:: General Motors - Deep Navigation

:: Project Duration: January - Present, 2003
:: Project Description:

General Motors came to us with a vision to develop a new in-vehicle navigation system in 2010. This new navigation system increases driver's awareness in geographic location, landmarks, route information using pre and post navigation systems. Successful implementation of this navigation system will also permit drivers to engage in social activity with their friends and family on the road.

Our team is responsible for brainstorming potential applications/services use of navigation system, developing evaluation/selection criteria, defining additional assumptions/requirements for navigation system, building system prototype including appropriate human-vehicle interface (HVI), conducting market research, and creating business-case analysis for this new navigation system (projected development costs, unit costs, purchase price, system penetration as a portion of sales).

:: Nokia Phone - Multimodal MP3 Display

:: Project Duration: February - March, 2002
:: Project Description:

Research has shown that when users are confused about how to use a particular software application, they will first ask someone in the room for help, then search the menus on the screen and only as a last resort, consult a printed or online software menu. This fact, combined with the growth of speech recognition technologies in recent years, makes speech user interfaces viable, but relatively unknown mechanisms for effective human-computer interactions.

This project consisted of working on a two-person team to design a series of simple task flows for an mp3 player. Because of the delima in choosing suitable interface (SUI vs. GUI) for this particular medium, our team developed combined solutions: multimodal capable interface. The mp3 player runs on the Nokia 7110 phone and is navigated mainly by key-pad and jog dial. Functionality included volume control, music control, random playback, playlist selection ,song selection, and sort by name and genre.

For more information, please refer to the demo in Shockwave (20.7MB) and the design hypothesis in PDF. Also, refer to the information on Designing for the Cell Phone Guideline and Designing SUI Guideline. For screen shots, click here.

:: HiBear - A Robot for the Elderly

:: Project Duration: April - May, 2002
:: Project Description:

This project draws on knowledge of design systems, typography, color, and visual and audio cues to create a visual and auditory interface for a humanoid robot, Pearl (Nursebot). This robot, whose audience is elders and their caregivers, is designed to assist with tasks related to personal care and home maintenance. The modes of input for the robot include a 640x480 touchscreen, speech input, and cameras with image processing.

As interactive designers of the visual, auditory, and behaviroal interface for this new product, our team conducted research on various forms of robot interfaces for the elderly, selected a concept to prototype, and demonstrated how a task or activity might be completed through interactions between the user and the robot. At the end, our team prototyped HiBear, a touchscreen embedded and SUI enabled bear doll to increase social involvement of the elderly.

For more information, please refer to the demo in Shockwave (72 MB) or the report paper in PDF. Click here for screen shots.

:: Solar Parking Meter

:: Project Duration: January - February, 2002
:: Project Description:

When we think of navigation, we often think of archetypical menu buttons running horizontally across a screen, down the left hand side, or some combination of both. While this may be an accepted practice for a software application, designers can and do depart from this convention when designing navigation for Web sites, CD-ROMs, kiosks, and novel interfaces that offer more than a task-driven experience.

This project introduces series of screens and interactions for a new solar-powered parking meter. The display of parking meter makes novel use of color, typography, navigation and information hierarchy. Users using the parking meter are able to access the following functions: multiple payment options (coin or card-based value transfer), time displays and time expiration, local map of the area with points of interest, browse points of interest alphabetically and topically.

For more information, please refer to the design decision report on Solar-powered Parking Meter in PDF. Click here for screen shots.