After working with Sharing Control, I have been thinking about how much trust is involved in the concept itself, therefore, I wanted to represent trust through a trust fall experience.

I have created a function on the Micro:bit that counts the seconds it takes for person B to catch person A from falling. The seconds represent how long person A has been in the "air" until being caught. The longer the time, the higher is the degree of fall, meaning that if person A is caught after 5 sec., it means that person B almost immediately caught person A, while if person A is caught after 10 sec. it means that person B caught person A very late, almost to the point of touching the ground.

Time here plays an important role when it comes to trust. 

As mentioned above, I took inspiration from the Sharing Control project, where me and my team created "Just move it" - an interactive experience where participants have to collaborate - and therefore trust each other - in order to touch with feet and hands the projections on the floor.

For this project I have used the laser cutter and the sewing room to create a watch that detects "free fall" which stops the counting of seconds as soon as person A is being caught by person B (as you can see in the videos), as well as emitting a sound.

The coding will be explained further on.

The process​​​​​​​

I have started the process broadly with two different ideas explained below.

In this sketch you can see two people. One wearing the Micro:bit that will detect the fall and the other trying to catch that person. This is a high-trust experience that involves emotions and physicality.

Since the environment is important when it comes to trust, the next prototype shows a different arrangement of the room: one with lights on, one with lights off. This is something I would have liked to implement further (as you can see in the last section "what's next?").

There are also different heights that change the perception of trust in the moment of falling, as you can see from the testing below.

The orange line shows that the person is being picked up quite early which changes the experience completely. The yellow line, on the other hand, shows that the person is being picked up quite later on.

The Micro:bit could help detecting the fall time, and therefore, the angle! 

The experience of understanding the effects on dementia on a brain is through the environment, where some images (brain mapping images) are displayed throughout the room. In the middle of the room there is a fake brain. A person has to interact with the brain and use the Micro:bit to guess if the images shown represent the brain before dementia or after. It might work like a guessing game that encourages fast thinking.

After day one, I wanted to experience prototyping both the ideas before deciding for a more narrow approach.

Experimenting idea 2:

Here I created two versions of the brain, both in flamingo material, but one with the use of a soft material and glue. 

Sadly I did not have a clear idea and time to gather feedback on this prototype, and therefore I moved to the idea number 1:

For this prototype I have sew a vest to hold the Micro:bit (still unfinished). I have laser cut a Micro:bit holder to have a better stability for it and its battery.

The feedback gathered was mostly about the design of the vest rather the functionality of the project, since the Micro:bit was not tested yet. However, I have tested again the trust falling experience and the vest had a great impact on who tried it since it was comfortable and it felt like it wasn't even there.

In that matter, I have written down some of the quotes from the participant:

It is engaging and fun and scary at the same time"​​​​​​​

After experimenting with the vest, I could see that the Micro:bit was not working well because of the type of movement when it was put on the upper side of the body. Therefore, I have created a Micro:bit watch instead as shown below.

When it comes to coding, I have been experimenting both time and spirit level. This last one was meant to measure two dimensions, while triggering an LED and sound for sensor reading. These two dimensions are roll and pitch, in order to see how the fall has an impact on the two dimensions.   

The other coding, and final one, was by using time, LED, sound and the free fall/gravity 3g function to showcase how long the fall took - in seconds - and therefore, how long it took for the falling person to be caught.

In this case, I have put the count to start. Before the falling, the person has to press the button A on the watch and the time starts running. In order to do that, I have created an "if analysis" so if the time counter is equal to true, then the time starts from 1 while showing on the Microbit LED. Once the gravity changes (3g), and therefore, once the falling person is caught by the second person, the Microbit emits sound on Low A# and the time stops, by showing how long it took for the falling person to be caught.

The time period also has an influence on the degree of the person being caught. As you can see from the beginning, I talked about the degree of fall and this changes the perception of the falling person. If the time shows 30 sec. rather than 20 sec. it means that the person was catched quite at a low angle compared to a person being catched at even 10 sec. 

The watch had a great success (meaning that no one complained about the size, material and functionality). It was easy to use and I did not have to say anything on how to use it, therefore, the design was clear. There have been some situations in which the sound would not work or work too late and there have been some comments about pressing A before falling. With this I mean that, once the button A is pressed, the time starts but the person has not yet started to fall, therefore, that 1 sec. that it takes to go to the position of falling should not be taken into consideration when checking the time again after person A is caught by person B.

In addition, before using the "free fall" code, I used the 3g (gravity), but in that case, person A really had to shake the arm to make the time stop and start the sound.

The design process was not linear, but instead I repeated in loops most activities such as prototyping, sketching, brainstorming, testing and coding. By starting with 2 ideas I was broad in what I wanted to achieve and after prototyping both, I narrowed down what I wanted to focus on: the trust fall. After deciding to go for one idea, I focused on re-sketching, brainstorming and testing again while creating 2 prototypes (and 2 sketches). At this point I was also playing with coding, trying to see what I could have done - that would have actually made sense - in the trust fall experience. At the end I had 3 options: spirit level, accelerometer, time count.

Time count was the one that I could develop further.

The testing has been done in different stages: at the very beginning, when brainstorming on ideas; after making prototype 1 (vest); after making prototype 2 (watch).

Sewing

Laser Cutting

Coding

Sketching

Testing

Tinkering (with the brain idea)

Cutting/playing with flamingo

17th November

Sketches + brainstorming 

Consultation Rob 

Continue sketching + brainstorming 

Testing on 2 people 

URL making

18th November

More sketching 

Prototyping 

Coding  

Testing on 2 people 

URL add on 

7:45  

19th November

Prototyping 

Coding 

Testing 

URL add on 

21st November

URL add on 

Testing 

22nd November

Final touches 

Final testing 

URL add on 

Make things simple, don't over-complicate it.

How good it looks does not matter, functionality does.

It would have been nice to have made the Micro:bit more sensible to the catch in order to have a more precise time count.

Do not facilitate too much.

Explain what you try to achieve with it.

If I would to continue with this project, I would involve the person that catches (Person B) the one that falls (Person A) more. This could be done by adding a second Micro:bit.

It could also be fun to look deeper into the accelerometer function on the Micro:bit and have a display that shows exactly to what degree the person has fallen before being caught.

I would also like in the future to involve the scenario and the environment as I planned initially by playing with the light of the room we were in.

In addition, I believe this could be also used in the medical system, by helping elderly people when falling to get external help through the sound system of the Micro:bit.