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Project

Design for Public Safety

Our project goal is to create a more restorative campus environment that reduces mental stress and improves emotional wellbeing. 

We achieved this by integrating nature inspired movements and forms with robotics, creating an interactive experience that transforms unpleasant environments into more calming spaces.  It’s designed to span the length of a hallway and create soothing ripple-like movements initiated by users.

Accepted for publication as a Student Design Challenge submission at the 2025 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI 2025) in Melbourne, Australia this March!

Info

ID Studio 4071

Exploring interactive robotic environments

Role

Team: Inika Shah, Priscilla Rojas, Jyotsna Bhageria

Timeline

August 15, 2024 - Present

Tools

Laser Cutter, Fusion 360, Slicer, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Arduino

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Project overview

Our design, Canopy, elevates campus spaces by creating soothing wave-like movements to improve user wellbeing.

Canopy  spans heavily trafficked areas on college campuses and creates soothing ripple-like movements that initiate once a person enters or exits a space.

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Understanding user perceptions surrounding safety

Where do people feel unsafe?

We began our research by asking users to pin point locations where they feel safe and unsafe ( marked by green and red pins). We placed this experiment in public locations to gather randomized and unbiased data points. 

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407 pins

57

Survey Responses

80%

felt unsafe due to a lack of people nearby

77%

felt unsafe in a poorly lit area

56%

are unfamiliar with emergency posts

Research conclusion

Users feel unsafe in long hallways and solitary spaces.

From our research through our probe, interviews and surveys we learned that users feel unsafe in environments that are dimly lit, eerily quiet, isolated, and unprotected.

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Surprisingly, we also learned that people find Skiles unsafe within campus. Characterized by long hallways and dimmed lights, skiles and other hallways within campus buildings are locations we want to focus on. 

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Chosen movement

People prefer mechanical transverse waves that cascade down a fixed line. 

By collecting user opinions about our different prototypes, we learned that users prefer the cascading motion of the form displayed above. The waterfall effect of the individual pieces created a very welcoming and fascinating structure. Here are some of our initial prototypes exploring this movement. 

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Initial sketch of our form

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Enjoyed cascading motion but the individual pieces were not balancing properly.

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Switched from rubber band to tape to create a more cohesive movement

Feedback suggested we size up the form to understand the motion in full scale.

From our initial wave exploration, we knew that tape transferred the wave motion very well so we kept using tape as we scaled up. We replaced the Popsicle sticks with wooden dowels that were 3/16ths”. We bandsawed and drill pressed scrap plywood to create weights that would replace the nuts used in the previous iteration.
This iteration ended being ~ 5ft long and 3ft wide.

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Transitioning from 2D to 3D forms

Our full-scale prototype was "skeletal". So we began exploring more organic forms.

We also realized that a lack of volume creates a skeletal feel which feels like its missing something, almost like a carcass. By creating a 3D form we could ameliorate this effect by making it seem more “warm bodied”. Then we transitioned from 2D to 3D forms. 

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Testing acrylic for movement and opacity; too skeletal

Transitioned into 3d forms to get a feel of volume in the movement

Acrylic casted limited shadows so we combined cardboard + acrylic

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Cardboard showed promise, had interesting shadow movements

Incorporated dynamism into form by having different plane views

Used SLICER to cut the form into multiple points to laser cut

Testing with users

After lots of testing, we went with an organic cardboard prototype design 

We decided to shift to cardboard for faster and cheaper prototyping, allowing us to explore a more organic wave form inspired by the spontaneity of natural waves. While our acrylic model used only two planes with minimal variation, our iterations introduced four planes with varied sketches, creating a shape with greater internal variation.

 

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User feedback highlighted the cardboard's opacity and the shadows it cast, enhancing its illusionary effect and making it appear alive, especially from side angles.

User Testing

Feedback

Cardboard Opacity

The form was clearly visible and also created an illusion when viewed from different angles of visibility

Location Matters

Realized that the view from under the structure vs from the side was drastically different

Height Suspension

Received feedback that the height at which its suspended is very important and its also directly correlated to scale

Building our final structure

We designed a hanging contraption to aerially suspend Canopy

We began this process by hanging our cardboard pieces with a belt. Then we realized that we needed something to maintain the tension of the strap so that the pieces wouldn't slouch and come to the center. With that in mind, our group attempted to use an L-beam to create tension as pictured in the third figure. This was a definitely a step towards our final design but we were still unsatisfied with the design of the structure. So we welded a steel beam to create an offset of 6 inches that would allow us to properly turn our cardboard pieces. Once that was settled, my group and I created a suspension mechanism that would allow us to make finer tuned adjustments.

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User Testing 

We measured Perceived Restorativeness by conducting interviews and surveys

We conducted user testing in three distinct phases to evaluate the effectiveness and impact of our installation. During the first phase, participants spent three minutes interacting with the Canopy form by walking under and around it.

 

Following this interaction, we asked participants to complete the PRS survey. In this survey users were asked to answer questions on a scale of 1 to 5 with 1 being ‘not at all’ to 5 being ‘very much’. One side of the survey focused on their experience underneath the form and the other side focused on their experiences viewing the form from the outside. 

 

After participants completed the PRS survey, we conducted qualitative interviews using a set of questions to gain deeper insights into user reactions and sentiments about the installation. These questions helped us evaluate their preferences, emotional responses, and suggestions.

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Conducted Wizard of Oz testing by manually controlling the wave moment by twisting the strap to simulate different types of movements and see which variations users preferred best. 

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Participants then completed the PRS  survey, rating questions on a scale from 1 (“not at all”) to 5 (“very much”). 

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After participants completed the PRS survey, we conducted qualitative interviews using a set of questions (shown in the bottom figure) to gain deeper insights into user reactions and sentiments about the installation. 

Results 

User Testing

Amplitude & Frequency are inversely proportional

Both subtle, frequent ripples and bold, infrequent waves can evoke feelings of calmness and serenity.​

Height influences viewing preferences

From our user tests, we learned that people enjoyed the intimate feeling of the form but also expressed that the form should be high enough so that users don’t feel a sense of danger of being hit by the form. 

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