LifeTime
In accosiation with:
Initial project Summary: We are creating a memory box with a digital interface for St Peter’s Hospice. The hospice specialises in end of life care for those who are terminally ill. We intend to prototype a physical box where users can assign media (video, audio etc.) to tangible objects of personal significance. The box will use RFID tags to trigger the different media types when objects are placed in the box. This allows people with family members in the hospice to create something physical to remember them by, and provides future memories for young children who may not remember relatives they have lost. Families will have the ability to add extra objects at any point in time by simply attaching a new tag.
Current Situation: At the moment the hospice website has a section to create tribute fund pages to raise money in memory of a loved one, they also help children to create physical memory boxes with keepsakes. Patients are also encouraged to give their personal stories for the hospice to use. We aim to collate the keepsake objects and stories, as well as user-recorded messages into one digital physical memory box.
What problem are we trying to solve? Memorialising relatives through physical objects representing digital media.
Who is this going to impact on? This project will help the hospice service users to pass on knowing that they have shared all important memories with their family. As well as this, it will help family members and friends to remember their loved ones and easily access specific memories of them.
The contraints: - How do we ensure that our design is simple to use? - How do we create something that is affordable? - How do we handle a sensitive topic appropriately? - Handling personal data securely. - Maintenance and backup of data. - Designing an appropriately sized product, portability. - Hardware constraints: we can’t afford to implement built in screens for our box, so will be using a laptop to represent the screen.
What resolution will the final prototype be? The final prototype will be high fidelity and will be a very close representation to the final product. Due to hardware constraints we will be using a laptop to represent the screen and internal processor which would be used in the finished memory box.
Schedule: March 16th - Technical research complete March 23rd - Prototype 1 (lo-fi) and user testing March 30th - Prototype 2 (hi-fi) and final user testing April 6th - Project completion deadline
Research. St Peters hospice weren’t the initial choice of organisation for the team. Attentions focused towards St Mungo’s (St Mungo’s, 2017) and Bristol Night Stop (Caring in Bristol, 2014) but to no prevail. As a result, a discussion was held with students from the previous year to find a charity that may be willing to help out. Based on the discussion, the team contacted St Peters hospice (St Peter’s Hospice, 2017). In efforts to understand the aims, activities and service users of the hospice, extensive research was completed. Research methods include talking, taking notes, evidence gathering, and literature reviews. After liaising with the hospice and agreeing the suitability of working together, the team agreed to a meeting with Mr. Matthew Bell, head of marketing. The intention was to ask open ended questions as proposed by Antonio Gould [guest lecturer], that would lead to a discussion acquiring insights into the charity. Another guest lecturer, Dr. Rob Phillips, suggested creating mission statements as well as open questions (see appendix 1.0 for mission statements & 2.0 for meeting questions). Prior to the meeting, literature review research was conducted to gain an understanding of what the charity do, equipping each member with a good basic understanding. The secondary research helped the team to prepare for the meeting, and helped to gain insights into some of the work that the hospice carries out, and guided the open ended questions to be asked. For example, the hospice neighbours network scheme (St Peter’s Hospice, 2017a). February 17th 2017, the meeting took place at the charities head offices in Long Ashton, Bristol, with Matthew Bell, one of his colleagues, Conol, and team members Adam, and Matthew. The session answered all questions in depth, discussing facilities, volunteering, hospice neighbours, and patient rights. The meeting provided several insights for the team (see appendix 3.0 and 3.1 for meeting notes from Adam and Matthew) as well as providing clarity. The meeting also allowed for confirmation on the audience that the team were essentially designing for, but not working directly with. Prior to the meeting the team had discussed how there was an interest in designing for a support system, aimed at patient’s families, friends, and colleagues. This was partly due to personal connections some of the team had experienced with other hospice charities. During the meeting, it was apparent that this idea would be difficult to design for as it would need to be patient specific. This would mean creating something generic that might later be unsuccessful due to not being personal enough. To gain extra insights, the team completed a card sorting exercise coding from the notes gathered during the meeting, creating themes for the analysis. The team then completed data saturation and created memos (unichallenged, 2017) to refer back to at a later date.
The themes for each set of codes was then categorised into the following groups: - Volunteers - Digital aspects - Marketing - Problems - Stories - Patient specificities and rights - Communication - Day hospice - Other Based on the thematic analysis the team discussed ideas to support the hospice in one of these key themes. The themes the team felt they could support the most were Problems, Stories, and Digital aspects. The codes in each theme are as follows:
It was collectively agreed that the team would need to design something that can involve families, friends, and possibly colleagues, whilst collect personal stories, and help to comfort families and friends whilst experiencing the trauma of losing a loved one. With these in mind, a form of digital memory box portal was agreed as a suitable option as Matthew Bell had specifically pointed this design problem out, and the team discussed approaches suitable for the product before emailing Matthew a proposal.
During this project, the focus of prototyping was more towards experimenting with unfamiliar technologies (RFID), rather than beginning with basic paper prototypes and developing these prototypes through an iterative process. Another reason for this was because the final idea for the prototype was not decided upon until a late point in the project, meaning that the group had to focus on ensuring the required technology would work for the design.
Initial idea: The initial idea for the design was an online portal allowing patients, families and friends to access digital memories after the patient’s passing. Insights gained from the current use of social media to share life moments noted that people tend to store digital memories online. The use of an online portal would allow the storage of digital memories such as videos, photos, letters and voice memos. The idea included the ability to assign access dates to specific materials for future life moments, such as weddings and milestone birthdays. The intended use of the portal is that memories could be collated from families, friends, and potentially patients, subjective to their health.
Refined idea: On review of this idea, it became apparent that we had overlooked a major project constraint. Technology is moving at a pace difficult to gauge, and as a result, it is not possible to guarantee that file types may be supported in years to come. This means that materials with an allocated access date may not be viewable for the intended user. With this in mind, the team went back to the drawing board to re-design the product to make it appropriate to the initial insights. The team recalled from a previous project that people naturally engage with tangible objects. It was at this point that the idea of a physical memory box incorporating RFID technology would be suitable. Assigning RFID tags to tangible, meaningful objects of significance would allow users to connect the object with the RFID reader to view assigned digital materials. Again, this could consist of videos, photos, letters and voice memos.
Prototype 1: As RFID is a technology unfamiliar to the team, a mock-up was created to test the software through body-storming. MAXMSP (Figure 1) reads unique codes when tags are placed on the scanner, and when a tag is read, numbers are outputted which correlate to codes assigned to specific media types such as music, videos, and audio recordings. Running MAXMSP, the team assigned materials to several tags to test the functionality. The items used included a watch, a birthday badge, a fork and a link chain (Figure 2). For this prototype, we were using a RFID scanner which was embedded with in a USB stick, but were advised that a higher performing card-reader could be provided. The team generated a solid understanding of the software. The software technicalities are explained as: After playback of audio files is complete, a bang is sent from the sfplay~ object which in turn sends the set 0 message to the toggle objects, thereby resetting the system. In regard to the video files, they are cued in the same way as the audio and sent to the jit.qt. movie object, whose loop attribute has been set to 0. A metro object is used to send bangs to the jit.qt. movie object, this cues the next frame of the video file. When the video files are cued, this automatically sends a bang to the 0 message which then stops the playback of any audio files currently playing to ensure multiple media types are not playing simultaneously. Using the jit.qt.movie object means that the last frame of the video remains visible on the playback window. This has been overcome by adding a single frame of black at the end of the files. As well as this, when audio files are cued during video file playback, the black.jpg file is read by the movie player - this is just a black image. This, again, ensures that multiple media types are not playing simultaneously. Content with the idea, the team contacted Matthew Bell to propose the new idea. Due to the hospice’s unfamiliarity with this technology, they asked the team for a meeting to talk through the functionality of the technology with a short demonstration of how it would work. In preparation for the next meeting, the team designed and built a physical memory box with space allocated to house the RFID technology and items of significance.
Final project summary: Introducing Lifetime, the memory box that visualizes the life of ones lost and cherished. Our aim was simple, to combine the exponential growth of videos, pictures and message shared online with something physical and personal to offer to people who have lost loved ones through terminal illnesses. So why did we make this? Through thorough research of many charities across Bristol, it was mutually agreed to work in conjunction and partnership with St. Peter’s Hospice, who offer amazing facilities, levels of communication and end of life support for people suffering terminal illnesses and after-life care for the bereaved family and friends. We found this charity very gratifying and decided that it was perfect. With help and advice from St. Peter’s Hospice’s marketing team, the idea of Lifetime was initiated. The product we offer is a box that can store items of memorable significance and sentimental value. The box’s exterior and inner lid can be personalized to be both exclusive and respectful to the person who has passed. You can store a number of items inside the box and choose a size to fit those items. Take one of the items out and place it on the RFID scanner surface in the left of the box. Using radio frequencies, the box will read a tag implemented in or on the item and when plugged into a television through USB or HDMI ports, it will display personal videos, photos, letters and video messages relevant to the item used. We understand that over time memories tend to fade slightly, which is why we have incorporated this level of technology to coincide with the items that you hold most sentimentally valuable from the person that has passed. Not only will it make those items more personal and cherished, but it will give the friends and families of those passed a memories last a Lifetime…
University Challenged: Matthew Roche Jos Banham Janusz Lavrnja-Czapski Mitch Davies Adam Symonds With special thanks to Matthew Bell, St Peters Hospice.