Planit-Clock

Submitted by shaohan on Sun, 04/07/2013 - 23:03

Project: Planit-Clock

team member Wendy Xue, Kate Hsiao, Shaohan Chen

Problem

Event planning is a process that calls for skills of organizing and will of execution. The planning itself can be full of surprises and memorable stories. Take wedding planning for example, a bride may plan her wedding using a planning album. She writes down the tasks and their target completion date in the album. As she executes tasks such as booking a venue, ordering a dress, she might attach pictures to tasks as references. She might write down her thoughts on the dresses she tried on next to the pictures she took. After the wedding is successfully executed, the bride may preserve the planning album as an memorable item. She might retrieve it many years later to review the work she did and maybe tell a story or two about a particular moment during the planning process.

We want to design a device will function similarly to a wedding planning album. However, it can be used for any event that user wants to preserve the memory of the process. The device should provide visual cues to the user to motivate them complete the tasks. When all the tasks planned for the event have been completed, the device can be preserved as an artistic object full of stories that the user can review and relish for years to come.

Overview of the device and its interactions

Overview

As the name “Planit-Clock” suggests, our device looks like a round clock. It will count down towards the event deadline with an clock arm that rotates to complete 360 degree. A user uses a physical block to represent a task. The block can store pictures, video and audio files. It has a screen to display the picture or video stored. When the block is placed on the surface of the clock, before the clock arm, it represents a task that has not be completed. If the block sits behind the arm, it means the task has been executed.

Interactions

The device consists of a surface looks like a round clock with an arm ticking clockwise.
A physical block is used to represent a planned task. The arrangement of the blocks on the surface indicates the order of the tasks.
User can store pictures, videos and audio using the block.
The block displays a thumbnail of pictures or a mini clip of the video so that user has a visual cue what task the block represent.
User presses the block to shorten its height to indicate a task is completed so that the clock arm can pass without hitting it.
The closer the clock arm approaches the block, the more “nervous” the block becomes, indicating to the user that he or she needs to execute the task otherwise it will be delayed. The nervousness can be indicated by color, such as red as alarming, yellow as nervous, green as calm.
User can pet the surface of the block to “calm” it, indicating task execution is under control.
If user does not complete a when the clock arm hits the block, the block will be pushed towards the event deadline by the arm. The more blocks pushed towards the deadline, the more crowded before the 12 o’clock position.
User can move a block to another location on the clock to rearrange the order of the event.
The size of the block indicates the importance of task, such as large for important task, small for miscellaneous tasks.
User can tap the block to play the digital media stored in the block. The media is projected onto the areas surrounding the clock. For example, if the clock is hanging on the wall, the media is projected onto the wall. The distance between the projected image and the perimeter of the clock is coordinated with the distance between the block and the center of the clock, so that densely located objects’ projections wouldn’t overlap too much.