Children with AS could find traveling an overwhelming experience, as they have to face new and unexpected situations, new schedules and new environments. While confronting the stress, children with AS tend to withdraw themselves into their complex inner worlds. If we can help them to ease their emotional stress and open their eyes to the outside world while traveling, they would be able to learn from the trip and have fun!

At the final round of Microsoft Imagine Cup 09, Yujia and I invented the PuzzleYe, a special camera for children with Asperger’s Syndrome (AS) to learn in new environments while traveling to foreign places. This project was completed in 30 hours. We were awarded the 1st place in Accessible Design and 2nd place in Design category.

PuzzleYe in storyboard:

Being exposed to the unfamiliarity beforehand helps to reduce anxiety

With PuzzleYe, parents can preload media about the destinations and share the trip schedule, as well as cultural and historical tidbits, with their children before the trip. The previews help build children’s anticipation and expectation for the trip.

emotiPic : Children with AS could find it easier to communicate through pictures – Gondy Leroy, et al.

Children with AS usually have difficulty on expressing their emotional needs verbally. As a result, they throw tantrum or keep the hard feeling within themselves. PuzzleYe is a camera which the children can take pictures of the trip and indicate whether they like scene using the smiley faces on the screen. The children express themselves through the pictures. At the same time, parents could also take notice of it and discuss with them about their experience.

Children with AS have a natural inclination to repetitive patterns and puzzle games

The puzzle game is designed to serve as an incentive for children to take more pictures of their trips. The pictures they took will turn into picture puzzles. Playing these puzzles give them additional quiet time and chance to reflect on the pictures, as well as their experience on the trip.

Most importantly, children learn while they explore the surrounding. PuzzleYe acts as a pathway to support children with AS to confront new external stimuli and get more comfortable with the outside world.

We also explored the future designs of PuzzleYe and its ergonomics.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/feixing/3734739872/

You can find in the following some of the ideas we had:

• There could be an online community where parents could share among each other images and sound files taken during the trip, and travel tips specific to children with Asperger’s syndrome.
• The photos collected can be taken to the children’s counsellors and therapists.
• More games could be incorporated: Finding the objects in the environment that match certain shapes: circle, square, triangles.
  Finding the objects with Egyptian characters.
• Let children to take picture of their favorite toy or choose a favorite character. Their toy/ chosen character will appear in every pictures they take.
• PuzzleYe should be protected with materials such as rubber to prevent damage from accidental drops.

So, I got really curious, and asked my friend to invite me to one of the most popular games I heard in Asia.. the “Happy Harvest”. The Happy Harvest is a game which you buy seeds for your farm, and comes back regularly to water and take care of your farm. As you harvest, you earn points that could get you more seeds or new decorations to personalize your own farms.

And, I was pretty pleased with the small delights that the developer put in this little application:

• a camera to take picture of your farm at current moment: I wish it could become a book of diaries to record and tweet how my garden grows and transforms.

• visiting my friends’ garden: some of my friends playing the same game were high school classmates that I had not met for almost 10 years. It was extremely exciting to visit their gardens. I felt again like we were doing the same thing again together. Even better, I could help them watering their plants when they were away from Facebook. And, they would get a little note about that as they got back!
• Leaving notes for your friends: When your friend come help water your plant or when they steal your plant, they are going to see the little personalized message that you set up. “HEY! That’s my fruit!” “Thank you for watering my plants.”

So, that was fun. These kinds of delight seems to have existed in Games since long time ago, but are much less seen in interfaces for other software. A good thing to ponder. Shouldn’t my tax software give some kind of delights too?

Probably there will be a cultural difference in the experiences that people seek in interfaces, but I think the app is quite successful, at least for a couple days of fun. I’m hoping to see how it could be more integrated with the real life   The “share the same activity again with your high schoolmate” part was cool. Since I am writing a journal article on how interactive design may support pleasurable urban farming and sustainable food practices, I would really love to see how apps like this may bring people to learn about permaculture and sustainable farming practices. For example, how without using chemical pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers, they may make use of passed-down farming knowledge, good methods, good seeds to plant equally healthy foods. For example, they can learn what types of plants go well with tomatoes and how to avoid pests if not using pesticides. And how fun it would be if we can learn together with friends

There were 150 teams competing in the semi-final round and we were one of the 6 who advanced to the final.

This is our video of eXchangeFun

I am very excited. Although I dreamed to visit every corners of the earth to explore the exotic cultures and the rich history of the human race, and to experience all the beauty of the nature, I have never imagined that I would be able to see the pyramids THAT Soon! The experience of participating in the Imagine Cup is way beyond my imagination. I learned so much. Our design evolved so much and we have gone so far!

As a child, I dreamed to step around the world, and use my hand to put smiles on the people who in need of help. I didn’t know the path to this dream. But, now I do. I would continually use my hands to craft better and better designs to realize this dream one step at a time.

Here I come, Cairo.

In our Imagine Cup project – eXchangeFun, we explored how we, as designer, could contribute to sustainability through improving the EXPERIENCE of engaging in sustainable lifestyle.

Unused items were usually piled up in hidden corners of many homes. However, goods that we may not need may be useful to our friends and neighbors.We observed that certain sustainable behaviors, such as trading, renewing, and repurposing used household items, were practiced locally.  However, these behavior were not sufficiently supported by existing services such as craiglist, community bulletin board etc. It is difficult to see what items are available in the community and where; posting items are difficult; people need more motivations to take out their unused items for reuse etc.

To encourage people to do more of these existing sustainable actions, we hold user experience as our top priority in the design of eXchangeFun. We set our goal to meet users’ need in their lifestyles, rather than to preach about sustainability.

First of all, eXchangeFun builds upon the trust and closeness in a residential community. The proximity in distance enables them to exchange items, including big furniture, more easily.Buyers could see and touch the items before making the decisions. More importantly, the familiarity, openness, and trust we have for our neighbors help catalyze the good experience of community items exchange.

2. Often people piled up items in the cabinet, closets, and garage. Many of these items are not being used. When people shop in eXchangeFun, they can see a box of “discount information”. The box lists the items on the seller’s wishlists and how much discount the buyers could get if they have the items that the seller wants for exchange. Since the exchange can be done in a single trip to either’s home, it motivates the buyers to post the items that they could offer for exchange. Probably, this will motivate the buyers to post the other items too while they are in the garages. Some people are not interested in selling out their stuff, even stuff that is left unused. But, they may be more willing to exchange these items with things that they need.

3. People often have multiple items to post. Some people prefer garage sale so they can get rid of many stuff all at once. To provide them with a choice to post multiple items easily. Our innovative tag and post design helps them to post multiple items with one single picture.

4. Many people loves the treasure hunting experience of garage sale. We recreate the experience by allowing people to browse these multiple items picture post in a slideshow to find items that they are interested in among these pictures. Besides, our single items are categorized by context (eg. living room, bedroom, kitchen etc), allowing people to navigate room by room to explore the items.

Through this project, I’m deeply inspired that to design for sustainable action, we ought to stand in the users perspective and understand why that action is meaningful to THEM more than fixing our thoughts on the sustainability goal.

The conventional product gallery is usually very technical. Users have to have some imagination to translate the 2D technical map into 3D rims. The technical catalog that was designed for engineers could scare off everyday consumers.

To realize the goal of designing a product gallery for everyday consumer, I build a 3D products museum with products shown in 3D. Products’ shapes and structures are important to the customers. With the design, customers are able to see the products in 3D from any angle that they like in a game-like, exploration experience. Of course, this 3D environment is not meant to replace the traditional catalog but to serve as a bridge for novice customers start learning about different products available.

The product boards were perfectly fitted at a height where users could clearly see the details. The round sculpture in the middle of the museum park allows users to learn what rims are good for what types of bike. For example, they could stand in front of a mountain bike to see all the rims fitted for mountain bike reflected in the sculpture; and they could stand in front of a road bike to see respective rims.

The engaging experience invites customers to reflect about the objects that they see in the environment.
More reflections = deeper memory, experience, and “ensoulment”

This is a video of virtual walk in King Dee park, not a good quality video, but you get the idea.