Aaron Lee
Design Student
Assistive Technology for Global Pandemic
Project name: Smart Pen
Name of team members: Karina Dong, Aaron Lee, Wenlin Qi
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The assignment we worked on needed us to work collaboratively as a team to design an assistive technology that addresses the challenges relevant to a global pandemic of COVID-19.
COVID-19 has fundamentally changed every aspect of our lives from studying to eating. The issue we decided to focus on was the online education system. As a student, we realised that it’s impossible to study hard online like would you would in a classroom. Online learning made us pay less attention to class and communicate less, so the problem our team wanted to tackle is: how to improve the education system in terms of communication and motivation.
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From the research, we thought students get less communication and less attention in the online class by a lot of distraction, and distraction is happening from free hands. Students’ hands are freer during online class compared with on-school teaching, and this may make students distract themself from the other things. Then we thought about how to move student's hands during online learning
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Solution 1 :
Our first solution was LiveVR
Solution 1 :
Our first solution was LiveVR.
Our solution to the problem is to create an assistive technology that helps students to concentrate better when attending online classes. We are incorporating some existing software into zoom that will help make online education fun. This prototype was created by combining many ideas in the ideating stage. We designed this prototype, hoping to make online classes fun for adolescents. From our experiences, Kahoot is always a great way to test the things we learnt in class and get competitive. Every millennial enjoys gaming, so we incorporated a virtual reality space for students to meet rather than using cameras.
Before you attend the lectures, you have the opportunity to interact with teachers and peers in VR form. As soon as talks end you have to go into Kahoot quiz where you can compete with your peers. Students will be motivated to listen in class because teachers will have access to Kahoot results.
For this technology to work, we must collaborate with software companies like Zoom and Galaxy S9, Kahoot and hubs (VR). To convince the companies, smartpen we would need to plan out a business model and contracts for each software companies.
Final idea
At the begining we design LIVEVR and after we received feedback, we designed an accessory for LIVEVR to focus on improving communication. Schools and classroom will need it and should choose it as it helps students effectively communicate with others when attending online classes.
We thought it was essential to making the SmartPen affordable. The LIVEVR users can receive this SmartPen for free when they make their first payment to LiveVR.
Also, We removed the individual sketchpad and added an inkless function to draw on paper to make it easier to use. When the user sees what they are drawing without a sketchpad which erases by the bottom of the smart Pen or eraser and adds the Bluetooth/wireless charger; it does not need any wire. The main function is the SmartPen is working on the LiveVR, so there is no delay between the users. To make it upgrade it, we also added a speaker/microphone function.
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Considerations:
There are things that need to be considerate before bringing out this project to the market. It is how we will sustainably source the materials and sustainably manufacture the pen.
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- Video link to the prototype 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kytgWDoC9vQ&feature=youtu.be
- Presentation slides for the pitch
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1i49AJ57im3kdRtEnoUqI0oFVETuIhJ7UCiBW2Za6B50/edit?usp=sharing
- URL link to Miro board