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Motion Control

Physical prototype that turns anything into a button.

Situation

When Nintendo released Labo I was fascinated by how motion sensors & cardboard can act as digital input. But I also thought one step further: what if you could make anything interactive just by having a motion sensor attached to your hand?

Task

So for my Physical Computing course at UCL I wanted to create a wearable device that uses the motion sensor to detect interactions with cardboard controls.

Tools & Technologies

Paper iOS App, Arduino, Illustrator, Autodesk Fusion 360, InVision, Sketch, Xcode, Swift, HomeKit, Laser Cutting, 3D Printing

UX Skills

Wireframing, Sketching, User Flows, Physical Prototyping

Action

  1. SKETCHING - When I got the initial idea I immediately started sketching it on my phone using the Paper app.
  2. EXPLORING DESIGN ALTERNATIVES - I explored multiple technical solutions by building different prototypes using Arduino.
  3. 3D MODELING & LASER CUTTING - For the enclosure I used Autodesk Fusion 360 to create a 3D model that was used for 3D printing. A laser cut model of a radio was built to demonstrate the interaction with a low-fidelity prototype.
  4. WIREFRAMING - I used Sketch and InVision to create an early prototype of the app that translates the motion data from the wearable into a digital control. 
  5. IMPLEMENTATION - The final iOS app used CoreBluetooth to communicate with the wearable. The HomeKit framework was used to control lights and the MPMusicPlayer to simulate a radio.
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Initial idea sketched on iPhone using the Paper app
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First prototype consisting of an Arduino 101 and an NFC reader
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Cardboard prototype to test interaction
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Laser-cut radio to demo interaction with a low-fidelity prototype
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Interactive prototypes created in Sketch & InVision

Result

Motion Control is a wearable device that turns anything into a digital control.
Only NFC tags are required to identify a physical control as digital input. The hand movement is captured by the wearable device and translated into digital input by a Bluetooth connected app.

This allows users to easily add interactivity to low fidelity prototypes and is a simple way of adding physical controls to smart home setups.

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Final app to control the physical prototype