Ruchita Lodha || Jamie Monville || Gina Herakovic || Kaavya Samu
Prototype Video
WatchDog is a smart security device that will keep track of your belongings when you need to step away. Many students, remote workers, and other individuals prefer to do their work in libraries and coffee shops due to the ambient noise and separation from home environments. However, getting up to use the bathroom or get something to eat or drink leaves these individuals with less than desirable options for what to do with their stuff:
WatchDog User Facing Application
WatchDog Device
We were motivated to work on this problem due to its prevalence in the daily life of students and remote working professionals and because of the lack of solutions available.
Diary study
For our formative study, we conducted diary studies with 6 participants and two separate rounds of interviews. The first round was with 7 participants and the second round had 6 participants. For the diary studies and first round of interviews, we spoke with college students of both undergraduate and graduate levels. For the second round of interviews, we widened our audience scope in order to gain a more comprehensive view of our original problem. The goal behind this formative study was to understand how people work and study in public spaces such as coffee shops and libraries. Our participants included remote workers, mothers, librarians, baristas, and media center employees. Due to COVID-19, the diary studies were conducted via email and the interviews via phone and virtual conferencing software. Our analysis of this research data resulted in the following insights:
When a user is working or studying in a public space and they need to get up, three main behaviors are seen: