Overview
Project:
The Concentration Station is a multimodal device which makes use of a powerful combination of olfactory and auditory memory to create two immersive sensory environments - Focus and Relax - to create distinct spaces for work and wellness in the home. With simple coding and prototype design, our team was able to create a usable device to support users in need of concentration and focus while adhering to stay-at-home orders during the COVID pandemic.
Goals:
Create device in response to issues created by pandemic precautions across the U.S. during coronavirus outbreak
Employ Arduino hardware to create device for this purpose
Team: Design team of 4 in graduate multimodal experience design course
Role:
Concept Design
Coding (C++ for Arduino)
Prototype Construction
User Testing
Date: Fall 2020
Process
Explore
The project began with independent research, problem definition, and concept design of a device to provide a sense of intimacy and connection as users wrangle with isolation and loneliness related to pandemic precautions separating them from friends, family, and colleagues.
PROBLEM:
People sheltering at home during the COVID-19 pandemic suffer from a lack of social connection and the inability to delineate between time for work and time for social or physical wellness. Employing a digital calendar to reserve time for wellness is a popular solution, however, with frequent sonic and visual notifications coming from devices, scheduling in this way only adds to sensory overload.
INITIAL PROPOSED SOLUTION:
Life is Cheap (installation view), Anicka Yi, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
SmellScape Central Park, Sissel Tolaas, Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum
Inspired by the community-building sensory immersions of artist Anicka Yi’s Life is Cheap exhibition and Sissel Tolaas' Central Park SmellScape, I proposed an olfactory device which serves as a suggestive alarm clock by emitting an odor connected to a particular activity to provide a gentle reminder to start that action - releasing lavender to begin meditation or the scent of grass to remember to head outdoors for fresh air.
When connecting with a loved one via video chat, a scent evoking that person is emitted by the device and lingers, simulating physical togetherness and increasing a sense of intimacy and connection across the screens.
The device employs sense of smell as a highly evocative trigger of memory. The nudge to move to a new activity is gently - almost subconsciously - activated, reducing cognitive load on a user already overwhelmed with constant calendar pings and badges.
Ideate
Designing a virtual coffee shop - bring in the team!
Working with a team of three others trying to solve pandemic-related problems with olfactory solutions, we combined forces to propose a multitude of devices: my scent-based alarm clock, an immersive sensory “room” to bring the outdoors in, an odor-emitting wearable… and finally landed on our target: an auditory and olfactory re-creation of a coffee shop experience to stimulate the concentration and flow users found working in their favorite neighborhood cafe. We imagined this device evoking a coffee shop experience by releasing the scent of brewed coffee and sounds of an active cafe: espresso machines steaming, dishes clinking, and shop patrons chattering.
Sketch
We sketched out a few of our ideas for construction, thinking critically about how the device would interact with the user and the user’s environment. Here, we decided to add an additional “focus feature” - a relax mode emitting a calming scent and meditative sounds.
A coffee grinder and diffuser model powered by a switch mechanism
A dual-chamber diffuser activated via infrared sensor situated on the user’s laptop
A “clock radio” type diffuser activated by a “knock lock” touch panel mechanism
Iterate + Prototype
Prototype One
Drawing from elements the team felt would be most successful for our user – and a fun challenge for us to code and build, I created a cardboard prototype of our device with a cylindrical dual-chamber diffuser body holding an audio device and focus/relax mode controls, all activated by an infrared-sensor perched atop a user’s laptop.
Flipping open the laptop lid automatically triggers the device to start focus mode, nudging the user to get to work.
Define Device Elements + Functions
Building the cardboard mockup and creating a functional analysis chart (below) allowed us to think critically about how device components worked together while starting to code our Arduino parts.
Functional Analysis Chart of the Concentration Station
User Testing
Producing this device during pandemic stay-at-home orders, team members employed casual user testing, asking family members and housemates to provide input about the usability and functionality of the device. Feedback was positive - after several months working from home, users loved this idea as a way to create an environment of focus, even when they didn’t have the physical space to do so. They generally liked the familiar size and shape of the prototype - similar to a large Amazon Echo device - but suggested a smaller device body to suit the size of their workspaces.
Arduino Component Limitations and Prototype Two
At this stage, our team ran into difficulties using Arduino parts - the IR sensor wasn’t as sensitive as we had hoped and we were having difficulty procuring a digital touch screen. Adapting to product limitations and implementing user interview information, I sketched out new options and created a simple paper prototype to investigate how much smaller we could make the device while adding more - but more straightforward - parts. Instead of using IR sensors and highly complex touch screens, we relied on touch sensors for mode selection and volume control. Overall device size was predicated on the size of the glass vials needed to hold the atomizers which powered coffee and lavender-scented diffusers.
Components testing
Prototype Two sketches with IR sensor and/or touch pad options
Prototype assessing component layout and size within paper form
Code + Build
While we all contributed to the preliminary coding of our Arduino device (in C++), we were lucky to have one team member with advanced coding knowledge who could bring individual component codes into one functional code to power the following components connected to our Arduino board:
Focus + Relax Atomizers – heat water and fragrance in glass vials to create a simple scent diffuser
Focus + Relax Touch Sensors – toggle between Focus + Relax modes
MP3 Module and Speaker – required for transmit/receive communication; holds and plays looping music files
Volume Up/Volume Down Touch Sensors – control volume
LCD Screen – displays current device mode, Focus or Relax
Working remotely as a team of four was particularly challenging as we approached the final stages of product building. I created the body of our final prototype - making creative use of some bread bag tags to label component locations - and shipped to our team coding expert, who assembled the device and completed final code testing with the fully-assembled Concentration Station device.
Final Solution
Our final product, the Concentration Station, makes use of the powerful combination of olfactory and auditory memory to create two immersive sensory environments –
The first, Focus, re-creates a coffee shop experience with the sounds of a bustling café. A diffuser emits the smell of freshly brewed coffee. We imagined this environment as a place where users come to work.
The second environment we call Relax. Here, the smell of lavender permeates the air and the soothing sounds of nature immerse the user in a place of relaxation. We created this space for quietude, imagining the user meditating, practicing yoga, or taking a moment out of a busy day to breathe and reset.
Our team put together a fun video about the Concentration Station as part of a final presentation and preparation for conference submissions – check it out!
Challenges
Creating a physical device with an entirely remote team during pandemic stay-at-home precautions was difficult. Arduino parts and other device components were shared and shipped back and forth from between teammates. Like many teams working during the pandemic, we learned how to balance time and purchase constraints, especially during the final device coding and body build phase.
Results + Reflection
The Concentration Station was publicly presented (virtually) during December 2020, with positive feedback and suggestions for expansion. The project will be submitted to several upcoming conferences around product innovation and experiential design in multimodal products.
Future Work
Future iterations will include a sturdier 3D-printed body. Our team also discussed including some of the components we removed during our final build - infrared sensors and a touch screen control panel - by upgrading our hardware system to a more robust model.