the problem we wanted to bring more awareness to is the impact school has on our physical and mental health. although our target audience were those involved in the education system, our creation was inclusive and accessible to everyone.

In order to represent this in an interactive art piece, our design concept was that the user would touch each heart as indicated by the fingerprint shapes on the heart, and they would feel heartbeats going at 2 different BPM’s. The BPM of the red heart is much more calm as it is a resting heart rate and a healthy, red color for a heart. The BPM of the blue heart would beat at the average BPM of a student taking a timed assessment. both hearts sit within a textbook, a representation of education.

we retrieved the data for the BPM’s from Nancy L. Elwess and F. Daniel Vogt from the Department of Biological Sciences where they surveyed the data from student volunteers at the State University of New York.

When developing the prototype for our project, we had to take in account how we wanted the user to interact with it, as well as a practical implementation of our arduino, battery, circuits, etc. For the hearts, we figured we needed it to be somewhat hollowed out. Ultimately, we decided on using plastic easter eggs since we could easily cut holes and was a good balance between being fragile and flexible.

we sliced out pages in the textbook to make space for the heart. the textbook was placed on top of the cardboard box for the wiring to be hidden.

a battery powered arduino uno was the core of it's functionality. The Arduino has jumper wires that connect to both the motors and the pressure sensors with the help of the breadboard. then, we programmed the arduino to activate the motor when touching the respective sensor, which led to several logistical errors at first (you could only touch one heart at a time, both motors wouldn’t activate, and the spinning was messed up in one motor). After extensive debugging and code modifications, the problems were fixed.

Once those issues were resolved, the wires were taped in place and blocks of wood were hot glued to the motor in order to feel the 'pulsing'. holes were drilled into the cardboard box to hide the wiring, and touch sensors were hidden under tape and thin paper mache without affecting it's performance.

Our group learned from this and made several changes. We marked the spot where the user touches the heart more clearly, glued down the pages to prevent flipping, and covered the box in a collage of happy students and test papers to give the box more purpose and bring attention to the topic we were presenting.

after our progress and finalization, our product was shown at the creative computing showcase!