Puzzleye

For the 30-hour final round of the Microsoft Imagine Cup Competition in Design, we were challenged to design and communicate the vision of a system that helps a child with Aspergers’ Syndrome(AS) to have a fun and enriching family trip to Egypt. Informed by substantial research, We designed Puzzleye, a camera for children, that helps the child to cope with his fear of crowds, long flight, and overwhelming new environment, with the purpose of supporting and encouraging him to observe the new surroundings. Having the companion of Puzzleye, we hope the children with AS will better enjoy the learning experience of looking at the unfamiliar world in travel. The final competition challenges us as designers to embrace the constraints no matter they are the unfamiliar special straits and needs of children with AS, or the limited resources and time. Developing empathy and honest understanding of the children with AS, and coming up with reasonable solutions in such a short time is a great learning experience.

Design Team:
Feixing Tuang, Yujia Zhao

Timeline:
30-hour on-site design session during the final competition, Egypt, Jul. 2009

Resonsibilities:
research, concept development, physical prototype, storyboards

Methods, Skills & Tools:
secondary research, storyboarding, prototyping, Photoshop

Deliverables:
final presentation slides(PDF), poster(see pictures below)

Challenge | Research & Insights | Concept Development | Strategy | Reflection

Challenge

In 30 hours, design and communicate your vision of a system that helps a family to have a fun and enriching time when they go on a 2-week vacation to Egypt. One of the members of the family is a 6-year-old child who has Aspergers Syndrome. Assume in this scenario that this family will travel from a place that is far away (at least one long plane ride) and from a culture that is very different (language, social norms, eating habits, etc) from Egypt. Read the full instruction here(.PDF).

Research & Insights

Empathy and honest understanding of the children with AS is essential to user-centered design in this challenge. How are they different from other children? What are their special needs? What do they like and dislike? With these questions in mind, we conducted secondary research and learned lots of things about them such as anxiety to flights, fear of new places, communication needs, and love of patterns.

The goal of the design is not only to help cope with the difficulty children with AS may face but also to facilitate a learning experience. We explored how travel to a foreign country can be a learning experience for children, and reached the consensus that simply observing the unfamiliar new environment is a learning and enriching experience, and taking pictures facilitates the observation.

Our design core was to support and encourage children with AS to observe unfamiliar environments in a less anxious way while traveling. We wanted to provide incentives for them to take pictures and help them cope with their frustrations while on their trip.
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research collection about Children with AS

Concept Development

Following our research, the following aspects were considered in concept generation and brainstorming:

Providing a preview of the unfamiliar destination before arrival can help to reduce anxiety upon actually seeing the destination. The preview can also help to kill time during flights and delays.
Patterned puzzle games can be a good incentive for children with AS to take pictures, as well as a good way to kill time.
Allowing them to express themselves better helps to reduce anxiety and bring the family closer together.

We came up with a wide range of concepts, useful features and system visions. Out of these concepts, we developed our final design, “Puzzleye”, a children’s camera. The highlights of the design are:

Like a normal camera, it has a playback mode in which you can review all the pictures and videos taken. Parents can preload pictures and videos of the destination and watch them together with their child during the flight.
Unlike a normal camera, there is a game mode in which the pictures stored in the camera can be converted into tile puzzle games. Children can play puzzle games by moving fingers around the touch screen.
In order to prevent the child from focusing too much on the game and not taking pictures, we designed the rewarding scheme. The more they take pictures, the more they can play in terms of both more patterns and more time.
Children can tag pictures and videos with emoticons to express their preference visually to their parents.

We made a physical prototype and developed a storyboard with digital mockups.

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brainstorming concepts with sketching

gathering concepts

physical prototype(front)

physical prototype(back)

screen mockups

a poster produced within the 30 hours

Scenario of how Puzzleye helps Samuel during his family trip to Egypt.

Strategy

In terms of the technical feasibility and cost, Puzzleye needs only current affordable technology. Puzzleye is very promising in terms of scalability. It potentially attracts broader user groups including other children with similar disabilities or without disabilities. Sharing pictures and videos of trip destinations among AS family communities could help to strengthen the bond and make it easier to find media about various destinations. In terms of materiality, children-safe and anti-shake materials should be considered.

Reflection

Facing constraints, designers should embrace them instead of trying to get around them. In this project, embracing constraints means that designers should sincerely try to understand the special needs and traits of users, even if primary research is not feasible, and honestly impose them as constraints in design. This is the only way to guarantee human-centeredness. Besides the constraints brought by the unfamiliar user group, there are also constraints on design practice such as limited time, and no chance for primary research and evaluation.

The competition was a great experience. I had never been involved in such as an intense design session before. We barely slept and barely ate on the second day. After the 30 hours, we still needed to prepare a half-hour presentation in one and a half hours. In such small amount of time with no means to conduct primary research, the designers' intuition and judgment played an important role. Coming up with promising ideas and a design argument under stress was very challenging and fun! I also learned a lot from the insightful and smart judges.