Göbie
IoT wearable and app for improving Social wellness
Role: Product & hardware lead
Responsibilities: Interaction / game design, UX design, hardware + software prototyping & development
Team: Göbie was built with Jane Mitchell, Qinzi Tan and Timothy Ronco
Press: Interview with Gear Live Wareable, Women's Wear Daily, The New School, Tencent Digital, Huanqiu Technology, Brand Times
Exhibitions: Panasonic House @SXSW 2017
Technology: Arduino, blueBean, iOS, Custom LED matrix, Custom haptic feedback motors
Design problem
What is social wellness and how can we leverage wearable technology to improve it?
Göbie was the result of collaboration between a team of Parsons graduate students and Panasonic's innovation team.
Panasonic wanted to reimagine the healthcare wearable through products that emphasize comprehensive wellness - physical, mental, and social wellness.
Market Research
The majority of the wearable market was focused only on physical health and the passive tracking of data.
Without any actionable incentives, most users lost interest in the wearable completely after a short period of time.
There was a gap in the market for a wearable that focused on mental and social wellbeing.
"Only 50% of Fitbit’s nearly 20
million registered users remained active users of their devices”
- Garber, 2015. The Atlantic
Customer research
Face-to-face interaction is critical to users' mental and physical well-being. However, many people, urbanites especially, are not getting enough face-to-face interaction on a daily basis.
Although technology has increased the opportunity for digital connection, the constant connectedness has isolated users from their physical environments and decreased the likelihood of in-person interactions.
"Americans spend a staggering 4.7 hours a day on their smart-phones"
-Lulu Chang, Digital Trends
"We need face-to-face contact and intimate human
connections...to preserve our mental and physical
well-being." - Matthew Lieberman, Cognitive Neuroscientist
Customer insights
Consumer insights were used to define our key components of 'social wellness'
Social wellness is...
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Being present in your surroundings
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Forming connections with others
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Face-to-face interaction that could be both verbal (dialogue) or nonverbal (gestures)
Play could be a facilitator of face-to-face interaction because it provides a fun, non-committal shared goal or purpose.
“Regular play has been linked to both cognitive and social development in both children and adults. The more we can play in our everyday lives, the healthier we are.”
-Nicholas Fortugno, CCO/Co-Founder, Playmatics
Product / solution
A wearable wristband and connected mobile app was designed to improve social wellness through play.
Haptic feedback from the wristband catalyzed moments of spontaneous play, like a high five or simple dance routine, while the app incentivized users to improve their social wellness through gamified rewards and objectives.
User journey
Summary
How Göbie would work on a day-to-day basis:
1. Put on Göbie wristband before going out
2. A haptic vibration / notification indicates when another Göbie is nearby
3. The Göbie app coordinates a pop-up play opportunity (e.g. a high five or game)
4. Opt in or decline the play / interaction.
5. Receive positive feedback through the app
Hardware development
Göbie was created using the LightBlue Bean micro-controller. Modifications included a custom LED matrix and haptic motors.
This particular micro-controller was chosen for speed and it's built in Bluetooth capabilities. However, production designs would have included a rechargeable battery and a custom micro-board to accommodate a smaller wearable size based on user feedback.
Software was programmed using the Arduino IDE.
Panasonic House @SXSW
For SXSW, the goal was to showcase the product's ability to catalyze play.
The product demo consisted of a short, collaborative game where the players synced their dance moves based on the LED light pattern on their Göbie wearable. (I.e. an UP UP DOWN pattern meant the players should dance in unison raising their arms up twice, then down.
The booth also featured a product commercial and display cases for the look and feel prototype.
