"How can we make the job of a college night guard
less monotonous & more fun?"
As part of the Living Mobile track at MIT Media Lab's first Design & Innovation Workshop in India, I worked along with Harshal (COEP), Shweta (IDC) & Shilpan (DAIICT) on a device to improve the job of night guards at colleges/societies. Common feedback was that the job was monotonous, and most felt sleepy with nothing to do all night.
Problem Statement and initial solution set
Based on the interviews of guards of COE Pune, we focused on three areas: make the job more interesting, allow guards to communicate in some way with each other, and prevent the guard from sleeping during duty.
Poster for the Final Presentation at the workshop
Final prototype was created using an Arduino board with Accelerometer and Speaker fabricated as shields.
We created a final prototype using a night guard's stick attached with an accelerometer that created different sounds when shaken/hit on walls. I worked on a proof of concept using an Android device, that was rewritten with Arduino and used on the stick. I also conceptualized how guards could leverage simple haptic feedback to detect other guards in the direction they're pointing at, and created a proof of concept using Android.
Thanks to Drew Harry and Andrea Colaço for their mentorship and Santiago Alfaro for introducing me to Android development.
More information about projects & mentors can be found on the MIT India Initiative website.
