Ongoing Document Prototype 3

The Recap

In the last prototype, we tested on the target audience's vibration patterns preferences. The content of vibration was divided into three categories, including vibration frequency, vibration length, and pressure of vibration.

We found out the testers, who under the different heart beat frequency have the different preferences of vibration pattern, measured by the vibration frequency and vibration length. Low heart beat prefers the high frequency and long vibration; normal heart beat prefers the high frequency and short vibration; high heart beat prefers the low frequency and long vibration; while the stronger vibration is expect for all heart beat level people.

The Goals

During the previous prototypes, we had already done testing the main technological features, vibrations and heart beat detection. In this round of prototype, we moved on the non-technological features of the hug pillow. We aim to find out the users' preference on the appearance of the pillow. The mainly non-technological features include color, shape, size, as well as the texture.

Color is the characteristic of human visual perception described through color categories, with names such as red. Shape is the form of an object or its external boundary, outline, or external surface. Size is the magnitude or dimensions of a thing. Size can be measured as length, width, height, diameter, perimeter, area, volume, or mass. Texture is the fillers inside the pillow.

We believed that these four features of the pillow is important to be considered. This is because, they effectively impact the feeling and emotions of users in some aspects. Also, the satisfied pillow appearance might improve user experience. Hence we considered them.

Categories with Relative Researches

Color Selection

Color occupies a crucial position in brand identity because it draws consumers to product, inspirates emotions. Normally, colors are able to impact our emotions, feelings, and behaviors psychologically. Such as people feel a bit sad when they see the blue, whereas warm colors often evoke feelings of happiness, optimism and energy.

Hence, we would like to pick up some warm colors for the appearance of pillow, then run a user testing to find the most appropriate color for the pillow.

Red - the warmest and most dynamic of the colors; trigger opposite emotions; associated with passion, love, anger and danger; may increase heart beat

Orange - enhances a feeling of vitality and happiness; draw attention; aggressive but balance; represents energy

Yellow - perhaps the most energetic of the warm colors; associated with laughter, hope and sunshine; make the viewer feel optimistic and cheerful; but reflect more light and can irritate a person’s eyes

Purple - associated with creativity, royalty and wealth; often used to soothe or calm a viewer; a lighter purple to show romance and mystery

Blue - evokes feelings of calmness, spirituality, security and trust; dark blues are great for corporate because it helps give a professional feel; light blues give a more relaxing, friendly feel

Shape Selection

“J” shaped pillow

The most “J” shaped pillows are recognised the pregnancy pillow in the market, but they are not just good for pregnant females. It also acts on the normal people. For example, the “J” shaped pillow will help the users’ blood circulation, provide extra support in the meantime.

“U” shaped pillow

The most “U” shaped pillow are recognised both the pregnancy pillow and the travel pillow. The “U”-shape is used to crad the head and neck of the user whatever the users are sitting or lying.

“O” shaped pillow

The "O" shaped pillow could support both a adult and a child, while the most pillows are concreting on support one specific area of human body and shape-limited. However, it is not effected so much. But the size of the "O" shaped pillow should be well considered.

Common pillow

Texture Selection

Based on the comfort, resilience, cost and to a lesser extent for ethical and health reasons, the most common synthetic fillers of the pillow are feathers, or down, wool, cotton (particularly in India), buckwheat (in Asia).

Wool

The wool pillow will help people sleep well because of its lots of advantages. For example, it reduces sleeping heart rate and sleep disturbances; wicks away moisture and helps the body reach ideal sleep temperature; keeps you warm in winter and cool in the summer; does not support the growth of dust-mites, etc.

Cotton

Freshly laundered and lightly starched cotton has a very crisp feel to it. It is absorbent and gentle on your skin. Cotton pillowcases will bunch up, however, and can make non-permanent crease marks on your skin. Cotton is cool to sleep on and absorbent. Cotton is generally affordable and can be found anywhere.

Buckwheat

Buckwheat pillows have some benefits, rather than the other traditional pillow fill like foam or feathers. Most significantly, buckwheat pillows do not collapse under the weight of your head, which conforms perfectly to the unique shape of your head and neck providing support that most pillows lack. This is also good for the weight of head distributed evenly. On the other hand, the buckwheat pillows are also an economic choice – they tend to have a much longer lifespan than most pillow types.

Size Selection

According to the prototype, this is not the real product need to have all things consideration. We decided to consider the size of the hug pillow at the beginning. However, it is only the prototype, so we are not focus on the comfortless through size.

Testing Process

Testing Agenda

Based on our design choice as hug pillow and corresponding research that we did, we believe the physical appearance of our product is important as different appearances would have different effects on victims' feelings and emotion state. Three most significant design aspects when considering physical appearance would be color, shape and texture. We would like to test these three perspectives respectively.

Colors are visually significant. As mentioned above, color choice have been narrowed down to warm colors because warm colors often evoke feelings of happiness, optimism and energy. We thought that considerably choosing the most appropriate color would maximize our design purpose as producing comfort. Thus we managed to narrow down to five warm colors including red, orange, yellow, purple and blue.

Then there comes the shape preference. Different shapes would accommodate our users in different way. But there might exits an underlying overlapped preference of victims. Therefore we would like to find out their individual preference according to "J" shaped, "O" shaped, "U" shaped and common pillow shape as a square.

Last, texture preference is conducted as well. We thought that there could be a specific texture that victims prefer the most, which could provide comfort in the most extent. Textures that we choose are wool, cotton and buckwheat.

Process

There are a total of 9 female victims participant in this test. Participants have been through different severity levels of sexual harassment. As if only choosing victims who have been through similar situations, there might be biased and we want to take the entire target group into consideration in order to ensure our test's comprehensiveness. Severity levels could be as follow:

Level 1: Light degree of severity level

Level 2: Medium degree of severity level

Level 3: Severe degree of severity level

Above three perspectives as color, texture and shape would be tested in two tests:

Test 1: Preference of the permutation and combination of each color and texture

Test 2: Preference of different shapes

For test 1, we give them a total of 15 pieces of cloth, including the three textures in five colors respectively. Color-texture dyads are numbered according to the following graph:

No.	Wool	Cotton	Buckwheat
Red	1	2	3
Orange	4	5	6
Yellow	7	8	9
Purple	10	11	12
Blue	13	14	15

These materials are presented according to colors, participants are expected to choose their color preferences first. Then touching the three textures based on their color choice in order to find out their most preferred color-texture dyads. After they make their choice, we will further ask the reasons for it.

For test 2, we will buy pillows of corresponding shapes from markets and give them to participants to feel. They might be able to comment on the comfort a particular shape of pillow could bring to them. And they will choose their most preferred one and provide reasons for their choice.

Testing Results

"Preferred Dyads" refers to the color-texture dyads mentioned above. And "Severity Level" refers to the severity level of sexual harassment that they have been through.

Participant 1	Statistics
Severity Level	1
Preferred Dyads	4
Reasons	I feel warm by seeing color orange and wools tend to be warmer than others.
Preferred Shape	“J” shaped
Reasons	I have low back pain, and I thought this could support my back which is good.

Participant 2	Statistics
Severity Level	1
Preferred Dyads	8
Reasons	I feel so energetic by seeing color yellow and somehow see a ray of hope. My skin is sensitive and I could only adapt to natural materials like cotton.
Preferred Shape	Normal shaped
Reasons	Despite its functions, I could also simply use it for sleeping.

Participant 3	Statistics
Severity Level	1
Preferred Dyads	14
Reasons	I feel serene by seeing color blue and I thought it could help me to fall asleep at night. I have skin allergies and cotton is safe for me.
Preferred Shape	"O" shaped
Reasons	It is perfect designed for leaning against it.

Participant 4	Statistics
Severity Level	2
Preferred Dyads	11
Reasons	Purple calms and soothes me. And I wear cotton made clothes the most.
Preferred Shape	"U" shaped
Reasons	It could support my neck while laying on the bed.

Participant 5	Statistics
Severity Level	2
Preferred Dyads	14
Reasons	I feel safe with a blue pillow. Cotton is a durable fabric and easy to wash.
Preferred Shape	“J” shaped
Reasons	It could literally accommodate my entire body.

Participant 6	Statistics
Severity Level	2
Preferred Dyads	14
Reasons	Blue reminds me of the ocean and it is so accepting. Cotton is soft and comfortable.
Preferred Shape	"O" shaped
Reasons	A round shape is visually good in my opinion.

Participant 7	Statistics
Severity Level	3
Preferred Dyads	10
Reasons	Purple makes me associate to lavender and I feel so peaceful. Wools are soft.
Preferred Shape	“J” shaped
Reasons	I feel like I am hugging someone by holding it.

Participant 8	Statistics
Severity Level	3
Preferred Dyads	5
Reasons	I just like orange and I thought cotton is durable.
Preferred Shape	Normal pillow shape
Reasons	I am using a squared normal pillow all the time and I am used to it.

Participant 9	Statistics
Severity Level	3
Preferred Dyads	14
Reasons	Blue makes me calm down. I sweat a lot and cotton could keep me dry.
Preferred Shape	“J” shaped
Reasons	I feel like I was so safe as I am fully wrapped with it.

Evaluation and Analysis

Color-texture dyads

Start with the color, from the results collected we could see that there are no participants choose color red, 1 participants choose yellow, 2 participants choose purple, 2 participants choose orange and 4 participants choose blue. Clearly, victims prefer using blue the most compared to others. We could see from the majority of their reasons for choosing blue are that they think blue could make them calm down and soothes them. This is true as based on our research, blue calls to mind feelings of calmness or serenity. It is often described as peaceful, tranquil, secure and orderly. Consider the context where our participants have all been through different extents of sexual harassment, we think that they might feel panic, perplexed and could rarely sleep. Thus we need to design our pillow in a way so that it could help victims to feel safe and calm. One participates mention that blue reminds her of ocean. This is a good symptom as ocean gives a feeling of accommodation and this would make victims feel that they are not alone which could better provide comfort.

Then for texture, from the results we could see that there are 7 out of 9 participants prefer using cotton, 2 participants choose wools whereas no people choose buckwheat. Majority of people choose cotton because they think cotton is durable, sweat absorbing, easy to wash and would not cause allergy. Based on these responses, we could summarize that cotton have the following advantages：

Moisture control: cotton fabric is breathable and transmits moisture away from body and is absorbent and removes liquid from the skin.
Hypoallergenic: cotton fabric rarely causes allergic reactions and wearing cotton is often recommended for people with skin allergies.
Comfort: cotton fabric is soft and easily stretches, making it a comfortable fabric to wear.
Durability: cotton has a high tensile strength, making it strong, durable and less likely to rip or tear.

Shape Preference

From the results collect from test 2, we could see that there are a total of 4 people choose "J" shape, 2 people choose normal shape, 2 people choose "O" shape and 1 people prefer "U" shape. From the reasons they give, basically, they think "J" shape pillow would better support their body and get fully wrapped. Based on the research we make, "J" shaped pillow is designed according to the nature curve of body shape and it follows the natural contour of our body. It could support people's back to help prevent sciatica and lower back pain. By holding the pillow, users would have the feeling as if they are being hugged. This is useful for providing comfort as victims would be feeling helpless and lonely and in this way, they will feel warm and safe.

Conclusion

As discussed above, we conclude that designing a cotton made blue pillow in shape "J" would be the most appropriate way according to our context and could maximize the purpose of providing comfort to the largest extent.

Consideration

We use the Arduino with "Mini vibration motor 2.7mm" to achieve our vibration function, since the vibration motor is soldered with the Arduino plus a wire board, it might be too big to be placed into the pillow, even if we had placed in, the big device might reduces the comfort while using it. Also, most importantly, which part of should we place the vibration motor at, and after careful consideration of areas that the pillow could reach, we thought that neck might be a good place as it is the most sensitive part of the body and how it feels will impact on the whole body.

Future Improvement and Limitation

Test is too subjective and could be influenced by many external factors such as personality and environment.
Sample size for each severity group could be enlarged in order to get a more representative and comprehensive result.
Colour and texture are tested together. There might exist potential effects between each other which could possibly influence participants choices.