Outcome

Goal

Inspired by those cute wish sticky notes stuck on lockers during Thanksgiving, we want to extend it to birthday blessings. The goal of the device is to subtly notify others to give out blessings on someone’s birthday in a shared workspace. There is a need for studio mates to give blessings to cheer up each other in the current stressful studio environment. SURPRISE aims to create a warm experience for each individual in the co-working space.

How it works

We defined locker as the channel to communicate this information and facilitate interactions between people. Messages that are displayed on the exterior of the locker invite everyone to look at while what’s inside are only accessible to the owner. We identify the locker as a personal/private space within this public open studio setting and want to use it as a new channel of communicating things that are more intimate in a slower, more ambient and physical way.

If it is someone’s birthday, their locker will light up throughout the day. People who notice the signal can use their phones to create digital written blessings and send them to the birthday person’s locker via thermal receipt printer inside the locker. When the birthday person opens the locker, SURPRISE! They will receive a pile of printed blessings. TADA!

Design Process

1. Conceptualization

To explore possible connected device solutions for our studio, we used the forced brainstorming techniques to generate ideas. After setting context and brainstorming, we came up with about ten concepts and then mapped them to a matrix to evaluate their value in data and device. We voted and discussed each idea, and finally decided to use lockers as the channel to communicate intimate messages among people in a shared workspace. 

2. Designing Interactions

3. Evaluating Meaningful Connections

When thinking about how our device can be connected with other devices in the studio, we were thinking about the meaningfulness rather than possibilities. We believed that the key idea about our concept was to create a way to facilitate private, intimate, and emotional communications in a shared space rather than just a physical “Whatsapp” or “Email inbox”. Therefore we decided to connect with the Silver Lining because they were seeking a way to show support to each other and it was aligned with the goal of our service.

4. Working Prototype

For our initial working prototype, we didn’t have the thermal printer at hand yet so instead used a LED to indicate the status of whether the message data has been sent to the device. In this step, we successfully connected with the Silver Lining group and received data from their devices.

5. Designing the Messages

6. Assembling the Components

An organized board to attach all the components:

Neopixel on locker door to indicate the status of birthday:

Preparing samples of different types of messages to demonstrate the idea:

Outcome

Extensible Use Case Scenarios

1. Birthday

Sending birthday wishes is our main purpose and a starting point for this project. Although we are already sending birthday wishes without this device, our current experience is not an enchanted experience. What happens now is, on someone’s birthday, the people who know about it will start texting Happy Birthday to our Whatsapp group chat tagging the birthday person. Other people learned about it successively and send wishes on the group chat throughout the day. With good intention, this could still be a burden as we see messages and feel the obligation to follow and reply promptly. Also, the messages that are sent are very generic and say no more than happy birthday itself.

The device will allow us to learn about someone’s birthday by seeing the light turned on on that person’s locker. This will initiate them to send messages through their phone and printed directly in the locker so that the message could be more personal. The birthday person will not get any notification other than knowing it’s their own birthday and the light on the locker is on. They only receive the messaged piled up in their locker whenever they open it.

2. Support

Our device is connected with Group Silver Lining by receiving data from them. When someone wishes to cheer up another person in the studio, they can do so by sending supportive messages which will be displayed both on their device and printed on ours.

3. Other special occasions

Other special occasions we vision our device can be implemented are:

“Good job. I enjoy working with you” messages among a project team.

Celebration messages after a phase presentation.

“Hope you feel better” messages when someone’s sick.

“Thank you” notes

4. Use as an intimate messaging platform in this co-working space IoT ecosystem with future applicable devices

These scenarios will be identified through icons we customized for different type of message and archived through either sent from a specific device or slack channel with a different "/___"

Circuit

Bill of Materials

Code

Feedback & Reflections

There is always a dilemma of balancing the enchantment of simplicity/single function and the actual cost of implementing an technology. The frequency of usage is important to consider. While it is ambient, it is not realistic to install this device to everyone’s locker just for a yearly use. Instead, a weekly use seems more appropriate. We have already come up with a list of scenario but in order to confirm that, we next step will have to be installing couple of printers and ask people to use it in their daily life for several weeks as a way of user testing.

They way it prints currently is that the message doesn't show the name of the sender unless they type in their name manually at the end of the message. We don’t want to define or have restriction about while it should be anonymous but keeping in mind that not all people might use it with good intention when it’s anonymous.

What’s the afterlife of the printer or the receipt? We imagine that the printer doesn’t switch user when the person relocate, but follow the person to their next assign space.

We think this project would fit the best in a professional studio setting of a small scale. Less than 15 people because of less cost and more specific functionality. It doesn’t have to stay in the locker and can be implemented in other spaces within a personal space, for example, a drawer, a mailbox.

Next Step

In the future, we hope studio mates can send each other printed wish messages conveniently, and create a more friendly atmosphere. SURPRISE will also connect with other IoT devices in the studio to build a new interaction format in the studio. Silver lining is one of the potential products that can be connected with SURPRISE. We will develop other categories, such as festivals and congratulations, integrating with their special icons on the message in the later development. In this way, we hope the physical texture of the printed paper to convey care and love in a more sincere way in our current digital world.