WAMI: An application that will retrieve lost items around a household

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1 1 WAMI: An application that will retrieve lost items around a household Valeriy Motornyy spreyluke@yahoo.com Paul Adesoye p.adesoye@hotmail.com Gregory Ellard geg124@hotmail.com Kill Avenue Dun Laoghaire Co. Dublin Ireland Abstract Where Are My Items (WAMI) is an application that will help its users on a daily basis, to retrieve their misplaced or lost items around the household. It will be available on smart phones and tablets and will work as tracker device that will locate missing objects. It will require the purchase of a set of microchips that will be put on to various items of the user s choice. These microchips will be activated and added to the database of the application. WAMI will pick up a signal from these chips directing the user towards the desired object. The aim of this application was based on research that was conducted around absentmindedness. This application will prove to be helpful for the elderly, parents or guardians, young adults, and college students in house sharing situations. Proving an incredible ability to accurately indicate the location of the desired item, WAMI will increase productivity, decrease workloads, stress levels and time consumption taken by the processes of searching for missing items. Copyright is held by the author/owner(s). CHI 2012, May 5 10, 2012, Austin, TX, USA. ACM xxx-x-xxxx-xxxx-x/xx/xx. Keywords WAMI, tracker, application, household, absentmindedness, augmented reality.

2 2 No joke but few days ago I spent almost 10 minutes walking around the house trying remember where I left my glasses case only to find out that it was in my pocket all along, because of that I missed my bus to college. If only I could just check the whereabouts of my case with my phone it would be brilliant and would only take a sec. Focus group participant. ACM Classification Keywords H5.m Information interfaces and presentation (e.g., HCI): Miscellaneous Introduction Many discussions surrounding memory loss and daily forgetfulness have raised issues about what is normal and abnormal forgetfulness. Methods like the Multifactorial Memory Questionnaire (MMQ) have being developed to explore if forgetfulness is excessive and memory strategy use [1]. Although the prevalence of subjective forgetfulness increases with age, it is evident among almost all age groups. [2] Within the young adult age group (18-29) there was a prevalence of 29% and 34% prevalence in middle aged adults (40-64). The topics of memory loss and forgetfulness can produce anxiety especially within older adults due to its association with dementia. After exploring these states of anxiety, there was a discovery that subjective forgetfulness was related to a lower quality of life. While perceived forgetfulness and decreased life satisfaction was higher in year olds. The fact that this was a longitudinal study based over nine years highlights the relevance of forgetfulness in one s daily life [3]. The importance of tackling the stigma to do with memory loss and forgetfulness cannot be underestimated and the introduction of intervention methods are crucial to insure a higher quality of life. The idea behind this project is to attempt to reduce the stress levels and anxiety associated with forgetfulness and absent-mindedness on daily basis with the use of modern technology. Taking into account existing applications such as various reminders, alerts, notifications or GPSs we tried to take our application to the next level. Contextual Inquiry The very first step was to determine the population that this application will be aimed at and how useful it will prove to be. An online survey and interviews were conducted exploring the frequency of forgetfulness and absent-mindedness as well as, the affect it may have on participant s lives. The majority of the participants admitted experiencing absent-mindedness on a weekly basis. Participants who claimed to suffer with these issues; all highlighted their experience of various levels of stress and anxiety. The participants were asked to rank the most important items that would often lose. The top five items as ranked by participants were: keys, mobile phones, wallets, remote-controls and glasses. Not being able to find these key items when they were needed led to lateness, missing appointments or experience of anxiety. The participants shared some of their methods of how they deal with such problems of misplacing their important items. One of the suggestions was to keep a special location where those items belonged. A popular choice was to retrace your steps and try to remember where they might have left the items. Some suggested thinking of locations that would seem logical, for them to have left the items. It seems like the misplacing of these types of important objects was a common reoccurring problem. The participants where very interested with our solution and the majority suggested that it would be an interesting solution if it indeed worked out.

3 3 Figure 1. A paper prototype of different designs, for the navigation systems. Design Process The design processes began with creating personas to take a closer look at potential users for this sort of application. Some qualitative research was also conducted to receive feedback from potential users on what they generally thought of the idea and how it should be approached in their opinion. These are the three personas that were created based on what was decided an average user for our target market would resemble. Joe Smith is an elderly man aged 67 living by himself. He has a pet dog, which he likes to take on long walks but his memory is not the best and he often has difficulty finding his house keys, wallet or the dog lead. Sometimes he would spend up to 20 or 30 minutes looking for his keys before going out. This takes a lot of energy from Joe and upsets him that he can t remember where he left such important items. Mary O Brien is a house wife with 4 children who are all between the age of 3 and 12 years old. She is busy all day looking after the kids and with so much work on her hands she often finds herself being very absentminded. With so many kids, things often get misplaced or lost. This is particularly annoying for Mary, when she can t find a remote-control or her favorite magazine, and all she would like is to sit down, watch the television and relax after a long day. look for his own CD s, Books, and Video Games only to find them under his roommate s bed or even worse, next door. Taking these identities into consideration and the idea for our application, we began getting closer to the desired goal. The proposed solution was to create an application that would be able to retrieve the users lost or misplaces items with the use of a smart phone or a tablet and a tiny microchip. This application would be based on the idea of Augmented Reality (AR). AR is a relatively new concept that works around direct or indirect viewing of reality which is augmented by a computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video or some sort of a graphic. Google sky map or Google goggles would be examples of AR. [4] Our design development was based on the results of our survey which we conducted trying to narrow down our potential target market, and identify the potential use of this application. After considering all the possible functions, we created a simple hierarchy diagram to illustrate what the navigation system would look like. Register Sign in Main Page Figure 2. The two different designs of the navigation system. Jim Burn is a second year student studying physics. He lives on campus and spends a lot of time out of his room studying or going to lectures. He hates when his roommates borrow his things and don t put them back where they belong. He finds it frustrating that he has to Track Down Add New Shop Help

4 4 Figure 3. A possible design of the main page in WAMI. Figure 4. Illustrating the size of the microchips. Releasing this in a form of a sticker would make them convenient and unnoticeable. The tricky part was to create a suitable name. In our opinion the name should be unique and not necessarily directly related to the function of the application such as the big brands like Google, Amazon or Apple. A good name should create association only with the specific product that it entitles. The goal was to create a new word that would be associated only with this application - WAMI - an abbreviation of where are my items? which was a question that was posed during brain storming. The next step was to create a paper prototype. After brainstorming, it was decided that it s better to create two alternative designs of the navigation systems. This meant that we would let the user decide which design is better suited to them. The paper prototypes were used in interviews and focus groups in order for the participants to test out the navigation systems and to discuss the layout and design. Our Solution: WAMI WAMI is an application for smart phones and tablets. The application was designed for its ability to retrieve misplaced or lost items around the household. The tracker device works using tiny microchips that will come in a form of a sticker. This sticker is to be attached to an item of choice e.g. keys, glasses, remote-control, book etc. The chip will send out an RFID signal (radio frequency identification) which is used in animal tags and credit cards. This signal can be picked up by a Bluetooth device which most up to date devices have. This signal is directional and according to recent research can be picked up within the range of meters [5]. This is not a great distance but should work around most households. The user would select the item that he/she wants to retrieve and scan the room using the camera view on their phone or tablet. The signal would be read by the device and a direction of the item will be indicated. It would look something like this. The application contains several other functions. The button with the magnifying glass is the track down menu. The first page of this menu contains the list of items which are in the data base. This way the user has the option to choose which item they want to tack down. The next button (sheet of paper with the plus sign at the bottom) is the Add New menu. In this menu the user gets to activate their microchips and add the items to the retrieve list. The shopping cart is the online shop where the user will be able to order and purchase the microchips. The question mark is the Help menu where the user has a chance to read the manual or contact support.

5 5 Figure 5. The screenshot of how the Item List page would appear. Figure 6. The screenshot of how the Add to list page would appear. The last button (the picture of a person) is the Profile page where the user can add their personal information such as credit card details and save it to make the online shopping easier. User Testing Several interviews were conducted with the paper prototypes. Each participant was briefed about the project and the idea behind it. Two different navigation systems were presented to each participant and they were asked to complete a set of tasks using each design. The participant s feedback helped to illuminate small errors and add missing features. Each participant stated their preferred design. The most preferred design was chosen for further development. A focus group was organized and the participants were briefed about the project and presented with the paper prototype. The participants were asked to discuss the design and layout of the application. Their feedback helped to decide the appearance of the application. Based on that feedback, screenshots were designed to illustrate the applications appearance. Overall the feedback was very useful. The participants managed to point out some important flaws of the early prototypes and the missing features and page were added as requested, to the updated versions of the application. Generally all participants liked the idea and thought it would be a very partible application. The only major issue that was pointed out was the production and distribution of the microchips. Production and Distribution The production and distribution were highlighted as the biggest issues with actually creating this application and putting it to work. As with most applications, WAMI could be easily programed and distributed for free or even a small fee. The main problem is creating the microchips to go with it. Since no chips actually exist for such a specific task and since it would be way too expensive to privately attempt to produce, the only possible solution would be to establish a partnership with already existing manufacturer. However, even if that was possible, the distribution of the microchips would still cause a lot of inconvenience. The application could be downloaded within few second, but how long would the user have to wait to receive their microchips before being able to use the tracker device? These are all the issues that stand in the way of bringing this idea to existence. Conclusion Through our user centered research we found how much stress and anxiety is actually related to the presented problem of losing and misplacing important items. We seemed to have successfully initiated an idea with an easy creative solution that would combat this problem, improve productivity, reduce time consumption and possibly improve general wellbeing by illuminating possible source of stress and anxiety. The participants that took part in this study all showed a high level of interest in this application and some expressed their hopes for WAMI or something of similar nature being designed and released in the near future. WAMI proved that it could be potentially available for a massive rage of potential users. The application itself and the navigation system were designed in a really simple and obvious way, in an attempt to to make it available to different ages and social backgrounds.

6 6 The main issue remains the production and distribution of the microchips as was already discussed. Hopefully with further research and feedback some sort of solution will arise since WAMI proved itself to be a very promising tool that could potentially become a part of every household. Acknowledgements We would like to say thanks to all family and friends and other people who participated in our research. Also special thanks to the supervisors of this project Robert Griffin, Dr. John Greaney, Stefan Paz Berrios and Dr. Nicola Porter. [4] Wikipedia. (2012). Augmented reality. Retrieved on January 7, 2012, from [5] Electronic Specifier. (2011). Passive RFID Reader with long read range up to 15 meters. Retrieved on December 9, 2011, from Portable/Passive-RFID-Reader-with-long-read-rangeup-to-15-meters.asp References [1] Van der Werf, P., & Vos, S. H., (2011). Memory worries and self-reported daily forgetfulness: A psychometric evaluation of the Dutch translation of the Multifactorial Memory Questionnaire. The Clinical Neuropsychologist, Vol 25(2), pp [2]Commissaris, C. J. A. M., Ponds, R. W. H. M., Jolles, J., (1998). Subjective forgetfulness in a normal Dutch population: Possibilities for health education and other interventions. Patient Education and Counseling, Vol 34(1), Special issue: Health and patient education for the elderly. pp [3] Mol, M. E. M., van Boxtel, M. P. J., Willems, D., Verhey, F. R. J., Jolles, J., (2009). Subjective forgetfulness is associated with lower quality of life in middle-aged and young-old individuals: A 9-year follow-up in older participants from the Maastricht Aging Study. Aging & Mental Health, Vol 13(5), pp