Wearable Heating System Preferences Study + Temperature Monitoring System
Purpose:
Create a user preference and product performance study surveying commercial and prototype wearable heating systems.
Five different form factors of heating considered: 2 radiant-based (face, hands), 3 on-body (neck, torso, hand).
Approach:
Team of 3 core team members on this agile project
Study planned first for Scotland, then later in the US
Divide and conquer approach with a kanban list and weekly meetings. One member was project lead as well as performed individual work, other two members did individual work
The Scotland study was structured as an in-between participant study, where each participant was randomly assigned the order of the 5 heating conditions, followed by a focus group of the 5 participants. We had 4 sessions of 5 participant groups, making a total of 20 participants.
Project duration: 4 months
Role & key contributions:
Project Lead for the study planning and execution, performing individual work as well as maintaining Kanban board and team communication
Lead author of protocol development, moderator during study
Assist physical prototyping
Designed and fabricated a temperature monitoring system for the study, which included on-body thermistors to continuously record 6 body locations on participants throughout the entire 3hr session. This system included a soldered board and individual thermistors, Arduino Mega, and Processing GUI via a computer.
Final product overview:
Successfully executed Scotland study with working prototypes and working temperature monitoring systems
Results are still undergoing analysis, and may be published in a research setting at a future date.
Shown below is the measuring equipment and simple GUI screen I developed for the study. This system included an Arduino microcontroller and electronics protoboard that converted readings from the thermistor sensors on the participants' body to simple GUI on the researcher's laptop. All of the electronics were stuffed into a bellybag that the participant wore, leaving the one USB cord to connect to the researcher's laptop. This way, the researcher could continuously monitor the temperature while participants were subjected to the heating condition (ensuring the skin didn't increase beyond a certain threshold) and automatically save the file of readings upon completion.