Hello! I'm ChiaYu.

The MentorShip Program aims to provide a chance for those who are ambitious but feeling lost to find their directions in pursuing a career. The program aims to gather female in tech for encouraging more outstanding women in tech industry to lead and be guided to a greater development.

I participate in the UX group as a mentee, so as to broaden my UX expertise and get to know more UX enthusiast that we can learn things together. Our team chose the podcast product as our research and IA re-architecturing project.

This project aims to study family mealtime with preschool children and investigate how interactive technology & data play might help with family mealtime for preschoolers and parents.

I co-work with the remote team in the States. Adopting the design thinking process along with previous restaurant observation and parents interview, we came up with several design ideas. We sketched the ideas. The team created three prototypes and test them with the children to validate these ideas; also, the U.S. team spread out the questionnaire with illustrative examples and description of prototypes, to gather the parents' and teachers' feedback on the prototypes.

Eventually, we decided to developed the Stamp Plate prototype into a hi-fidelity tech probe for the field study, to investigate how this mealtime technology would help with family mealtime and what "data play" would affect. I worked with another developer to create the hi-fi prototype, using weight sensor, Arduino, and Processing on the Android tablet. We've explored several approaches, e.g., computer vision, electric capacitiy based solutions; we found using weight sensor is the easiest and the most precise way as for now.

When the user take off the food on the plate, the stamp plate creates a stamp that resemble the food. It keeps track of the food that has been eaten. After the meal, these stamps line up by each food and become art materials that users can create drawings with.

The U.S. team conducted the field studies in the households, before we transcribed the videos into text, conducted qualitative coding and data analysis.

This project is still ongoing. But there's some preliminary result that I could share. For instance, in several studies, the children picky about the food would actively eat the food they didn't like before or eat more food, just because they want to collect different kind of stamps.

Project Outcome

This project is still ongoing and we've submitted papers that are currently under review.

You can also refer to our TAICHI'18 paper for the lo-fi testing results and how we built the hi-fi prototype of Stamp Plate.

Online videos make it possible and popular to do exercise and fitness at home. However, for the practitioners, it's not easy to notice the subtle change of motion by merely watching training videos, so they cannot perform the movements well.

In the field study in the on-site Tai chi (太極) classroom, we found that the coach would hold the practitioner's arm to correct the motion, which inspired us to 'design a virtual coach' to enhance the learning of tai chi.

We have designed 'external artificial muscles' on a sleeve to create a pulling sensation that mimic the touch from a virtual touch and can gently guide the forearm’s pronation (internal rotation) and the forearm’s supination (external rotation). We conduct two preliminary experiments to verify the system:

• The first one is directional response task to measure the clarity of pulling direction. The result shows that this system can effectively guide the forearm to rotate in the correct direction with a 99.87% accuracy in average.
• The second one utilizes the tactile cue. The cue consists of a 2-second directional cue and several 0.5-second angle targeting cues. The results show that users can be guided to the targeted angle by utilizing a tactile cue.

Project outcome

Paper published in Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '16). You can download the paper from ACM digital library or watch my presentation at CHI '16.

學齡前（4-7歲）的孩童正在學習認知自己與世界的連結，因而容易在進入陌生環境時感到不安、產生「分離焦慮」。Coy 為一款能讓父母親與孩童共同繪製裝扮並互動的小玩伴，期望透過 Coy 的互動模式，讓孩子將這個小玩伴當作與父母間的「信物」。在孩子感到不安時，Coy 能吸引他的注意力、與他遊戲，藉此舒緩孩子和熟悉的親人、環境分離所產生的不安感。

我們從日常生活物件開始探索「要喚醒什麼物件的靈魂」，從各組員事先選擇感興趣的物件討論，從中選擇了「水」而至自來水園區場域觀察。時值平日下午，這裡絕大多數是家長帶小孩或三代同行來玩水。在場域觀察與訪談幾位家長和小朋友後，我們歸納整組覺得有趣、想繼續探討的現象：

• 小朋友上岸時腳踩到石頭會喊「好溫暖噢！」
• 水池內有個中空的水柱，小孩跟大人都喜歡跑到水柱中間不會被沖到頭的地方躲著。
• 水與岸：陪伴者（家長）跟小朋友的互動；陪伴者認為更衣梳洗麻煩而不下水一起玩。小朋友專心玩水，時不時確認爸媽還在原本位置等待。

我們從觀察結果中發現現象有共通的特性：「冷水」到「溫石頭」的溫度對比，和小朋友在水池中「突然找不到爸媽」到「找到爸媽」的情緒對比，都有「從不愉快瞬間轉化成愉快」的大反差。我們認為「如何製造對比？」「如何將不愉快轉化成愉快？」可能是有趣的問題。經過票選後，我們決定聚焦在「親子分離」的主題。

我們如何能舒緩學齡前小孩離開熟悉環境、父母的分離焦慮？

親子分離經驗：焦慮行為與尋找陪伴物件

聚焦親子分離主題後，我們著手訪談工作坊中其他參與者幼時與父母分離的經驗，並聯絡學齡前兒童的保姆訪談每日父母托兒後的親子分離經驗。從這其中，我們認為有趣、許多人共通的經驗有：

• 了解恆存：起初以為爸媽出門就是消失了、離開了，後來才了解他們只是「暫時不在身邊」。
• 安撫陪伴物：小朋友有專屬小毯毯、玩偶，甚至會想像虛擬朋友。
• 萬物有靈：小時候一個人睡覺時害怕有鬼，房間裡的物件好像活著。
• 承諾：父母在離開前，再三保證會回來。
• 讓孩子分心：給他玩具，逗他笑，讓他暫時忘掉分離的難過情緒。

從父母的承諾和反覆經驗中學習「恆存」概念、具安撫作用的陪伴物、讓孩子暫時跳脫難過情緒，都能幫助減緩分離焦慮，而兒童時期許多人有相信物件有靈魂的共通經驗，我們因而試著運用這些概念，繼續提出互動設計提案。

互動設計提案

Coy：Co-toy，是孩子的玩伴，也是孩子與父母間的信物

我們選擇結合玩伴、信物兩者概念，設計出 Coy 的互動原型。小朋友和爸媽各自持有一顆球，在開始使用時，親子可以一起繪製、裝扮這顆球，以共同創作的儀式賦予這顆球生命。小朋友的球是小玩伴，可以對小朋友的碰觸、搖晃、說話、踢、拋等動作回應，透過燈光、球體動態模擬生命體。

初期，爸媽可以藉由遠端控制讓 Coy 主動開始找孩子遊玩，並向孩子解釋是爸媽操作，讓孩子學習「恆存」的概念。並透過每天早晨一起將 Coy 從巢中（充電站）喚醒、每天晚間放進巢中的儀式，給予孩子專屬互動信物。在孩子感到不安時，可以碰觸 Coy，小玩伴的回應可以吸引孩子的注意力、陪他玩遊戲。Coy 運用了分離經驗中「幫助學習恆存」、「暫時分心」、「給予信物」、「萬物有靈」，幫助剛開始上幼稚園、送到保母家的學齡前孩童，舒緩離開熟悉環境、家人所產生的分離焦慮。

Coy 的實作包含：Sphero 控制球的感測、連線、顏色、動態（搖晃、滾動等）、手縫棉墊與不織布的外層與雷設切割密底板製作的巢。