Huzzah! was a project that had its origins in a Design for Smart Products class. It was born out of a passion to empower and encourage children to be more physically active and connect with each other. I worked with 3 other team members to make this product a reality and had a tremendous amount of fun in the process.
After interviewing some parents and physicians on how their children currently engage in physical activity, we set out to create a physical device that would allow children to see and track their physical activity. In order to engage children, we used a Superhero theme and created a device like Iron Man's Arc Reactor that would enable this. The device lights up as children run around. On the back end, we used Arduino boards, accelerometers, and LED lights to create the functionality. Working with and learning about software and hardware components made this a challenging project, but especially satisfying when we were able to see the joy on the children's faces as they ran around with the device.
The process and prototypes are outlined below.
After interviewing some parents and physicians on how their children currently engage in physical activity, we set out to create a physical device that would allow children to see and track their physical activity. In order to engage children, we used a Superhero theme and created a device like Iron Man's Arc Reactor that would enable this. The device lights up as children run around. On the back end, we used Arduino boards, accelerometers, and LED lights to create the functionality. Working with and learning about software and hardware components made this a challenging project, but especially satisfying when we were able to see the joy on the children's faces as they ran around with the device.
The process and prototypes are outlined below.