Today’s class served as a great opportunity to evaluate the current state of progress. We also shared our recent changes (in light of last week’s stand-in focus group) and presented a brief performance of one facet of our projects interaction. In short, we have defined our conceptual design and are proceeding to refine our project into a more coherent and understandable package.

In light of today’s class topic, concept refinement, we’ve assembled a lengthy list of weekly requirements to have complete in preparation for the user feedback stage where our team will engage in focus groups and a series of one-to-one interviews.

The following are our short-term goals:

1) Further Project Definition

2) Mood Board

3) User Personas

4) Create new and alternate design aesthetics (thus far we’ve focused too much effort on the box/rectangular form)

5) Create the look/feel/style of our digital interface

6) Questionairres/Interview Preparation

7) Find Participants for Interviews & Focus Groups

To supplement the above directions, we began to refine the project’s interactions:

Firstly, there are two primary types:

(1) the physical interaction with the actual stack

(2) the interaction with the digital web-based interface

On the physical side, we have narrowed our focus to :

• dials for altering light levels and water usage
• interactions afforded through the project’s form (how one provides water or, more simply, how one gains entry to the stack)
• the base of the stacks (divided in logical manner for accessibility to the various parts — largely for troubleshooting purposes)
• an alert system that alters the look of the stack so as to indicate a change from the norm

On the digital side, we’ve narrowed our focus to (adding/editing/saving):

• a calendar system (where the user can keep track of the days on which the plants were watered)
• health monitor (a visual represenation of the plant’s state of being)
• water/light levels
• FAQ section (to be integrated on a separate page — it is our goal to keep the central interface as clean and minimalistic as possible)

Sketches are to come!