Embodying Health

I just presented SWAY at the IDSA southern district conference 2011 held in Austin, TX this past weekend. I presented it as a part of the Graduate Research Showcase event.

It was a challenge to present a year’s worth of work in about 6 minutes, but in the end, I think I succeeded in comunicating the project scope as well as the design process that went into the product. The presentation was followed by a poster presentation and a demo of the working prototype.

Surprisingly, of the 8 graduate student groups (from Georgia Tech, Auburn, Virginia Tech & Univ. of Houston) who displayed their work, I was the only one with a functional prototype that people could see, touch and use to give focussed input on. 

Apart from the conference, I had the opportunity to tour parts of Austin and I really think its a very progressive city. Quite unlike Dallas (the other texan city I’d visited sometime ago), Austin is highly bike friendly, has a good public transportation system, has great people and lip-smacking local food choices. So if you’re ever in texas, stop by austin. It will surpass your expectations.

P.S: I also presented the project at the GVU Interactive computing research showcase held at Georgia Tech to good feedback. This coming week I will be demoing the project at the CATEA Open House scheduled to be held on the 21st. So if you’re in Atlanta, be sure to drop by and take a look. :)

Today was a day of testing the first prototype of SWAY. The participant was a receptionist who spends a great amount of time sitting at his desk. I installed the system on his chair and let him use it for close to an hour. I videotaped him for the entire duration to capture his movements as he reacted to the feedback system.

This also provided an opportunity for me to know what’s involved in installing SWAY system in someone else’s chair.

For example, the receptionist was using a gel cushion on his seat which had to be removed in order to install my pressure mat. Also SWAY in its current form requires power over USB or battery. I had planned on using a 9V battery  for today’s test but it turned out that using a battery reduced the brightness with which the LEDs needed to glow. So I had to resort to using power over USB. Trouble being, the USB port on the participant’s computer was too far away from SWAY’s power port. So I had to use my laptop as the power source.

Lastly and most importantly, I realised that SWAY needed to be calibrated for the participants body weight. Something that i would want to automate down the development timeline.

Overall, I gained good insight into improving the prototype further. More later. Take care.

Samples of different kinds of upholstry fabrics. They all vary in the texture, stitching patterns, layering and colors they contain. I will select the most appropriate fabric among them to use in the next phase of design. The criteria for selection will include the durability, flexibility and the tactile feel that a particular fabric posseses, along with the its design compatibility with electronic components and ofcourse chair aesthetics.  The goal is to use fabric to encase the electronics in such a way, so a user can easily connect with it.