User experience prototypes for mobile devices

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Category: Completed
Published on Thursday, 12 January 2012 22:27

User experience design for mobile devices

Fitbit Golf trainerFitbit Golf trainer

In the spring of 2012 I took the course 02266 - User Experience Engineering as a part of the program for my Masters at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU).
Though it was an university course i decided to post it anyway as it was quite entertaining (and a whole lot of hard work).
The main objective of the course was to teach the students how to create a nice user experience on an array of different devices. Assignments was mostly given along the lines "Design an interface for use with this project/idea - how can you explot the possibilities in that?"

Most of the prototypes was for mobile devices and made in a trial of Axure 6.0 from www.axure.com

Below is a few of the prototypes we made (I must stress that i did not make this alone and that we were 4 in the group - Sune Andersen, Johan Flod, Allan Munck and Me - credit where it is due ;)

Fitbit golfing application

fitbit deviceThe fitbit device

For this assignment we were told to exploit the possibilities in the "FitBit" in collaboration with an Iphone. The FitBit is basically a tiny datalogger containing an accelerometer, and is mostly used to measure personal performance in a variaty of sports. The device transfers the logs on request using bluetooth, but the limitation is that it can not (at time of writing) report stats in realtime but onlydeliver logs upon request.

We chosed to make a personal golftrainer for the happy amateur. In addition to the the fitbit, we utilizied that the iphone also have an accelerometer. The iphone should be worn on the hip and the fitbit on should be mounted on the hand or club in use, giving us two measuring points.


We decided that the application had to be pretty simple and only fulfill two goale: Golfers want to get better, and they want to show off (compete with) to their golfer friends.

NewsNews RecommendationRecommendation InstriuctionsInstriuctions AnalysisAnalysis

The user can do one of two things:

  • Practice strokes: The iphone knows the golfers strengths and handicaps and recommends some strokes to practice. When chosen, a video will show how to do it and the golfer can afterwards try it. Afterwards he can see the analys of his stroke on a 360 degrees rotatable 3d figure in real time compared to his own stroke.
  • Complete a course: In this mode the golfer completes the course as he would traditionallty, but the iphone and fitbit keeps track of all strokes and places them in a "history list" for later analysis.
StatisticsStatistics HistoryHistory

During all activities the application automatically uploads the results to a central database. The data is used to extrapolate new surgestions for training (Surgestions screen), but also to create newsfeeds to be viewed by all the the golfers friends.

Admiditly there has got to be some pretty heavy math involcved in making the recommendations, but i think it could be done if enough energy was poured into it.

  • The Prototype can be testet online HERE (note that it does not go well with older browsers - and that the "Search" page for some reason does not load, something to do with copying the files from Window$ to Linux...).
  • A zipped version including a detailed description report and the Axure model can be downloaded HERE (if you want to view the model and description report, be aware that the Axure program for some obscure reason only exists for Windows and Mac??!! - and that the report does not function in LibreOffice but only in Word)

Lifebalance Kinect Prototype

LifeBalanceLifeBalance Kinect RecordingKinect Recording

This prototype was mainly made in order to try to play with the possibilities of a Kinect. The prototype is intended to be the frontend of a program that continiously monitors the residents of a household in order to figure out what they are currently doing. The idea being that people would probably become more active if they visually could see how much of their lives was spend on just sitting, eating and doing nothing. This would ofcourse require multiple kinects around the house, but it should possible to derieve a good activity context from what behavioral patterns people show. Also the program interfaces with the users mobile in order to use it as an advanced pedometer for off-property detection.

We envisioned the interface for the system as being a tv build into the wall in a sort of nonintruisive way... letting it be a part of the house and nothing alien. There it would be, just offering its detections letting the user deside if they should be used or not.

LifeBalance HistoryGoalsHistory and Goals LifeBalance PlanetaryPlanetary View LifeBalance PlanetarySportSport subcategory LifeBalance SurgestionSurgestion Screen

 

There are three kind of screens available:

  • History and Mission. A screen where the user can see his activity history and his "percieved wellness. The wellness is how the system percieved the user... is he slouching a lot, shoulders hanging? ... how is his physical attitude. As the user can can see what kind of activities he was doing when his wellness was high or low, he can set his goals accordingly. Goalsetting is also done at this screen and is conducted by gesturing a "pinch" or a "spread" with the arms at activities.
  • Planetary View. Another kind of view on activities. People tend to be better at comparing "volumes" than graphs, so here the activities are shown as "planets" with size equal to the amount of time spent on the activitiy. This is a "current view". The planets are colorcoded in accordance with how much of this activity the user is doing compared to the goal, letting the user se see if his over or under the goal. The planets can be "clicked" (pointed at) to get to the "subcategory" planetary view. ... Shown is the "Sports" subcategories. Note that some of these activities cannot be recorded by the kinect and is shown to emphasis that extra sensors can be plugged into the system.
  • Recomendation View. The last screen shows a personal avetar that will surgest activities in order to obtain the goal the user has set.

The prototype can be tested HERE, and the prototype along with report and model can be downloaded HERE. The same limitation goes as for the previous prototype.