Wave: A Concept for Remote Social Swimming

Students in my HCI Design class this semester are being asked to work up weekly components, either research or a grounded concept, to gain experience in making and communicating good design choices. I decided to go through the process with them, devoting no more than the 2-3 hours I expect of them (at minimum) with each assignment.

Since I’m also trying to re-establish a long-term pattern of public writing, it seems appropriate to post my weekly work here. Although the School of Informatics & Computing HCI program has freed me from the need to perfect my work before sharing, I still am apprehensive about doing so when work is in a rough state. My caveat, therefore, is that the self-imposed time limit does constrain me from the kind of depth I hope some of my students attempt.

The design challenge for this week was to use prior design research—the class of 120 just submitted research on the topic of comfortable spaces last week—to motivate and inspire a new concept for an interactive digital system. This system should address a human need for controlling personal or collective comfort.

Wave is my concept for controlling physical and social comfort through swimming. Small pools are rigged with sensors that interpret water-based interaction to control local and remote environmental systems. Patterns of activity then connect you to those with similar patterns for follow-up socialization.

Background

One working definition of comfort is relief from pain or trauma. My initial research focused on spaces that provided such relief:

• Panic rooms claim to provide safety from an immediate threat at home by essentially entombing the residents in a protective cave stockpiled with necessities and armed with digital surveillance and communication technology.
• An endless pool is a small-footprint pool for water exercise, aquatic therapy, and relaxation. Unlike larger recreational pools, this space is meant to be intimate, usually meant for a single person to use at one time.
• A meditation chamber is a room dedicated to the practice of gaining awareness. It is furnished with pillows and special chairs, with soothing music, art, and incense to help distance one’s self from the noise and pressure of the outside world.

I also conducted a quick online survey that asked about how and where people find relief. Although the number of responses I could get in a short window were small (N=5), a theme that seemed to emerge is that comfort is an escape from reality. The respondents did this with food, sounds, and natural spaces and by doing activities like watching a movie, listening to music, or literally running away.

“I seek comfort in cool places under blankets, with some sort of media to help me turn my brain off.”

Further research expanding this notion of comfort as relief from pain to include social disconnection. Humans are hardwired to connect. It is a biological imperative for us to form ans sustain enduring relationships. When we are rejected or suffer from prolonged detachment from others, our brain endures what is the chemical equivalent of physical pain.

When the focus of the assignments shifted from comfortable spaces to comfort controls, I opted for a combination of the endless pool and meditation chamber, but also wanting something that facilitated social connection.

Explanation

In this case, Wave is not a failed collaborative tool by Google but a social pool connecting you to others through your motion in the water. Interaction with water can be detected through light, flow, texture, temperature, and sound to trigger digital controls of pool environments.

The pool room has is tricked out with ambient cues that someone else is using their own pool. Lights change colors, the temperature of the room becomes more inviting for swimming, and gentle sounds of music or nature play to entice you to get in the water, too. Prolonged absence from the pool when others are swimming elsewhere in the world can spark uncomfortable conditions (dissonant noise, temperatures that are too warm or cold, and all-but-seizure-inducing flashing lights).

Once in the pool, you are encouraged through similar environmental cues to find your own pace for exercise, relaxation, or even physical therapy. From the community of other people using the pool system, similar patterns of movement and pace are detected and used to form an ad-hoc, anonymous social network. In the future, when these people use the pool, the ambient cues are more inviting to encourage stronger connections and mutually supportive sessions in the Wave pool. These social networks can be further nurtured online by accessing your Wave system’s personal contact list.

Resources:

1. Endless Pool (downloaded at http://www.endlesspools.com/gallery/detail.php?id=399 on 1-25-2011)
2. How a Panic Room Works (downloaded at http://home.howstuffworks.com on 1-25-2011)
3. YMCA of USA (2010) Hardwired to connect: The new scientific case for authoritative community. Ed. Stephen J. Bavolek
4. Zhang, Z., Bao, X., Rennie, C.D., Nistor, I., and Cornett, A. (2008). Water wave frequency detection by optical fiber sensor. Optics Communications, 281(24), pp. 6011-6015.
5. Rudomin, I., Diaz, M., Hernandez, B., and Rivera, D. (2005). Water, temperature and proximity sensing for a mixed reality art installation. Intelligent Technologies for Interactive Entertainment Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 3814, pp. 155-163.
6. Toon, J. (2007). New sensor detects direction of sound under water. Optics+Photonics@Georgia Tech (downloaded at http://www.op.gatech.edu/ on 2-6-2011).