computer-lov / Nighttime-Parenting-Device

This is a senior design project.
MIT License
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Write conclusion/recommendations section of report #25

Closed arongoldberg closed 2 years ago

BeatrizPer commented 2 years ago

I wrote the conclusion and recommendations for report

Nighttime Parenting’s goal has always been to provide a solution to help ease the stressful and negative feelings that come along with taking care of an infant at night. The team worked diligently to achieve this by monitoring and logging when a baby wakes up, tracking the stress levels of the parent who is taking care of the baby, and implementing a stress relief routine for the parent when an increase in stress is detected. With its OLED screen, LED bar, stereo decoder, microphone, heart rate sensor, and dials, the Care Sleeve was designed to integrate all these functionalities in a seamless and intuitive way. However, the Care Sleeve did provide quite a few challenges along the way. The team realized that integrating individual components together, combining hardware and software, and prototyping can lead to unexpected outcomes that need to be worked through. For example, the heart rate sensor proved to not be as accurate in taking measurements of a user’s BPM as expected. The microphone wasn’t originally able to pick up baby cries as desired. The flexible perfboard began to crack as we tried to flex it. The original ADC didn't have enough channels needed. The original OLED ordered was not working and we had to switch to a different model. These are all examples of challenges we had to overcome with our product. In future iterations, a better heart rate sensor will be purchased for the product. The current heart rate sensor has faulty readings at times which have been shown to come from the performance of the actual sensor rather than the implementation. Additionally, the analytics that are seen in the browser UI will be implemented to give actual feedback on the night time care routine. SMS messages will be implemented as the form of communication between one care giver to the other rather than the email currently being used. A better flexible perfboard will be purchased along with durable material to build a better prototype. Additionally, more user research will be done by working with actual parents and letting them use the care sleeve. This whole project had a context of user research found online, we lacked the research of real parents interacting with our product. None of the team members are parents, so there may be a huge disconnect between our product and that of what parents of infants actually need. With real user feedback of our product, the physical UI and the cuffs practical functionality will be tested and drive future iterations as well. Overall, our whole design works well for what was planned however it is far from done. In order to actually market this as a product, more work needs to be done in many fronts to provide the best for our customers to really ease the pain of nighttime care. Although it isn’t at its final stage, we know this prototype is a good basis for the future growth that will come for this company and product. The pitch and demo video for the Care Sleeve can be accessed here Appendix I - Demo and Pitch Video.