Turtle Tracks

• Interaction Design

Project Role

• Concept Development
• Design Research
• Prototyping

Brief
Our third-year interactive prototyping course asked teams of two to research on a particular need/value of a user group, validate it, present a conceptual solution, and construct a working prototype using the open-source Arduino hardware packages.

Process
Christine Poh and I underwent investigation on family interactions then focused on a child’s nature of finding comfort in being with their parent. We illustrated the idea using examples of infant animals being nurtured by their parent, but also a growing desire for exploration.

Delivery
Programming the RFID scanner to connect with the Arduino board, the concept was packaged into a children’s plush toy calling it Turtle Tracks. The large turtle (with the hardware inside) would act as a scanner to look for little turtles and sea creatures (with mini RFID tags inside). The mother turtle is programmed to play a sound when searching for its family and play a melody upon finding its child.

The concept was prototyped and presented in class with an on-screen use-case scenario. We also looked at Turtle Tracks’ potential in integrating RFID tags for other objects like cell phone or keys to allow an adult to make use of the idea/toy as well.

Collaborators