Smart Cast: Part 2

As a continuation of the first part of Smart Cast, this project got my group to design an electronic component to work with the Smart Cast that engages with a user’s somatic experiences through multiple senses. What we decided to design was a three-part process, the first is researching and creating a mock-up of the smart fabric potential. The second part was designing a mobile application that keeps the user informed of the necessary medical information about their injury. Finally, the third part is a mobile game designed for children with injuries to teach them about the healing process and their bodies.
We decided that these ideas would be good to address in the project due to the design issue of the lack of information regarding an injury. When a user gets an injury and seeks medical attention all the information is told to them upfront. This leaves the users to possibly forget some of the information or miss what they need. As well as, after they return home with their injury there is no feedback on how they are doing or if something is wrong. Especially for a child who would need to inform an adult about an issue, they might not know or remember what symptoms to look out for and could cause more damage in the process.
For this prototype, we split the design process into three sections, one regarding the smart fabric and an Arduino, one using Adobe XD to create the mobile app, and one for creating the game using Unity. For the first section, the design process mainly consisted of researching smart fabric and what the possible features could be. We decided on temperature monitoring because of the relation to infection and heart rate monitoring as an overall good statistic to be aware of. The next step after this was to use an Arduino to mimic these functions but had to change this idea last minute due to the challenges of time restraints and the current pandemic. Instead, we responded by opting to look up related projects that other people have done on the Arduino Project Hub to show the potential, using both a simpler and a more difficult method. For the second section involving the mobile application, we again started with researching what information should be available and what images or charts are common for people to see. Taking this information, we designed wireframes of the app in Adobe XD and incorporated the images and research. Finally, for the third section, the design process was a bit more complicated. This was my part for the prototype, and it took a long time to create a rough prototype of the game using Unity. Most of the design process was iteratively writing code used from method learned in game design and development, then testing and finding issues. The overall game is supposed to be similar to Flappy Bird but is about a child jumping through the bloodstream of an injured person who is shooting healing orbs to destroy infection monsters. Each time an infection monster gets past the player the game is supposed to speed up and a text prompt is shown that states a symptom of infection. The game can be slowed down again by collecting power-up hearts that prompt the user with information to prevent infection.
Overall, the experience of designing and making this prototype went fairly well. What really seemed to work was the way that we split up the different sections, because each of us was able to do something while still in quarantine and not depend on other group members to finish first. I could focus on making the game while everyone else had their separate part to work on. What did not work as well though, was trying to prototype a fully functional game in the time span. While I got the rough version of the game done, I had originally planned for a full version of that simple game. As hard as I worked, I continued to run into errors and needed more time to solve them than originally thought. What I learned from this design process involving what worked, what did not work, and the challenges faced was to always be flexible with the plan. When it came to the game, I tried my best but was flexible at realizing the programming the whole game perfectly was not an option, and when it came to the Arduino it was a pretty easy flexible change. Thus, everything came together to contribute to my evolution as a UX designer because it made me more realistic about what goals to have and taught me how to incorporate my skills from game design and development into UX design.