Tea Time Reminder

Group Members

Jeff Zych, Rowyn McDonald

Description

For our final project we will continue with our midterm project but focus specifically on building a cup that includes a detachable token to remind the person of their pending tea. This token will glow to reflect the temperature of the tea, shifting colors from red to blue.

For us, drinking tea is a calm, relaxing experience, and the token is designed to reflect that by being unobtrusive and ambient. Although beeping or some other indicator more demanding of one’s attention could be employed as a reminder, this would break the ritual. Furthermore, this implies there is a specific time when the tea is ready, when in fact the goal of the project is to give a gentle indication of “tea is waiting.” Although this design has the potential downside of forgetting the token entirely, we expect this to be unlikely since it will be worn. Thus, the person will feel an unfamiliar object on their body and see it occasionally as they move their hands or arms.

As discussed in our midterm project, this concept developed from our own tea-preparation experiences. We often make tea and leave it to steep or cool on a counter while adjourning to an adjacent room. As a result, we sometimes forget about the tea and return later only to find the tea has been over-steeped, cooled, or both.
 

Look and Feel

Our original idea, inspired by "snaps cups" with detachable handles, was to have the handle be the token.  However, we're now considering other possibilities, such as a ring which fits around the top or bottom of the tea cup.  A handle needs to be stiff and sturdy, which doesn't lend itself as well to being wearable.  A removable ring of material that fits around the cup and could be worn as a bracelet, however, might allow more design flexibility.  Tea cups are usually made of porcelain, ceramic, or glass so those materials would fit most organically with the existing object, but for a portable wearable token we also need the material to be resilient and maybe flexible.  This aspect of our idea is still undecided.

Drinking tea is often a relaxing or at least a low key experience, and the flavour of tea is fairly subtle, so the colours of our token should reflect this quality, perhaps by being darker or more muted.

Materials for Prototype/Mockup

• LEDs (cf. http://www.instructables.com/id/Programmable-LED/)

• microcontroller

• flexible, transparent material, e.g. plastic tubing

• small battery, e.g. watch battery

• temperature sensor