Process:

Our team was really interested in exploring how we could incorporate movement and touch to our intimacy object. We brainstormed different rituals that we thought couples or families cared about and were difficult to replicate because of long distances.  We really enjoyed the story that one of our team members shared around cherry blossom festivals. 

Once we aligned on a scenario, we explored how we could create movement inside the glass dome and how we could incorporate touch as the trigger for our intimacy object. We tested different servos and fans to determine the best option for our object. Once the code, the input (squeeze sensor) and output (blower) were incorporated, we developed the base to host the glass dome.  

Challenges:

As we developed our prototype, we encountered the following challenges:

• Learning to work with a transistor. It was challenging to understand how to properly create the circuit for the transistor. 
• Code: In order to have the blower blow for a couple of seconds we learned that we needed to create a loop using the while function vs an if statement 
• the importance of grounding: the 12 V rails needed to be grounded to the particle in order for the blower to work properly
• Blower wind force was not displacing the petals correctly. We had to create several adjustments to alter the angles of the created current so that the petals would continually rotate and not stagnate in the edges of the dome.