CONCEPT
The concept I chose to explore was that of personal space and what it is to have yours violated. People have their personal space zone wherein they feel uncomfortable if someone is inhabiting that space without their consent. If someone violates your personal space you feel uncomfortable and anxious but if they are further making you more umcomfortable by doing soemthing or acting in some way when they are in your personal space you become more anxious, alarmed, and panicked and may even close off to the other person by crossing your arms.
CONCEPT SKETCH
INTERACTION
I have created a t-shirt which deals with this concept. The shirt has a NeoPixel Ring that changes colour from blue (when someone is a good distance away from you ie. not in your personal space) to red (when someone has entered your personal space. When someone is in your personal space the ring will be red in colour but if you begin to feel more uncomfortable due to the person's actions for example,you may close off and cross your arms and trigger the soft switch in the sleeve which causes the piezo buzzer to make sounds signifying your internal panick, alarm, and anxiety.
INPUTS/OUTPUTS/STATES
My deisgn has two inputs. The first is the distance sensor which reads how far or close someone is, so if they are in your personal space, and the second one is the soft switch which gets triggered when the person is feeling most umcomfortable.
The t-shirt has two outputs. One is the NeoPixel ring which outputs a colour depending on the distance read by the IR sensor and the second is the piezo buzzer which creates a beeping sound when triggered by the soft switch.
The shirt has 3 states:
1. Personal space isn't violated - NeoPixel remains blue
2. Personal space violated - NeoPixel turns red
3. Personal space violated + feeling of extreme discomfort (crossing arms over) - NeoPixel is red and soft circuit pressed so buzzer is triggered
CIRCUIT
The circuit involves:
- IR distance sensor which reads the distance of something from the shirt
- NeoPixel Ring which takes the value from the IR sensor and outputs a colour based on that value (blue = ok red = personal space violation)
- Soft circuit switch which is on the sleeve or shoulder area and is triggered when pushed
- Piezo buzzer which beeps when the soft circuit switch is triggered when someone is in the "red zone" or in your personal space
IDEATION
My original idea was to explore how people behave in their environment by looking at how sometimes you don't realize how loud you are being especially in certain situations/environments where you should be quiet such as study areas or libraries. I was going to create a sound responsive shirt that allows the user to be aware of how loud they are being in certain situations and LEDS would change colours to indicate the user's loudness. The LEDS would change colours according to a sound sensor. After discussing it in class I decided to move toward something worn on the hand or wrist so an armband or a glove which would have a sound sensor that would see if the user was being too loud and if so, a buzzer would go off as well as an led indicating you are too loud and it wouldn't turn off unless the user put their hand up to their mouth and covered it which would be symbolic. Unfortunately I could not get my sound sensor working right and so I had to abandon this idea and come up with something else. Through this idea is how I began to think about personal space because when someone is being too loud or disruptive they are violating the public space they are in and depending on how close they are maybe even your personal space.
CODE
VIDEOS
The circuit working on a breadboard
This video shows state 3. So, the person filming was standing in the personal space zone (note: this was before I changed the range to be a little bit closer than it seems in the video) and so the person wearing the shirt gets uncomfortable and crosses their arms and triggers the switch to cause the buzzer to sound.
This video shows the distance sensor working and showing the two NeoPixel states/colours. (Note: I did not wear the shirt again because last time I put it on it caused the NeoPixel to stop changing colours. I also couldn't trigger the soft circuit and the distance sensor at the same time as I was holding up the shirt with one hand and waving my other hand in front of the distance sensor. To trigger the soft switch I would have had to keep one hand in front of the distance sensor causing the NeoPixel to stay red and also press the soft circuit with the other hand.
