Sprout
Physical + digital · Prototyping
How might we create a tangible representation of the growth of a child that is meaningful and intimate for distant family members?
Challenge
Outcome
Family members who live geographically apart are missing out on the experience of watching loved ones grow up, especially in the world of pandemic-imposed isolation.
In 10 weeks, our team prototyped a physical height-marking bar, through which families can capture both the height and voice of growing children and share them with distant family members.
Role
Teammates
Our team worked together on ideation, making prototypes, and user testing. Individually, I was responsible for digital fabrication, electrical engineering, Arduino coding, and video editing.
Maisie Howard, Juan C. Santos, Fontayne Wong
Design Overview
Sprout is an interactive height-marking bar that connects children and their distant family members.
With families increasingly living further apart and isolated with the current pandemic, many are missing out on the experience of watching loved ones grow up.
Using Sprout, families are able to measure children's heights and record stories about their growth.
Distant family members are able to see these height marks and listen to their stories. A connection between the separated two is thus made.
Concept Video
This concept video illustrates how Sprout connects families through the story of Pierre and his granddaughter Becca. You can also skip to the next section to see key interactions.
Key Interactions
At child's home
Measuring height
Child's height is measured by touching height marks on the Sprout bar.
This interaction is the most intuitive through research, mimicking how people normally mark heights.
Recording story
Using one of the prompts on the mobile interface, the child can press a button on the Sprout bar to start recording a story.
We believe mobile would be the most accessible channel to deliver the prompts. They inspire families to reflect on key milestones of children's growth.
Sharing with distant family members
Pressing the button again after recording, the height mark and story will be shared with distant family members.
At distant relative's home
Seeing height
New height marks will appear on distant family member's Sprout bar, with a blinking animation.
We believe having the height mark on a tangible medium in front of relatives is more intimate than the height being in the form of just numbers.
Listening to stories
Relatives can touch the height marks on the Sprout bar to listen to linked stories.
Through research we found how growth of a child has many dimensions. The stories children record allow relatives to experience changes in children's voice as well as the changes in personality and cognition through the content of stories.
Observing growth over time
Through the height marks and the stories, the distant family member will be able to see the child's physical growth and psychological development over time.
Process
In the following sections, I will share how our team got to our final design through building iterations of prototypes and testing them with people.
01
Divergent ideation and down-selecting
With the design prompt, our group conducted background research on existing products that connect people who are physically apart.
Using them as inspirations, we sketched 39 ideas that involve kids as stakeholders and down-selected to two after two rounds of dot voting and team discussions. The criteria we used include novelty, interest level, presumed effectiveness, and feasibility to build.
Part of the board we used for dot voting, with the emojis representing our votes
02
Prototype 01 - low fidelity
Goals
We wanted to test with kids to learn about their preferences between the two down-selected ideas, and evaluate existing features.
Prototypes
We made video prototypes of the two down-selected ideas: the height-marking bar, Sprout, and the picture frame that shares tactile senses, Imprint.
Snippet from the video prototype of Sprout
Test findings
Kids liked the height-marking bar idea better, and would like to interact with other kids through it.
Design actions
We selected Sprout as our final direction, and started thinking about interactions between multiple users instead of just 1-on-1 ones.
Snippet from the video prototype of Imprint
03
Prototype 02 - mid fidelity
Goals
For the second round of prototyping and testing, we want to see:
One of the bars, with LEDs and microcontrollers attached
Prototypes
To answer these questions, we made two wooden bars that had electronic components with different height-measuring interactions (touch vs. slider), and three versions of phone wireframes.
The other bar, mimicking the height measuring interactions in medical settings using a slider
Explorations of the digital interface visuals
Testing findings
Users preferred the touch interaction, and the graph visualization of growth over time on digital interfaces. Interestingly, users perceived the bar as a medical device, wanting accuracy and medical data such as BMI.
Participant trying the touch interaction
Participant trying the slider interaction
Design actions
Because we don't want the users to think of the bars as medical devices, we want to explore how to capture other growth that are emotionally significant aside from height.
04
Additional research
To get inspiration on what other growth we can capture that are emotionally significant, we asked parents what they see as the manifestation of their kids' growth.
We found that parents keep physical artifacts that signify psychological and personality growth, such as drawings and poetry. Additionally, most parents only have pictures of children, and wish there were videos.
Inspired by these findings, we decided to allow users to record stories, which will capture both children's voice changes and personality growth through the stories they tell.
Kids' drawings & writings that parents keep
05
Prototype 03 - high fidelity
Ultimately, we were able to make design decisions based on prototype testing findings, and created the final hi-fi. working prototypes.
Laser cutting the acrylic boards to create height marks
Coding to make the bars sync
Reflection
I'm proud that I was able to learn digital fabrication, coding in Arduino, and basic electrical engineering in just 10 weeks.
My biggest takeaway from this project is the importance of iterations and testing. They sometimes would yield surprising findings that can effectively benefit the design. For example, although our initial goal for one of the testing was to determine the preferred way of measuring height, we were able to find how users perceived the bars as medical devices, and started to think about other emotionally significant growth representations.
The height marks of our team
Resume
© 2021 Mike Dong