Brainstorm ideas for IoT apps:
(collaborators: Jonathan Nakhla, Samuel Son, and Richa Sheth)
1. app that keeps track of the food you purchase for expiry and let’s nearby users know in case they need some ingredient that is about to expire anyway. Has scanner to scan for food information. OR, the fridge can keep track of its contents automatically?
2. app that has uses some sort of sensor or webcam (heat flows relative to space?) for detecting human presence or people entering/leaving. This could be used for shared showers (any kind of shared public/semi-public space), restaurants, general events, or gyms (like the rsf - to see machine or court usage).
3. automated microwave, oven, etc. turn on on a timer
4. Toll or parking payment using your phone.
5. Universal remote (some IR addon?)
6. App that connects to security cameras, and has notifications for motion detection or just to view live footage
7. Anti-burglary app that scares trespassers by turning on and off your lights, TVs, etc. and also blasts your sound system. Conveniently also can be used to control your electronics for your own personal pleasure.
8. Dog tag or some kind of monitoring device for your pets that can monitor their vitals and also their location.
9. google glass identify dangerous people so you can avoid them (maybe the facial recognition isn’t there yet)
10. Massage app that connects to a health device and increases or decreases its intensity depending on your vitals
11. Buzzer that shows wait times. Restaurant or whatever business uses it has app that keeps track of patrons.
12. App to pay for parking and get notifications for expiry without checking meter
13. Car diagnostic app, maybe remote ignition or control? Remote control car???
Selection:
I was deciding between the fridge that tracks it's inventory and the app that monitors heat-sensing cameras for room crowdedness. I ultimately chose the capacity-checking app because I can't imagine what kind of technology would be involved in creating a refrigerator that can do those things. A barcode scanner wouldn't work well because a lot of your items (like produce or meat) probably wouldn't have a barcode on them, so you'd have to rely on optical recognition. Also, the testing for how crowded a place is app seems very applicable to the users interviewed by my collaborators and me. Some of them had specifically commented on the usefulness of such an app, and indeed (as an aside), I had in the past thought of making something like this.
Feedback:
I tested my rough low-fidelity prototype with a user and it went fairly well. Navigating the menu options went smoothly, probably mainly because I didn't give many options, out of fear that it would be difficult to use. Initial setup mostly involved going to settings to select an appropriate location the user would like to monitor.
I had the user tell me his thoughts on the layout of the screen showing room occupancy. He seemed to get that the circles represented concentration of people, but didn't immediately associate their spatial coordinates with the actual locations of people within a room. He understood, based on the empty rectangle having no circles, that the shaded areas represented how full a room was. But he might not have gotten that without the empty room example for guidance. In fact, he said that the shaded area increased clutter, and maybe straight up stating the percentage would be more helpful.
That seemed to be a common theme throughout my questioning: that while visual clues were nice, more text could be useful, like a notification that might pop up (either for the entire room or for specific sections) that warns users that a room is full or nearing its limit. Also, he was extremely worried about clutter, especially on a smaller screen, the preview icons wouldn't be especially useful as you can't really see the heat map very well at all. Maybe only showing one specific section of the venue (with a default being selectable) would work better. The selection could be made with a dropdown, but I think a better solution could be devised, such as a selectable map of the venue.
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