Rohan Sobha

Weekly log

Week 1

I created a profile page and wrote about the involved stakeholders and extended the environments page. Whilst writing the activities, I learned of the many types of therapy offered to patients with dementia and the ReJAM project.

Week 2

I wrote a motivation on our pick for the Miro robot and explored how music and cognition theory can be applied to our own project. In this week, I was exposed to many different kinds of robots and how each robot can use its features to support a similar target group. I found the connection between music and cognition very interesting as I never knew that there was such an innate connection between the two and how it can help with recall.

Week 3

I wrote about the claims that resulted from our personas and their respective storyboards. I was not able to take every storyboard and proposed function into the claims as it would turn out that some of these claims are difficult to justify by prior works or empirically by means of an experiment.

Week 4

I created a draft for the evaluation and I was a presenter during the mid-progress presentations. This draft contained the main research question followed with subquestions and a couple of key words (e.g. within-subject design) as a vague aim to work towards. In addition, together with Laura, I created the slides for the mid-presentation of which I was a presenter.

Week 5

I elaborated on the evaluation design and collaborated with Doreen on the experimental test setup. After receiving feedback on the complexity of the proposed experimental design, we decided to explicitly not evaluate the Snoezelen feature as it would make it more complicated and quite unfeasible to manage within the scope of the project. Simultaneously, Doreen and I were augmenting the experimental test setup by elaborating on how we were going to answer our research questions and justify the respective claims.

Week 6

Together with Tim, I finalized the survey for the experimental setup and elaborated on the provided claims. The claims needed to be justified with literature and the survey that the participants of the experiment need to fill in was finalized. In addition, I enjoyed Frank Broz' lecture on inclusive design as I was not aware that inclusive design not only benefits those who explicitly need it, but also those who make use of it and implicitly reap the benefits. Moreover, as a group, we held the pilot experiment with a hard-of-hearing person to be able to observe how well the MiRo would perform when being used by a person with impaired senses.

Week 7

This week we held the actual experiments and I added Marcus as a persona to the claims. 

Week 8

The final presentations were held and every group displayed their final prototype and their evaluation. All in all, given the limitations of the MiRo, we, as group 2, can be proud for setting up such an experiment. In addition, I have written a couple of sentences about how patients with early-to-mid stage dementia are experiencing a decreased sense of freedom of choice. 

Week 9 (Final Week)

Report should have been handed in.

Project reflection

During the span of eight weeks, I personally feel that I learned much. The whole design cycle from picturing one's target audience to modelling interactions, but also how to prototype quickly and evaluate one's prototype in a meaningful way. I wished that this kind of course was given in the Bachelor's, because the evaluation part of the course is something that is not covered in the Bachelor, but still expected of students who are writing their thesis. I really enjoyed the course given the provided lectures and working collaboratively on a robot with one common goal in mind. 

One suggestion I would propose for next year's edition is to schedule an extra lab session that is dedicated to working with the chosen robot rather than letting each group figure out a schedule that works for everyone. I also think that Ruud (the manager of the Insyght Lab) would appreciate it if he knows in advance during what hours and on which days groups are working on this project so that he does not need to keep track of the planning of five groups. When contact moments (i.e. lectures, labs, tutorials) are imposed on students, they are more likely to take it into account when picking the course.

Another suggestion would be to have a TA present on days where groups work with the robot. The TA could then assist groups with programming related questions when the robot is present rather than during a separate classroom lab session.