0. Introduction

Study Shuffle is a HCI project where the goal is to solve an everyday problem using the Arduino interface. Study Shuffle addresses the problem that many students face while attempting to study: maintaining focus and finding the perfect study playlist. The environment in which we work or study in plays a large part in how efficient we are. By providing students and workers with soothing, ambient music paired with relaxing scenery and a candy reward with each successful work session, Study Shuffle helps to reinforce good study habits while laying out a calming work environment. Our application was designed to help people who may have short attention spans and are easily distracted by having them follow a simple time management system that allows them to work with the time they have - rather than against it. This page documents the iterative design process that lead to our final product.

1. Design Ideas

The first iteration of our design process consisted of each group member sketching 10+ ideas. Here, our top 5 sketches out of the 30+ are shown.

2. Refined Sketches

From the aforementioned 5 chosen sketches as inspiration, the group member drew a total of 10 refined sketches. See the slider below to view them all!

Here is a quick presentation of our sketches as we ideated and refined during our project process.

3. Storyboard

Below is a video detailing our storyboard.

4. Final Product

After deciding on the idea of playing random TV Shows from Netflix, we set out to program our first iteration. A sizable amount of time was spent setting up the hardware. After that we hit a hard roadblock with communicating with the Netflix API. We did a hard pivot from random TV Shows to selecting ambient, studying YouTube videos using the Arduino and a controller with a personalized board. We then shifted our focus to solving the everyday problem problem of quickly transitioning into a state of deep focus to effectively complete work/study tasks by immersing ourselves into the proper environment. We included presets for the study music and also included functionality that allowed for snack dispensing.

My contributions:

• Sketched design ideas that were eventually included in the final implementation
• Participated in voting for top ideas/sketches after completing the initial and refined sketches
• Wrote Python code to scrape data from YouTube
• Wrote code to establish serial communication between the Arduino and our Python program
• Wrote code to handle events triggered by button and joystick
• Wrote code that manipulated two servos and three LED lights based on user input.
• Created candy dispensor using servo actuator
• Created category arrow picker using servo actuator
• Designed and decorated box cases for Arduino components in an aesthetic manner
• Took pictures and provided voiceover for storyboard video
• Recorded voice clips to be used in final video demo

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