the complete UI for the smartwatch:

Here’s the complete UI for the tablet:

Video prototyping and presentation preparation

We discovered that chefs are not allowed to use watches, due to hygiene rules. We actually had not thought of this before, maybe it should’ve been obvious as there are so many rules about hygiene in a restaurant kitchen. Therefore we had to rethink and questioned ourselves where or in what situation our idea would be necessary and important. We arrived at “what if the chef is deaf?” – in this situation glanceable feedback could be very important and helpful. This could’ve been devastating for a project, but luckily it did not change our concept. However, we did have to consider this when editing the video, for example by having no audio when the video is shot from first-person perspective. Learned lesson from this is that it would be necessary to research the context we’re designing for.

Video

Before we started shooting the video, we decided create some kind of story with the video, explaining the concept and purpose of the smartwatch and tablet. Making a video prototype with a story is challenging. You have to think of ways to show how the prototype works, how to interact with it and in addition, making the viewer understand what the video is about in just a short period of time. It was a tough challenge to make this video, in every scene we had to try a lot of different angles to get the best shot. At the same time we had to think about distracting background and how the light was. I hope that the video is understandable for the viewers. A problem that occurred while filming, was that our tablet interface was made on long piece of paper, showing how the interface changed after interacting with it. Therefore we had to hide it using things from my kitchen. It wasn’t optimal and but I think we made it look ok.

• 

• 

• 

When the video shooting was done, we divided the tasks again for editing and presentation preparation. I edited the video with feedback from the rest of the group, so that we were on the same page on how it would run. With the video we wanted to portray the experience of the hearing impaired chef while and working and multitasking in a hectic restaurant kitchen. However, since the video was shot in my kitchen (which doesn’t look like a professional kitchen) we used background sound of a restaurant kitchen because we wanted to give a more realistic scenario of a chef working in restaurant kitchen with the smartwatch. Also, to make it clear of how this is experienced from the chefs perspective, we cut out the background sound when you see it from first-person view. In addition, we used a vibration sound so that the viewer understand when a notification pops up in the smartwatch. For some shots, text had to be used as explanation because we felt we had to make more clear what happened on the smartwatch.

Making paper and video prototypes is a great way to convey an idea, in an inexpensive and time efficient way. A video can easily be done using one’s phone and some lights that are available at home! The hard part is to make it look professional, that demands experience or that you hire a professional.

I think the group dynamic is, and have been, great. While in the design process we have challenged our ideas together, trying to see it from different perspectives in order to make them better. We’ve encountered some problems (e.g hygiene rules) during the project but I think we’ve conquered them in a good way, by discussing and working as a team. That also helped us to stay on the same page during the project.

Learning outcomes:

• Research the context we’re designing for, in order to not miss out on important things such as hygiene rules in kitchens.
• Making paper and video prototypes is a great way to convey an idea in an inexpensive and time efficient way.
• Bodystorming is a good way to find flaws in the design and prototype, as you try it out and act as it actually exists. It is also a good way to look at the project through different perspectives. For example, the small test we made by glancing at the sketch using shaded colors helped us understand that it was hard to distinguish the priorities, which led us to improve it by applying solid color.
• When inexperienced designing for a device (e.g smartwatch in our case), it can be a great opportunity to look at design guidelines for inspiration.

Here’s the full video prototype that we created!

Presentation and critique

Some feedback that we got from the presentation:

• We should have explained the system a bit better as for someone who is completely unknown to how an order system works it can be confusing. Give a little more context to the system, then flashing the prototype a bit.
• David could not understand that the kitchen was working in a big scale since it was a lonely chef with no one else around.

Reflections about the presentation:

We could’ve set the context in a better way. We thought of going to a real restaurant that my cousin own but that did not work out, also we could’ve thought of using the uni restaurant. However, given the constrained environment of my kitchen we tried to do it with sound, but could’ve used more people than only one in the video that we created, so that it would be more apparent that the situation was in a big scale kitchen.

Some groups made the interaction clear by using overlaying paper for their buttons or whatever symbols they used, so that it could be pulled in or out from the device. We just used static sketches. We could’ve done this with the tablet to make the interaction clearer on the video. However, it would have been difficult to achieve with the watch on the arm, without showing the person pulling the paper.

It was nice to realise that the audience understood why we cut out the background sound when we switched to the first-person view. We thought of explaining this before but left it to see if people noticed it. It showed that it is important to explain the context during the presentation before the video is shown.

This was my first seminar I’ve had. Here are some learning outcomes from it.

Check the authors – is it a valid paper? Thought the question about this was irrelevant, but from the seminar I learned that this question was relevant as it is important to do a background check on the authors to see if the paper is valid to what we are doing. Important to look at the author’s database and if the author is influenced by a company or not. 

Understand terminology – David asked us describe feedback, which I noticed I had interpreted wrongly. There are many ways to describe feedback and I instantly thought of Don Norman’s description of feedback. However, David gave another description of feedback – constant feedback loop that can influence or change behavior, makes us act, behave and use language in certain ways. Also, that it can be described as a mechanism of control. It is important to understand the terminology when doing a project and using the supplied literature, if we interpret terminology incorrect, it can obviously affect the outcome of a project.

Prioritize meaningful terminology – Instead of trying to learn every terminology in a paper, it is better to prioritize meaningful terminology, that are relatable to our design work. 

Check if the paper is relevant to modern society – analyse if the paper is relevant to modern society and if we can use it for our own design work. For example with the text “Evaluating Peripheral Displays”. When it was written, it wasn’t cheap to design for peripheral displays and therefore maybe mostly relevant for companies with financial support. However, now in modern society, it is possible to make it cheap, and therefore this paper can be picked up again. This is probably the case for many papers in history about technology, as it becomes cheaper to design and create technology.

The course started off with David talking about glanceability and then the human cognitive model. So what is glanceability? Glanceability refers to the interpretation and perception of information after when you take a quick look at something or move swiftly from one thing to another. Glanceability is important because it can improve our ability to use screens with little cognitive effort. It can improve our multitasking ability and will lessen the disruption of flow when for example working.

We looked at the human cognitive model because our brain has areas dedicated to sensory processing and therefore senses are connected. An example from the slides was that when we activate the sense of touch, the sense of sight is also activated in the brain. Interesting!
Therefore, we should not only look at how feedback is captured by the body, but also how many resources the brain dedicates to coping with the produced signals. 

We also did a quick group exercise, where we wrote our activities from waking up, to leaving for school. The reason for this was to do it as a exercise in how a user journey could look like, and how to make it. It was interesting to see how the other group members “user journey” was like, and as David said, there were some negotiations about when doing what. The hard part was when we got constraints, we could only keep 2-3 activities and here the negotiation went off even more. But, we managed to filter out and agree on the activities. What David wanted us to think about, is that we will probably have these constraint projects in the future when working professionally. Even though it was short, it was a quite
fun exercise. It is like the classical question ”name three things you would bring to an island”.

Reading the literature:

Designing and Evaluating Glanceable Peripheral Displays by Tara Matthews (2006).

The text want to give the reader knowledge and guidelines for designing glanceable peripheral displays, as these can improve our ability to multitask. The author refer glanceability to perception and interpretation after a user draw their attention to an interface. They look at glancing and not peripheral vision. Peripheral vision is the ability to see objects/movement outside of the focal point / direct line of vision. You can see something in the periphery for a long time and decide to look at it or not. Glancing is when you take a quick look at something or move swiftly from one thing to another. Could be both intentional and unintentional? Glancing is triggered by peripheral view, but glancing requires focal vision. 

How will Glanceability improve comp-based UIs? 
Glanceability is important because it can improve our ability to use screens with little cognitive effort. It can lead to improve multitasking and lessen disruption of flow, while for example working. Naturally, this can be very subjective. Not all people like to or are good at multitasking, it can seem rather stressful to have feedback popping up. However, if we’re able to design glanceable feedback correctly, it should be easy to interpret with little cognitive effort and therefore not disturb the flow. 

The main characteristics of term glanceability are:
– Symbolism (ability to convey meaning)
– Dimensionality (the number of visual variables used or visual complexity)
– Entity (situations/ideas, objects or people).

In the text, they measure glanceability by:

• Perceptibility (how easy you can see or recognize a visual).
• Interpretability (how long it takes for me to understand the meaning of a symbol).
• Memorability (how well can you remember the meaning of a visual, how easy it is to remember what a symbol represents for example).
• Aesthetics (how does it look, attractiveness of the visual, how well a symbol attracts the attention.

Interesting things they found was that the more things that are shown, the more important it is using abstract representations (symbolic). Find a balance between symbolic and simple representations that allow for ease of interpretation and perception. As they say in the text, there is a sweet spot number of how much we can interpret and understand at the same time, which is 7 plus/minus 2. I can relate this to many apps that have a lot of information and symbolic representations at the same time, making them feel very cluttered and annoying to use.

The author made two studies. The first looked at how fast and easy users interpret abstract representations without pre-knowledge of them, where they thought that the result would be that symbolic representations will be the easiest and fastest to interpret. The second study looked at speed and ease of interpretation and perception of representations that they had been trained to identify. Trying different numbers of information mapped to representations to see when users change from perceptive capabilities to cognitive capabilities. 

What I think can be good things to keep in mind from the results is that the more abstract mappings, the more important it is with symbolic representation. Simple representations more important the less abstract mapping – lessens the need of symbolism.

The text is 13 years old now and with the fast pace in tech I believe many things have changed. But it feels like it is a good introduction to how it was before and a good explanation of what glanceability is.

Exploring the Design Space of Glanceable Feedback for Physical Activity Trackers – by Gouveia et al., 2016

This text quite new and therefore it feels relevant for us to read and use. The text show a lot of examples and in-depth research. Also, they use current technology and research on it. They use quantitative and qualitative methods (mixed methods) but do a qualitative analysis. They present qualitative results, from interviews with participants asking about they experience and looking at their behavior using the prototypes. 

The authors explore the design space of glanceable feedback, specifically for physical activity trackers, which result in 21 concepts and 6 design qualities. After creating prototypes of four concepts, they do two studies in order to get a better understanding of how the types glanceable behavioral feedback affect user engagement and their physical activity. It was nice to see pictures of the examples as well as how their user testing was performed, and the results they got when testing their design qualities in the prototypes. 

The qualities they present could be good to consider and try out when designing glanceable feedback for multitasking activities. For example the use of Abstraction, which according to the text is the most common used quality for glanceable displays. Abstracting data with metaphors, as opposed to displaying raw data, allow users to perceive and process information with minimal consciousness, enabling quick awareness and reflection on one’s behavior. In a test with one of the prototypes called “Gardy”, users first felt interest in the interface to see how the garden filled up the watch. However, when they had reached their goal and seen it complete once, interest and engagement decreased. In addition, it was difficult to estimate or measure the progress, as there was no numerical feedback and no comparison to the goal except the garden filling up. Feedback that presents progress in comparison to a target can be easier for the user to process, helping the user evaluate their behaviour relative to a certain goal.

In another concept they made called “Novelty”, the strategy of presenting new information was used. The gratification people derive from encountering novel content as they check their smartwatch would reinforce the habit of checking for new information. I can relate this, just as in the text, when watching a movie or show on TV, I often watch the commercial breaks so that I won’t miss parts of the show. Another example I can relate to is my use of Runkeeper (activity app) which sends me novel notifications each and every day, saying “This day a week ago you ran, why not do it again?”. This feedback is actually making me change my behavior as I sometimes go out and run after this notification. The question is if this is the way people want to get treated? I guess it is subjective, some people like to get told what to do and some don’t. This strategy makes people keep on using their system which I feel can be a bit concerning, as many people are obsessed with their phones.

References:

Gouveia, R., Pereira, F., Karapanos, E., Munson, S. A., & Hassenzahl, M. (2016). Exploring the design space of glanceable feedback for physical activity trackers. Proceedings of the 2016 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing – UbiComp ’16. https://doi.org/10.1145/2971648.2971754

Matthews, T. (2006). Designing and evaluating glanceable peripheral displays. Proceedings of the 6th ACM conference on Designing Interactive systems – DIS ’06. https://doi.org/10.1145/1142405.1142457