Intellihoop
The Challenge
This project was given to us as part of the Advanced Prototyping class. In this assignment, we were supposed to take and analog toy and hack it to make it interactive and more fun creating a ludic experience.
We went to a local superstore to observe different toys for kids and saw which one speaks to the kid inside us. As we were walking down the aisle, we say a basket ball hoop and decide to make Intellihoop.
The Concept
Intellihoop is a Arduino based hacked basketball hoop which encourages kids to play and try harder. Intellihoop motivates kids with audio visual feedback. The visual feedback is given with lights and the audio is by cheering sounds.
In our preliminary research, we observed that the only encouragement kids get when they play basketball at a very young age is from their parents. The parent cant be with the kids all the time, but we can leverage technology to encourage a bit a can still be there with the kids all the time.
Intellihoop track the distance of the kid playing basketball from the hoop using ranging sensor. Intellihoop has an infrared LED and infrared photoresistor in the hoop to detect when a basket is scored. When anything obstructs the line of sight of the infrared LED and the photoresistor, the hoop detects it as a basket.
Based on how far the kid is, different feedback is given. The farther the kid, the better the feedback and hence the encouragement. If the kid scores a basket from a very long distance, then he will see all the light strips glowing and a loud cheering sound, if he scores from the closest distance, only one strip of lights will glow and the sound is comparatively less cheerful. This motivates the kids to try harder. Once the basket is scored, the prototype takes a picture capturing the moment of joy.
The Process
We went out in the wild started looking for inspiration. We went to day care centers and watched a lot of kids playing.We came back a did a large session for ideation where we decided to focus on kids playing basketball.
Ideation
Concepting
We created concepts of many things which had the focus on motivating kids. Most of our concepts focussed on using distance a metric for increasing motivation for trying harder
Usability Testing
Once we had the prototype working and built nicely, we took it to a day care center and tested our concept with 2 kids and iterated on the problems we found in our prototype.
Research
We went to day care centers and observed small kids playing basketball. We also did a lot of secondary research online watching videos of kids playing basketball.
Prototyping
We bought a analog basket ball hoop from a shop and started putting lights, sensors on it. Once we were sure that our concept worked, we soldered everything on a board to make it stand hard hits. As it had too many wires, we concealed as many wires as possible and small no of wires went to the Arduino board which was used to make everything work.
Result
We made this concept for kids, and they loved it. We found that kids got more enthusiastic with the feedback they got from the prototype. They also found it fascinating that the prototype took their picture and they wanted to play more. Not just the kids, but people from all age group were involved and enjoyed playing with it. We achieved the experience we wanted.
My Contribution
I helped doing preliminary and secondary research, ideating and generating the concept. I did all the development of the circuit and the Arduino programming for the concept. I also assisted in the physical construction of the prototype and doing the final installation and testing of the prototype with kids in an actual setting and recorded their reaction.