Brief: Design a way to track and trace human contact that builds trust
Members: Amber Lau, Tanvi Kulkarni, Felix Kirk, Nancy Obeid
Collaborative Partner: Tactical Technology Collective
Comments from Weekly Presentation
Our tutors thought it was nice to be able to see some ideas in physical form, each prototype has its features and points that can learn from, however one common point that we all have is missing time axis, hence it was hard to do an overview and comparison.
There are some elements from Tanvi and I’s prototype that are commendable. Tanvi’s idea of using blocks as presentation of population density and my idea of using flags to can be a great combination to build a self tracking map. (originally, the flags in my prototype was to represent date, but our tutors thought it would be better to use it to identify known and unknown people.)
They also suggested us to do some further thinking base on the current concept, including:
- Think about what people would need to know when one got affected (what do they need to see from the map? how can people compare their maps?)
- How can you notify people you don’t know but had contact with you?
- How to express the map in digital form?
Regarding our concern with technology, our tutor gave us an example of someone else’s project on turning physical data into digital form. This gave us an idea on transferring data form physical map to digital.
Technical Inquiry with CTL Staffs
As part of our design need to transform physical data into digital, our team planned to have a chat with CTL staffs and see what they would suggest us to do. We prepared some questions to ask, including:
- How to turn physical data to digital?
- Is there a way to identify people, location and date?
- What method or software would they suggest us to do if we want to prototype it?
We first showed our physical prototype, then explained our idea and concerns. They replied us that they haven’t encounter projects similar to ours before, hence they might not able to provide us a permanent answer. However, they also gave us some suggestions and talked about which areas we can worth spending time trying.
1. A.I
Ideally, for real case usage, it would probably be better using computerisation — training an AI on how to identify the colours, sort them, then generate analysis. Yet training an AI requires lots of data and testing in order to make it work. Consider the time constraints and the fact that it requires a lot of data entry, this method probably wouldn’t work for us.
2. AR
Another method they mentioned is to turn it in to an AR project, where allowing the camera to get data from the physical board, but since they haven’t tried using this method of collecting data like this before, there’s no guarantee.
3. Creative Coding (p5/ 3DX)
One trick that they suggested us to do is to use software like p5 or 3DX to generate 3D models. These softwares can work well with pixels and basic shapes which might able to achieve what we want in certain extent. They suggested to use basic shapes for our physical board, so it would be easier to recognise. But one point they mentioned is that they never seen people working 3D with p5 on phone before, so we would have to try it out.
4. Application or Website
In terms of comparing data, CTL staffs recommended us to do it on a website so people wouldn’t have to download another application. But they also mentioned the fact that we wanted individuals to keep digital records from their physical board, as well as able to share to public, probably using an application would be more convenient.
One potential problem that they mentioned which I found it crucial is the fact that lighting would affect the image of the camera, leading to less accuracy on colour identification. In order to minimise such error, we need to be careful with colour selection.
Group Discussion — Approach & Direction
Base on the feedbacks and recommendation from tutors and technical team, we had a discussion to reorganise our thoughts. First, about the axis (time, location, people) of the map, we thought if we really follow this dimension to create a map, it would turn into a weekly chart where it is very similar to the example our tutors showed us. More importantly, the shape would no longer like a map, it loses the fun part as motivation to self track. Therefore we would reconsider the shape and labelling method of the physical map.
Second, with concern of all the features that needs to be included in our system (scan physical board, keep digital record, compare data, and searching), we decided to create an application as the extension of the physical board instead of building a website. We knew some people might not happy about downloading another application, but we thought using an app would be more convenient for overall usage.
Third, about the method of turning physical data to digital, our team decided to try out p5 since it seems to be the closest software that we could manage. But since our group doesn’t know much about coding, so that would take us some time to learn it. We hope to able to prove the function of colour identification hence able to generate the same map digitally.
Ideation — Form of Physical Map
We started ideating the form of the map that includes information of time, location and people. We came up with some crazy ideas that was inspired from kids toys, monopoly, and art work from Piet Mondrian.
Eventually, we settled with a form that looks like a pizza: each slides represents one day, and people can place where they go and who they were with, with the pins provided on the map. To make sure the content is easily comparable as well as colour identifiable by the system, we reduce the number of location categories to five essential ones and one other category.
Note: These categories are base on the situation with COVID-19, for self-trackers that wants to track for other purposes, the location provided might not applicable for them.
We started making it!!!
Apparently due to COVID-19, we weren’t able to meet physically and do stuffs together, therefore we divided our work to each person.
Physical Board — Nancy
Since Nancy’s dad owns a wood company and willing to provide us a space, she is responsible for creating the physical board. The physical board turns out very pretty, it looks real and colourful in a way that looks like a board game.
Coding — Tanvi
Tanvi, who her dad is an engineer that can help with coding, focus on working out how we can demonstrate colour identification in a system from an image taken by a camera. As Tanvi wasn’t familiar with programming, she is still in the progress of learning some basic concepts.
Application — Amber & Felix
Felix and I focused on finding appropriate ways to express physical data into digital form. We also need to think about the system on where, when, and how people will share data out.
We all decided to create an app as a support and medium to transfer record from physical board to digital platform. The app would allow individuals to keep records like a diary, it also serves as a platform for them to search recent cases, and share their boards when they got infected.
We both started off drawing some low fidelity wireframe to give ourselves an overview on what content should be included in the app. I later further modified the wireframes into a more detail look, then started to create high fidelity wireframe digitally. After creating the first version of digital wireframes, Tanvi also helped to modified my wireframe into a more modern looking way.
Features
Consider there might be lighting problems which might affect the colour identification of the board during scan, we also added a question asking whether the scanned colours are accurate or not. If it is not, they can either retake the photo or edit manually.
After scanning, this is also where people will input the names of people they met, as well as the location names for the “other” category.
We always keep in mind on protecting one’s privacy, therefore for the names people need to input, it doesn’t have to be the official name of that person, it can be a nickname that people feel comfortable with. After all, if one doesn’t get COVID-19, the app would still serve it like a diary, the app should provide space for people.
Reflection
I think our team have accomplished a lot this week: from consulting, making decision, ideating, to model making and wire framing. Our progress starting to go smoothly once we moved away from the reliance on Bluetooth and GPS, it creates more space and possibility to develop our ideas.
I always feel excited when it comes to the design part. I feel so lucky that our teammates have very talented and supportive parents as well, this actually give us space to fully test our idea.
