Fingerspelet is a mathematics game aimed towards young children. Whilst researching for the project we found that although there are a great number of mathmatics games available, almost all of them are controlled through traditional input methods such a mouse and keyboard or touchscreens which lack embodiment.

The limited embodiment becomes a problem as research shows that embodiment can be used as an effective tool for encouraging learning in children and that finger counting help children better understand mathematics and arithmetics.

The game is played by holding up as many fingers as you believe to be the correct answer towards the Kinect camera and pressing the footswitch to confirm. The game encourages collaboration as the answer to certain questions is greater than ten, for these questions the player has to find a partner to help answer the question correctly.

Rather than asking the player to solve abstract equations, Fingerspelet asks questions based on real life objects and situations such as "How many lemons are in the tree?" or "How many more blue cars are there than red ones?" in order to help children better understand the problems.

The game was built with the help of a Kinect camera, an Arduino and the Processing language. My role during the project was to handle the programming involved for the game itself and the Arduino.

Oh, and "Fingerspelet" in English translates to "Fingerplay".

The problem

The public displays surrounding the information center of Malmö University's Niagara building were poorly designed. They didn't adhere to Malmö University's own design guidelines and to be frank, they looked quite ugly. It was obvious that very little thought had been put into what information to show on the displays and as a result, almost nobody would look at them.

The receptionists at the information center who took care of uploading new material to the displays agreed that the screen space on the multiple displays were poorly used since they all displayed the same information and could only display static images which periodically changed.

The solution

We began figuring out what information could be relevant to put on the displays and found that Malmö University's website as well as the reception itself contains a lot of information that could each get its own display. We created mockups based on Malmö University's design guidelines on how it could look.

Our idea was that the displays would each show different information. The different displays would show:

• The Malmö University calendar
• Listings for smaller events which didn't get a spot in the calendar
• Operational information about the building (broken elevators etc.)
• Information from the reception itself

The result

Due to time constraints we decided on only coding only the calendar screen and keeping the other screens as mockup images. The prototype was written in Java and fetched live data from the calendar RSS-feed. A Raspberry Pi was connected to the display which could run the program we wrote.

In the end the prototype was operational and looped through the entries from the calendar while the other screens displayed the mockups. The concept made better use of the available screen space and the information was more relevant than it had previously been.

During the project I developed my skills in making mockups as well as programming in Java.

The problem

Designing for visibility means that when you interact with an object or application, everyone in the room should be able to see what it is that you're doing. In the case of using applications on your smartphone this becomes difficult as the screen is only facing you, leaving out others.

We were given the task to add visibility to a popular application. We chose Swish, the mobile payment app as we believed visibility could bring some real benefits to the application.

The solution

We added a simple QR-code to the app so that the person who is lending out money can let the borrowers scan to get the persons phone number. A prototype was built using the POP (Prototyping on Paper) application to demonstrate the concept.

The result

Asking for Swish payments can sometimes be an awkward process where you have to repeat to several people that they need to pay, and if you're in a noisy setting you may even have to repeat your number several times. With this concept the need for payment is made far more apparent as everyone in the party is made aware by simply seeing the QR-code, the problem of having to repeat yourself is gone and the risk of left out payments gets lowered.

The Swish with Visibility project was an exercise in rapid concept development.

Tongue Twister is a game which challenge the player in two different ways. The first challenge is to simply pronounce the tongue twister correctly and the second challenge is to get Google's speech-to-text engine to recognize you correctly, because although you might have retold the tongue twister perfectly, Google might still have misheard you.

The main purpose of this project was to explore data collection through Google Analytics, the game therefore tracks how far users would get before giving up, which levels they would fail the most at as well as the actual text string Google would produce from the speech input.

Tongue Twister was built with using the Kattegat framework which utlilizes HTML, CSS and Javascript. My role during this project was to program the mechanics of the game and the Google Analytics data delivery.

Try it out!

Rememberall is a smart home concept based around the idea of not wanting to forget necessary items like your wallet or phone when you leave your house.

The idea is to modify an action necessary for leaving your home (touching the door handle) and have it check whether you have your belonings on you and make you aware in case they are not. This way users get reminded without having to actively interact with the smart home appliance.

The project was an exersice in rapid concept development.

IOIO at Malmö University is an electronics and physical prototyping lab where focus lies in creating intuitive solutions to complex problems.

In my second year of the Interaction Design bachelor's programme I was invited to join IOIO. My main focus has been on tutoring students from other programmes in physical prototyping, most often using Arduino as the material. Projects I've helped with has ranged from artistic installations to building product design prototypes.

We're also working together with the workshop of Malmö University on building a better booking system for the laser cutter where one can go online to see it it's currently busy and book available times.

IOIO has it's own website, check it out here!

The Miniature Gym was a means to do user testing for a project about making the gym environment more interactive. For the project we needed to research what habits people have when they go to the gym and how they act in certain situations.

To research the user group we invited people who regularly went to the gym to come to us. At first they would each get a blank paper which they were asked to draw out the plan layout of the gym they go to most often, they were then asked to place out the laser cut miniature gym equipment in the gym they had drawn. Lastly they got to pick a LEGO figure to represent themselves and walk around the gym showing the routine that they would do on a typical gym session.

Once done, we asked the participants to go through their routine again. But this time we created situations with other LEGO figures, such as having the machine they wanted to use be busy or having a stranger come talk to you, in order to understand how they would respond in these situations.

All in all we learnt a lot about gym behaviour from this exercise, the participants could think aloud whilst doing it and we found out things we might not have from simply observing people in an actual gym.

Sedentary behaviour in the workplace is a big problem since it can lead to a great number of health problems including heart disease, dementia and depression. But nevertheless, we Swedes spend a lot of time sitting down, one fifth of the population reportedly spends 8.5 hours on average sitting down each day with far too few breaks in between.

Vibraseat is a prototype which aims to solve this problem. The seat cushion tracks how long you've been sitting and through gentle vibrations it reminds you to stand up and take a stretch every 30 minutes. Getting caught up in work happens far too easily, but this gentle reminder could potentially prevent health problems down the line.

Vibraseat was built using an regular old seat cushion and an Arduino connected to a pressure sensor and two vibration motors. During this project I worked with connecting the electronics and writing the Arduino code.