VAMO

In an eight-month-long project sponsored by FutureWei I collaborated with a team of three at Stanford and a team of three students from the Hasso Plattner Institut in Potsdam, Germany. FutureWei challenged us to enhance human communication using Artificial Intelligence. Our project culminated in designing a system that enhances parents’ communication with their 3-to-5-year-old children.

Through a series of Needfinding interviews, observation and user testing we found that parents with children between 3 and 5 years of age deal on a daily basis with the struggle of getting their children through routines and the negative home environment that develops as a result of the poor communication. Children of this age are at a crucial stage in terms of development of emotions, language and sense of time. They need time to prepare themselves for transitions between activities and engagement to keep them from being distracted while going through these transitions. The parent on the other hand, is concerned about their child’s schedule and getting them from place to place on time, balancing taking care of the home and being tired and stressed after a long day’s work. The discrepancy between the child’s need to prepare for change and the parent’s wish to move from task to task creates a lot of tension, stress and negative communication in the household.

VAMO is a system that addresses this need. It signals an approaching transition to the child using light cues in the house – an association that the child learns – and provides them with a Buffer Time to prepare for incoming change. Once the Buffer Time expires, the system signals the child again and guides them to the desired location. This happens through a story told using Milestones placed around the house on the path between the two activity locations. Artificial Intelligence is used to create personalized stories relevant to the child’s life to promote even further engagement by incorporating information input by the parent through a smartphone app. The routine stress and negative communication is replaced by positive communication and engagement in the family.

Read on to get more information about how VAMO works and click here for the full report on the design development throughout the eight months we worked on the project!

How does it work?

VAMO is a smart home system comprised of three parts: smart lights, interactive storytelling Milestones and a smartphone app for personalization.

Lights

The parent inputs their child's desired bedtime in the app. The smart lights change color, as shown below, 15 minutes before the child needs to stop playing and get ready to go to bed. These 15 minutes are the Buffer Time and the light change is a signal that the kid learns to associate with the period of transition. With this, the child knows that they'll have to stop playing soon and can begin to prepare themselves for change.

As the Buffer Time expires, the lights begin to flash and thus signal to the kid that they need to stop playing and transition to the next activity – getting ready for bed. The parent accompanies their child and the family is off to bed.

Milestones

The Milestones are mounted on the walls of the house along the path between the play area and the child's room. They play a bedtime story that is personalized for the child's interests and life events. This story is broken up into fragments and each part of the story is told by one Milestone.

• An inactive Milestone shines red. It turns green when it receives a signal that determines that is ready to be played.
• The child recognizes that the green light means that the bedtime story is ready and presses the button to begin.
• Once the button is pressed, that Milestone turns blue and tells a part of the bedtime story.
• As soon as the Milestone is done with that part of the story it sends a signal to the next Milestone, which turns from red to green.
• The child and their parent walk to this next Milestone and press the button to hear the next part of the story.

This way the family is able to move through the house and transition from the play area to the bedroom where the child can get set to go to bed. The child was allowed time to acclimate to the transition with the smart lights and is kept engaged throughout the process by listening to the story. The family's stressful routine has been replaced by a more pleasant one that focuses on sharing and bonding over a storytelling experience and that takes into account the child's and the parent's needs.

Our concept was put to the test during our class expo at Stanford and our booth attracted many visitors. The concept was very well received by the attendees but we were especially pleased to hear from a five year old boy who really enjoyed the experience. He told his mother he had a lot of fun and wanted to come back and do demo again later in the day.

App

The smartphone app is what controls the rest of the system. The app sends signals through Wi-Fi to the smart lights, controlling their color and brightness. It sends the audio files containing the stories to the Milestones, communicating via Wi-Fi with a Raspberry Pi Zero installed in each.

Bonus

I was messing around and having fun with a camera and made this little video of the experience from the point of view of the child. First without and then with VAMO.