Ova

Ova is a touchable lamp artefact exploring how to provoke healthier break habbits through subtle nudges.

Design decisions

Ova is placed in the context of the user’s work or study place. While idle and not touched, the lamp slowly increases in brightness and glows up from the bottom, until the light reaches the top and the whole shape is glowing. At this stage the light will slowly start to pulsate to pull the awareness of the user to the artefact. This state of being fully lit and pulsating will be kept until the user turns their attention to Ova and starts to touch it with both hands. While being touched the light first stops to pulsate and then slowly fades down again.

Because Ova needs to be touched all the time while charging down the user will focus on the egg itself. This helps the user to have a mindful break without digital noise or other distractions. Even though the time component of Ova reminds of an alarm it is in no way meant as a timer. Especially not as one that forcefully interrupts the users studying and concentration. On the contrary, we hope that the first uses with Ova will create a mental bridge between the lit artefact and taking a mindful break. With every use this connection will be reinforced and subconsciously the user will be triggered to take a break when seeing the glowing artefact. At the same time the returning breaks will instil these regular break patterns into the users mind. Therefore creating a long term habit of taking regular mind freeing breaks even without the artefact being around.

Construction

Ova is not intended as an end-user device. Instead it is seen as a reseach artifact. It is planned to use Ova in future studies as technology probe (Hutchinson et al. 2003). To reduce the time spend building and avoid construction errors the complexity of building is kept low. The whole frame can be 3D-printed and is designed in a way that all components can be assembled into the printed case. To make the assembly even easier a cage inside the egg contains all the electronic components. This frame can then be inserted into the outer shell, which also allows easy changes to the outer shape to explore new visual and tangible forms.

Electronics

As Ova is intendet for long term technology probe studies it is equipped with an Arduino MRK GSM 1400. This device allows the connection to the GSM network and thus the uploading of data to a server. To capture different interactions with the device the board is extended with the MKR IMU Shield which allows three axis acceleration sensing. The assembly and work in progress prototype can be seen below.

In collaboration with: Molly Z. Sigander, Beatrice Andersson and Calle L. Dreyer.