Conceptual Design

"To teach a child, the way positive reinforcement is carried out is more important than the amount " 

"Keep me Safe" is an IoT toy that targets children ages (3-5) years old. We decided to target this age group because of the children's ability to adopt behaviors and attitudes during that age as they are not yet fixated on given beliefs. As a result, through reinforcement methods, we believe that our toy could promote social interaction and nurture positive emotions, particularly responsibility and care. In addition, this stage resembles the period in which children develop an understanding of concepts such as belongings and friendships (Kardefelt-Winther, 2017).  Children's appreciation for friends at this age is further demonstrated by children's tendency to cry continuously and express deep, negative emotions and stubbornness as they separate from their friends. Nonetheless, as they spend time together, most children spend their time on digital devices, such as mobiles and ipads . This observation contributed to our concept generation where we wanted to connect children with their friends while providing tangible and meaningful ways to entertain themselves. 

The placement of the toy is a key factor that was critical to the success of our overall product. The reason being is that it is irrelevant to certain types of users. As a result,  proper positioning enhances the usability and the value of our product. In this project, as we intend for children to be the primary users of our product, it was crucial to determine appropriate settings that are centered on children and are suitable to promote social engagement. We decided that the most appropriate location for our object was in nurseries since objects are usually scattered across the space and are rarely treated with care. Consequently, the nature of the space was an opportunity that we leveraged to convey the intended message. 

"Keep me Safe" uses IoT to connect children to each other as it allows each of them to use their own controller to control the movement of one of the stickman's arms. The ability to control an arm remotely and play with the stickman without exerting extreme pressures on the controller uses IoT as it entails communication between devices. The decision to have one figure is intended to as a form of positive reinforcement such that the child who wants to observe the outcome of their action should be near the toy, thus resulting in anticipation that will encourage the connection amongst the two children. In addition, this will teach the children values such as sharing as this would be a way for children to alternate turns in owning the object, which in itself will resemble a maturing friendship. Currently, "Keep me Safe" utilizes IoT to serve its purpose. 

However, future applications of IoT could also extend into leveraging the outcome of pressure readings exerted on the toys for behavioral studies and research to indicate necessary developmental efforts. For this application, we would publish all the pressure readings onto the cloud so that researchers and scientists in labs would access the outcomes of those readings. Then, the output would be analyzed to detect meaningful behavioral and psychographic patterns that could be used as opportunities for improvement. Thus, the IoT in this device would provide insights that would focus on the well-being of upcoming generations by addressing their social, mental, and behavioral health. Those benefits could arise from recommended reformation of educational and social systems that address trends in the data. As seen, we believe that the goal of IoT in the current design is to promote social and behavioral well-being. However, in the future, we want "Keep me Safe" to be utilized to yield more generalizable applications that would benefit a larger group of people. 

The mechanism of "Keep me Safe" is a shared stickman model controlled by two separate joysticks. Each of the stickman's arms is tied by a rope, which is attached to a servo on the back of a stage. Each child would use their controller to press on a pressure sensor to move the servo and gently move the stickman's arm that they have control over. Once either player exceeds a certain threshold, the arm won't move, a solenoid will work along with a red neopixel as indicators of fault or mistreatment, and the child will not be able to play for a certain amount of time. The usage of indicators of punishment is intended to highlight that the child did an error in the game, thus resulting in the reinforcement of a gentler press once their next turn comes. By exposing the children to this form of punishment, we are reinforcing the idea that things should be handled with care as the aim of the game is to maximize the number of consecutive interactions between the players. In addition, we are utilizing the object as a mean to connect the children, regardless of whether they were in close or distant proximity. Lastly, the design of the stage and the consoles was intended to stir feeling of curiosity in the children to explore the toy and use it as a way to express their desire in establishing a friendship while learning from the consequences that they encounter. 

Greenspan, S. I. (1982). Three levels of learning: A developmental approach to “awareness” and mind‐body relations. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 1(4), 659-694.