Hand-Washing Carnival
Himani Deshpande, Hanyu Gong, Tanvi Singh
An interactive installation for waiting areas of children's hospitals for kids to play with as well as learn the CDC specified method of washing hands.
We visited the Children's Hospital of Atlanta to observe the waiting areas. We located a few games and installations set in place for the kids while they were waiting. There were also some hand sanitation stations around the area. They were not being used unless a parent asked a child to use it. This inspired our initial concept for the installation.
The initial concept featured a sink with a pico projector on top. When a child would place her hands on the sink, germs would be projected on her hands using the projector and a leap motion. The display screen would then show an instructional animation of how to wash the hands and an inbuilt sanitizer station would then spray her hands with sanitizer. There would be a wind blower which would dry the child's hand.
We found that there were certain issues with this concept.
1. The connection of hand-washing with a sanitizer was difficult to understand
2. It lacked a prompt for the child to place her hands on the sink
3. The idea of a child putting their hands on a sink, itself, felt unsanitary
We thus decided to move away from complex ideas and electronics and break down the concept to its basics. The goal was to engage kids while teaching them how to wash their hands. We found that we needed different colors and sounds to attract kids to use the installation which directed towards a carnival game-like feel. We created the minimum viable list for the installation and used it to modify the concept.
Final Visualizations of the Concept and Prototyping
The prototype and working
My Role and Learnings
I was responsible for the physical computing and working mechanism of this installation. I used an Arduino Mega with RFID readers and tags for the puzzle pieces and 3 DC motors for the zoetropes. This project help me understand the user journey of designing an interactive installation where the feelings of curiosity, excitement and competitiveness can be strategically designed for. I understood the importance of having curiosity be the driving force behind a user approaching the installation, having a play element to stimulate competitiveness and a feeling of control and then a big reveal to match the excitement of the user. This projects made me extremely interested in designing such interactions.