Essay Example: SleepyWhispers

Question 1

a. The Main Idea of the Design

The main idea behind the conceptual design is to create a prototype device that facilitates communication among distant lovers. The design is intended to incorporate voice as the main medium of interaction in the SleepyWhispers system. Precisely, the SleepyWhispers communication system is anticipated to enable distant lovers to share goodnight messages. The design of the SleepyWhispers device basically relies on the appraisal of pillow talk as a major inspiration in the design. By examining the aspects of pillow talk communication among lovers, the researchers are able to implement crucial features to enable users to interact with the system.

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b. The way that people are understood to interact with it

SleepyWhispers works by allowing love partners to record and send the recorded sound messages from one person to another. Generally, the SleepyWhispers device comprises of a photo frame and a pillow. In interacting with the system, a person is required to record messages and send them to the intended partner during the daytime. The partner on the receiving end listens to the recorded messages at night. Listening of messages occurs through a speaker placed inside a pillow. Users record messages using any form of a device such as a mobile phone or personal computer. The photo frame contains a button that allows users to listen to the messages by pressing it. Recorded messages are only listened to once, after which the user deletes and is not able to listen to them again.

c. The user experience

The participants involved in the study overwhelmingly used the device to communicate between themselves. The participants found the SleepyWhispers device to be effective in supporting their distant relationship. However, the user experience with the device reveals that participants hated recording messages.

Question 2

a. Type of Interface

The design of the SleepyWhispers device employs the WIMP and GUI interface. A WIMP interface enables users to interact with the system through the use of icons, pointers, windows, and menus. Consequently, the GUI interface provides visual indicators and graphical icons to enable a user to interact with the system instead of a text-based approach. Considering the SleepyWhispers device, it is made of a photo frame with an embedded button and a pillow. It also uses mobile phones or PCs to record the messages. These provide the windows, pointers, and graphical tools to support in recording and deleting of the messages. As a result, all the interactions with the system occur through visual, graphical, and iconic support.

b. Alternative Interface Type for the Design

An alternative approach to the interface design of the system would involve multimodal human-computer interaction. A multimodal interface provides users with multiple ways of interacting with systems. Generally, the mode offers tools for different tools for both input and output of information. Instead of using the WIMP and GUI interface, the sleepyWhispers would be designed in a way that it incorporates more than one mode of communication. In creating the system using the multimodal interface, audio and video tools would be used at both the input and output of the system. The input would capture the user's audio and visual recording so the messages while the output would allow a partner to view listen to the recorded messages while viewing the sender's visual appearance.