-Leaving early for work

-Coming home late from work

-Going to the bathroom

-Getting something to eat/drink

-Going to another bedroom

 

Then we thought about ways that some sort of light system would improve the navigating experience for people in these situations:

 

-People who sleep in the same room don't have to wake each other up with lights

-Avoiding things on the floor(objects, pets, corners, etc.)

-Guests unfamiliar with the house layout don't know how to get around

-Don't need to look for flashlight/cellphone/candle to get around at night

 

We then created character profiles for people who are in need of something to improve their navigation routines at night (using information from our research), describing a little bit about their lifestyles and the type of product they would need to fix their problem.
 

Modified POV Statement: 
"People who need to move around their house at night need a way to see where they're going without bothering others because they don't want to step on/run into things."
 

After our team had decided on our project idea, we got together and qualified it based on a multitude of different categories. There were five main ones that we had to address: 1. How would we get it to light up 2. Motion sensor pros and cons 3. Pressure sensor pros and cons 4. Who was our target user/ how would it help them 5. The cost of our product. Once we had decided on these categories, our researching process started. After ample research, we decide that we would create a floor that was lit by fiber optics that were triggered to turn on by pressure sensors in the floor, turning off after a specified amount of time in order to save electricity.
 

 

Fiber optics can be used for lighting solutions as a great way to light up hard to reach or damp areas. Their lights can change color much easier than a traditional light bulbs. Carpets are not only a spill area, but often are steam cleaned. This discourages the use of any electricity flow; Since fiber optics do not have any electricity flowing through them, spilling or steam cleaning on our modified carpets would not be an issue. Fiber optics have also become cheaper in the past few years, making them a reasonbale utility to solve this type of problem.

Pros
*Fewer false positives than pressure sensors
*Provides natural control point for floor

Cons
*Too large a range (difficult to light 1 square only) 
*Adding (several) sensors to a wall
*Price high (multiple sensors)
*Connection to floor could be difficult

Recommendations
*Find alternative means of triggering lights
 

 

 

The final carpet prototype that we designed combined fiber optic and motion sensor technology. Although we were not able to test it with these particular components, we have a strong understanding of how we would go about implementing it after working out all of the details.

 

The carpet itself would be made of 3-by-3 foot squares. Edge-emitting fiber optic cables would be woven into certain pieces of thread, all distributed evenly among the square. There would be one end emitting fiber optic cable on each of the carpet squares. It would start from underneath that particular carpet square, underneath the rest of the carpet, and finally up the wall, connecting to the illuminator which holds the main source of electricity for the fiber optics.

 

Underneath each carpet square would be a two pressure sensor devices, shown in one of the drawings above. It would be set to react to a weight of 50 lbs or heavier. When a person or object 50 lbs or heavier triggered one of the sensors, there would be a circuit connection between the pressure sensors and fiber optics that would have the carpet squares corresponding with those particular sensors.

 

When something triggers a pressure sensor, the fiber optics lights in that square, those directly in front of it, behind it, and on both of the sides turn on (this is also shown in one of the pictures above). If a person stands on a particular square for more than 30 seconds, then the lights in that square and all others triggered by it turn off. The purpose of this is to prevent the lights from staying on all of the time when a heavy object such as a dresser or bed is on top of the carpet and triggering the pressure sensors.

 

 

Because we don't have the resources or time needed to actually construct a carpet with fiber optic strands woven into it, our testing phase was focused on demonstrating the motion sensor/light relationship in our product. Each of the four pictures below explains what happens to the carpet squares as Trevor walks across them.

After completing Module 3 with our light up carpet idea, our team had a lot of difficulty at the beginning trying to figure out where to go next. We made a table of positives and negatives about our original light-up carpet idea, as well as questions and other ideas that we had about it. There were two major areas that we wanted to improve:

 

 

We went and talked to Dr. Dwayne Ball, the department chair and associate professor of Marketing at UNL, about our light-up carpet. The main points that we drew out of our conversations with him were:

 

-Marketing to a broader audience than the specific user, such as carpet stores

-Determining a goal market siz that we want our product to take up

-Countering the price disadvantage that we had by enhancing our product in other ways

-Figuring out a way for the light-up carpet to work in emergencies, such as a power outage

-Changing the light-up carpet so that it had more of a "need" factor as opposed to just a "cool" factor

 

The last two points were especially interesting to our group. Those combined with our two original improvement areas gave our group solid direction in making positive alterations and ideation.

 

 

 

To address our installation efficiency issue, we decided to look into making carpet squares that had self-contained lighting sources. It would be very difficult, tedious, and expensive to have an illuminator and wires corresponing with each carpet square in every single hotel room. Once we found out that turning it into a self-contained unit was possible, we decided that this was going to be one of the major changes in our product.

 

 

Looking back at our conversation with Dr. Ball, ideation led us in a direction where we could add a safety aspect to our product as well as increasing its "need" factor. We thought about ways in which we could build new hotels that would make them more desirable to stay at than previously existing ones. This gave way to our new project idea: an improved fire escape system for hotels using the technology from our light-up carpet. 

 

 

After deciding to switch our main market targets from residential use to commercial use, we looked into a lot of information on hotel fires. The National Fire Protection Agency has data collected from a few years ago regarding confined hotel fires, all of which helped us understand the type of problem that we would be looking to fix with our prototype. The link to the pdf of all of the NFPA findings is below, along with a few graphs and tables to support the need for our new fire security system.

 

We called eight different hotels to try and schedule meetings to talk with someone about current emergency evacuation systems and routes, but were transferred to a voicemail in HR each time so were  unable to obtain this information.

 

Along with all of the data we found from the NFPA, we thought about our own experiences with safety escape routes. Below is the fire evacution procedure for one of the dorm rooms inside of Kauffman Academic Residential Center. Most of the students that we talked to inside of Kauffman had no idea what the real fire escape plan was, or even that there was a plan like this on the back of everyone's door. This was similar in the other dorms that our group members lived in as well. We realized if there were ever a fire emergency, many of us would have no idea what the safest route to take was, giving us firsthand empathy into the situation on why a new fire emergency escape system was necessary.

 

 

GENERAL EXPLANATION
When a smoke alarm detects a fire, our mainframe computer tries to detect the fire's location through temperature gauges in our carpet squares. If a fire is detected, the computer directs the flow of traffic away from the fire and to the safest exit. If no fire is detected, the normal evacuation routes are lit. The computer lights half of the diamond indicating whether the user should go left or right down the hallway. The square is lit by an LED lightbulb that is attached to a edge- emitting fiber optic cable that is woven into the carpet square. A switch is used to light either half of the square.

 

We didn't have the resource or time needed to actually implement our fire escape system, so our testing consisted of showing how the lit carpet squares would work. The two pictures below explain when and why that particular side of the carpet would light up during a fire.

 

In order for our escape route to be affective, users need to be able to understand that the floor squares are pointing them in the direction that they should travel. To try and test this, we asked Kauffman Academic Center residents to help us out. We showed them the carpet square unlit and then asked them to go into their dorms rooms. While they were in the room, we would light one side of the carpet square to indicate the direction that we wanted them to travel. Through the door, we told them to pretend that there was a fire inside of Kauffman and the alarms had just went out. They would open the door, and try to determine where to go. Our hope was that they would openthe door, see the carpet square, and know to walk in that direction. We asked 10 different people to do this, and all of them recognized that the carpet square was pointing them in the direction that they were supposed to go in a fire emergency. Below are a few pictures of our directional testing process.