Progress in the shoe factory

We are well underway now in the final part of our project. Before the start of these last 2 weeks of project work we have once more presented our plans. This feedback session has provided us with some valuable recommendations to take into account in this final part of the design process.

Part of the given advice was to link the short-term reward (sound effects when walking) that we give the user in some way to the long-term rewards (unlockable features/achievements and of course a better health). Another recommendation concerned the fact that maybe we needed to start more from the user perspective instead of the technology perspective.

This week we started exploring the possibilities of the Sun SPOT, a wireless microprocessor, that to our surprise also contains an onboard accelerometer! The latter makes our earlier attempts to look for an external sensor to measure movement abundant. However, getting a wireless live measurement of the accelerometer going was easier said than done.

Ok, back to the progress of the final project! As discussed at the beginning of this blog entry, we decided to work on our reward scheme for the fun shoe. After all, the reward scheme determines whether the desired behavior (more exerce) will be stimulated enough to result in a healthier lifestyle in the long run for children. The new reward schedule that we have have designed incorporates a mobile device that acts as an interface for the Fun Shoe. On this interface you can see your "avatar" (kind of similar to the old-fashioned tamagochi) that you can improve by exercising more. The sound effects that belong to these improvements or upgrades will sound through the shoe-speakers. Also possible sound effects that can be used with the shoe can be activated through the mobile device. This powerpoint gives an idea of the look and feel of this interface device.

As far as the progress of the whole project is concerned: We have the Sun SPOT up and running now with the accelerometers on board and on another computer we also have an emulator for our mobile interface device running. The to-do's for the remaining sessions are getting the Sun SPOT to run on the same computer as our emulator and to finish the ankle mount for the Sun SPOT. The final thing to do is off course some calibration, anyway...we'll keep you posted!