Woven Speaker: Exploring the Potential of Technology and Craft Juxtaposition through Speaker Weaving

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2024-05-17) Romero, Lissette A.

Curiosity is an essential quality that is integral to the human experience and plays a crucial role in fostering creativity and promoting engagement. By understanding how to evoke curiosity through design, designers can leverage curiosity as a means to cultivate exploration and strengthen engagement with their creations. One approach to evoking curiosity through design is bringing conflicting elements together to prompt individuals to seek deeper understanding of the underlying relationships and explore creative possibilities between them. With this in mind, there is potential in uniting craft and technology, two seemingly polarizing domains, to foster these behaviors. This work explores the juxtaposition of craft and technology through weaving to create speakers and investigates how this juxtaposition can be utilized to ignite curiosity and lead a deeper engagement with technology. Following a research-through-design approach, a material recipe and weaving-based technique for speaker construction was developed. Utilizing the material recipe we conducted a hands-on speaker weaving workshop with ten experienced makers to gather insights on the implications and limitations of using craft and craft materials to build electronics. By integrating weaving methods and craft materials into the process of building electronics, an acceptance of imperfection was fostered and curiosity was sparked, which facilitated further exploration of technology. This thesis demonstrates the potential of juxtaposing craft and technology in product design, offering new pathways for designers to enhance user experiences with curiosity and engagement.
TIMEFLEX: Exploring Time Perception without Numbers through Tangible Interaction Method

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2024-05-17) Cheng, Ernuo

Modern people perceive time through precise but abstract and mechanical number time. However, the subjective nature of time perception and the need of flexible time management inspires us to explore the possibility of alternative time managing approach. This study introduces a concept of time that guide our lives based on the sequence and duration of events and explores the context where this concept can be more beneficial. Through a Concept-Driven interaction design approach and Research through Design method, this study designed an operable functional interaction prototype and conducted an exploratory user study to generate insights of the relationship between us with time.
Co-Design with Neurodivergent Students and Recent Graduates to Develop an Inclusive Pedagogy in Design Education

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2024-04-29) Bhattacharya, Karina Lani

This thesis aimed to learn from co-design workshops with neurodivergent industrial design students and recent graduates and develop an educational product for inclusive teaching practices within design studio courses. This approach aligns with the biopsychosocial model of disability, which encompasses listening to individuals personally affected and redesigning external factors that impact them. Themes drawn from the co-design workshops informed the design of Naranote, a digital template that assists students in expressing a story of their design process for their studio projects. Naranote was implemented among junior-level industrial design students while completing their current studio projects, and it was also implemented among portfolio workshop participants who used Naranote to integrate storytelling into a past project. This thesis contributes to general knowledge by proposing a novel methodology and recommendations for co-design with neurodivergent students and recent graduates. Secondarily, it proposes co-design as an approach for informing products to support inclusive teaching practices while providing two user studies as starting points for testing educational interventions.
A Co-Designed Framework for Advancing American Sign Language (ASL) Digital Learning

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2024-04-29) Welkley, Avery White

Since its origins at the American School for the Deaf in 1817, American Sign Language (ASL) has drastically increased in use among the Deaf, hard-of-hearing, non-verbal, and hearing populations in the United States and Canada. Despite its surge in popularity, ASL holds a web of complexities and misconceptions that differentiate it from spoken languages. This thesis explores in-depth some of the common challenges hearing adult ASL learners face, along with the gaps between in-person and digital ASL learning, employing inquiry-based methods. Then, using the co-design method, this thesis further investigates how to design future ASL learning appropriate to the community's expectations and provides a framework for future ASL learning platforms, identifying necessary qualities and topics of instruction to be included on digital platforms.
Incorporating interactivity into product design with printed tactile interactive elements

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2024-01-16) Huang, Han

The rising prevalence of smart products accentuates the importance of embedding interactivity into industrial design. Currently, designers use mechanical electronic components like buttons and sliders and program them using a micro-controller such as Arduino board for prototyping. However, those conventional electronic components with fixed shapes and interaction methods are limited in terms of both the aesthetic and functional possibilities of prototypes. As a way to address the issue of the rigidity of the form and function of the prototypes, printed electronics, which are thin and flexible, offers an opportunity to develop interactive prototypes seamlessly integrating form and function. However, a drawback of printed electronics has been the absence of tactile feedback, restricting their application in tactile-dependent environments like eyes-free interactions. This project investigated a novel fabrication method to create printed electronics with tactile feedback and explored the usability and design space for visible and eyes-free environments. By comparing the usability of tactile electronic components with traditional flat printed electronic components, we collected design insights from users for utilizing and optimizing tactile electronic components. After that, a co-design workshop was conducted with eight designers to learn and explore potential design space of the proposed fabrication methods and summarize the design recommendations for applying tactile printed electronic components in visible and eyes-free environments. Through the study, I draw four main findings. First, tactile features enhance the usability of printed electronic components in visible environments by improving access, recognition, and utilization. Second, electronic components can be categorized into two groups based on their interactive methods and the intensity of the haptic feedback outcome. Third, in eyes-free environments, sliding elements benefit from a touchpad-like pattern with a clear starting point, direction, and boundary without detailed tick marks. Lastly, pressing elements benefit from confirmation spots, and a concave shape aids in verifying precise presses.
Empowering breast self-awareness: integrating augmented reality for comprehensive breast self-examination

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2023-12-13) Wang, Yijing

In recent years, Augmented Reality (AR) has seen a growing application in the healthcare industry, revolutionizing patient care, medical training, and diagnostics. In alignment with this technological trend, this thesis explores the development and evaluation of an innovative mobile application that harnesses the power of AR to enhance breast self-examinations. This application offers real-time, step-by-step instructions projected onto the user's body to ensure precise self-examinations, supplemented by personalized feedback and guidance for follow-up actions. Through this research, we have gained valuable insights into the fundamental pain points users encounter in breast self-examination, user attitudes toward the application of AR technology in this domain, and their reactions to the newly designed experience. These findings provide a wealth of information and assistance in shaping the future of breast self-examination, offering a more informed and enhanced user experience.
Designing an Interactive Experience for Local Elections Information to Increase Civic Participation Amongst Young Adults

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2023-12-13) Park, Chaeeun

Americans are uniquely situated in that they have more opportunities than people in other countries to vote due to the combination of municipal, state, and national elections. However out of these elections, local elections suffer from the lowest voter turnout despite the fact that these elections hold major influence in the daily lives of local residents. Paired with this, young, voting-aged adults (aged 18-29) have different frameworks for understanding and engaging with politics from previous generations. This divergence is rooted in their reliance on trusted personal networks in a vast sea of political information as well as their interest in specific social causes as opposed to the mechanisms of traditional political institutions. This study examines how young, voting-aged adults (ages 18-29) are both motivated and demoralized from civic engagement. Through design intervention, it explores how interactive games can help motivate young adults to become more civically engaged in their local elections through demystifying the perceived complex hostility of politics by utilizing roleplaying and gamification, helping young adults learn more about what is happening in their local environment, and fostering a cooperative model of civic engagement based on guided discussion. Finally, a tabletop game, Denizen, was developed in order to help facilitate political discussions amongst young adults and also help them learn more about local issues. The outcomes of this study underscore the importance of utilizing new engagement methods for young adults, especially for re-engaging young adults into traditional electoral duties. It also highlights the importance of knowledge-building and political expertise in improving overall civic motivation.
UX guide to microinteractions : Establishing a classification system to enable microinteraction design literacy among novice UX designers

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2023-12-11) Shankar, Abhishek

This study explores how identifying and classifying various animated microinteractions can help improve design literacy among UX/UI designers by integrating motion design elements. Microinteractions are small, task-specific actions that a user can trigger or experience within a user interface, such as liking a post, setting a status, or receiving a notification. They play a crucial role in providing feedback, guiding users, and adding an element of delight to the user experience. In this thesis, the focus is on the importance of microinteractions in enhancing the user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) design. To better understand how designers work with microinteractions and motion in product design, subject matter experts (SMEs) were interviewed who revealed that non-motion designers often need help understanding microinteraction design language. To address this, a classification system was developed and hosted online, which permits UX/UI designers to access microinteraction design language. Microinteractions are classified into a visual design system based on triggers, functions, and principles of motion. This classification system was validated by UX/UI designers using interviews and questionnaires. The results showed that the system promotes cross-disciplinary communication and collaboration among design team members by introducing motion design language and terminologies through an organized classification system.
A Comparative Study: Influence on Real-World Consumer Perception of Products Presented in Augmented Reality

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2023-08-18) Chen, Kaiyuan

With the development of the mobile device, augmented reality (AR) is moving from the laboratory into the consumer market. Product presentation in the augmented environment has become a compelling function that helps consumers have a better perception of the product. In this article, we proposed a comparative study to figure out how users perceive the product model in the AR environment and the difference compared with the real-world product. Through this research, we will further understand which attributes of the product can be better perceived in AR. The product semantic differential method was used here to build the product evaluation metrics and compare the user perception of 3 types of product presentation based on product semantic.
Design Opportunities Tracking Related Cues to Support Remote Psychotherapy

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2023-07-26) Gao, Lan

Remote psychotherapy has been growing rapidly. Despite its increasing prevalence, it presents challenges such as privacy concerns, technological familiarity, and interaction blockers. Most significantly, it often compromises the therapeutic alliance—a key factor in effective psychotherapy—due to a lack of non-verbal cues and a perceived distance between client and therapist. This research aims to address these challenges through the integration of sensor tracking systems, which offer the potential to improve online interactions and support a stronger therapeutic alliance. We begin by exploring the opportunities and challenges of deploying sensor-tracking systems in remote psychotherapy, through qualitative analysis of interviews, card-sorting activities, and co-design sessions with 9 clients and 10 therapists. We subsequently propose a sensor-based remote psychotherapy platform, informed by the findings from these activities. Finally, we ran a user testing session conducted with 7 clients and 3 therapists to evaluate the feasibility of our proposal. This work offers insights into the deployment of sensor-tracking systems in remote psychotherapy, presenting valuable directions for enhancing the therapeutic alliance and overall experience for both clients and therapists.