Members: Mudit, Adam and Neera

We intend to continue working on Brushee as per the mid-term project proposal. Additionally, based on the feedback after the mid-term project proposal presentations, here are a few aspects we will strive to build upon  –

1)     We plan to stick to our original scope of encouraging pre-linguistic children to brush their teeth. We will not be focusing on the technique they use for brushing their teeth.

2)     In addition, we will focus on fleshing out the interaction to sustain routine. As we heard in feedback and also had an opportunity to observe (although very limited) that the age group of kids we are focusing on, get bored of the same routine very quickly. In order to address that and keep them engaged, we will be working on the same character doing different things everyday and even characters changing over time e.g Elmo appearing on the screen from different directions, Elmo appearing with Abby, Bob train appearing instead of Elmo/Abby etc.

3)      Furthermore, we strive to keep the interaction really simple, so that we do not overwhelm the child and distract him away from the main task of brushing. Some initial interaction design details are illustrated in the sketch below –

• Elmo emerges from one corner of the mirror as soon as the child picks up the brush
• Elmo  greets the child with a welcome message like, “Hey, good morning. Let’s put some toothpaste on the brush  and start brushing!”
• Following the child’s cue, Elmo takes out a brush and starts brushing, with a pleasant background score
• Elmo takes the child through a 3 minute routine which involves brushing teeth and gums, spitting, and finally, rinsing the mouth. Anytime during the 3 minutes, if the child stops brushing, Elmo becomes sad and prompts the child to continue brushing.
• After the 3 minutes are over, Elmo congratulates the child and invites the child to pose for a picture with him. Next, the laptop/tablet’s front camera comes on and captures the face of the child and creates a snapshot of Elmo and the child side by side.
• This snapshot is the child’s reward for brushing and is stored in memory. The child can accrue a streak of snapshots and subsequently get to unlock new characters.

4)     On the hardware front, we will be using an accelerometer instead of the tilt sensor as the data stream we were getting as output from the tilt sensor (comprised of 1s and 0s) is quite hard to map to the physical movement and process further downstream.

Materials Required to be Reserved: None