Project Concept
For our final project, we chose to create a provocative object to address the ethical issues in contraceptive justice. The invention of the birth control pill was a significant milestone in the women’s rights movement. Since then, other long-acting, reversible contraceptives have been developed for women, and women now have a total of 11 methods. In contrast, men only have 2 options, thus the public ceding major responsibility for contraception to women. Moreover, Women currently bear most of the financial and health-related burdens of contraception, dedicating time and energy to contraception care, feeling stress and anxiety about taking the pills, the possibility of unintended pregnancy.
Women bear the majority of contraception responsibility and the burdens it entails while men have limited reproductive autonomy. We decided to design a pill bag resembling the birth control pills calls the attention to reconceptualize the responsibility for contraception as shared between men and women.
Observational Documentation for User Tests
A Video of Brian Testing out our experiences.
Feedback and observations
Design Process Documentation
Idea generations and sketches, pls check here
Form
The Key factory for our project is the form factor, it needs to look like a legit bag, fashion statement, a bag you can bring it out for a girls night out. So we did a lot of research regarding the form of the bag, here are some of the inspiration pics.
The initial idea was to design a pouch instead of a bag, however after the first body storming which you can find herehttps://oss.adm.ntu.edu.sg/sitikhad005/final-project-project-development-body-storming/. we realized that it didn’t work as what we expected, and there are few things need to be changed.
After body storming, we decided to do a bag instead of a pouch and focus to the transparency of bag on birth control (the function of the bag of reminding the user to take the birth control pill) and one should not be awkward about this issue.
Adding a second layer of interaction which requires the public to scan the QR CODE to lead them to a page about the information, questionnaire, and donation related to birth control. –raising awareness and ability to track down how many people have we reached out to with our object.)
QR Code Survey
Here is the link to the Survey
For the Final product, we decided to add the pill element into the bag. We melt the plastic to create the pills blister, and we put the baby figurine to resemble the pill. 
Coding
How Does The Pill Bag Works?
- Rings at 9 am
- The alarm (RTC module) will be activated and LED light surrounding the pill Compartment, to remind the user to take the pill before work.
- The alarm will stop once the pill pack is removed and placed back into the compartment. (Using photocell)
In total, we have four different components to work with.
Real Time Clock(RCT)
Liquid Crystal Display(LCD)
Photocell
LED
Make the Alarm Work
One of the biggest challenges that we face is to get the Alarm work, in order to get the alarm works, we need to solve the RCT, LCD, and the switch then the alarm will work.
We manage to the code and everything goes well (see the attached vid0eo).
However, the RCT decided not to work anymore, we consulted Lei and Serena, the reason why our RCT is not working because we did not pre-set the RCT, that’s why it is not working….
LED
Make all the compartments Works
Here come to the headache part is to make all four components work together. It’s either the LED works and the alarm is not working, if not the other way round.
In the end, we managed to get everything to work, we just need to get another RCT and remember to pre-set the RCT, and replace the switch to Photocell, then we are ready to go. Here are the final codes.
D-DAY
Three hours before the presentation, everything decides not to work…
WE WERE DEVASTATED…….
Since we only have three hours left, we decided to focus on how are we gonna present our object. One of the biggest problems that we face is that we are the designer of this object, so we know how it works, often we end up design “for ourselves”, in the sense that if something works for us we assume it works for everyone. However, from the previous rounds of bod storming, the testers were confused about our object, they do not know how to interact/handle with the object. I came to realize how different people often had different reactions and actions to the same given object.
I realized how we can’t simply expect people to interact and do things in a certain way, instead, we had to understand the behaviors of people and readjust our designs to them. For our final presentation, we decided to use sound as an audio signal to lead the testers to find out the object.
Sound Design
For the sound aspect of our project, we decide to incorporate the alarm sound, a recorded voice ” take the pill” and the baby crying noise.
Alarm sound – represent the noise in the birth control pill user’s head. When this humming sound in your head is caused by persistently elevated stress, of taking the pill.
A recorded voice ” take the pill” – the audio signal for the tester to take out the pill from the pill bag.
Baby crying noise – the audio signal for the tester to find the pill bag.
Set-Up
We decided to create a living room setting by using the school locker as a wardrobe and tape the boundary to set up a living room setting.
REFLECTIONS
Overall, I am really satisfied with our final product, its a legit bag and I will definitely bring it out to town. From this project, I really learn a lot, besides the technical aspects of coding, I really learn the idea of interaction design. In order to design a successful interactive object, the object needs to design for the targeted audience not “for ourselves”, in the sense that if something works for us we assume it works for everyone VS a design for the targeted audience. As the designer, we need need to careful social engineering from sound, set-up, location, timing, atmosphere to guide the audience to think and behave the way we want them to. Moreover, I also learn the importance of asking for help from your friends and ask your friends to test your product and give feedback to improve your product.
Here is a video of Carol testing our experience before the presentation.
Thanks, Carol 🙂
