SparkSisters

LCLA Prototype
Final Vision
Team Logo

Inspiration

When Zen lands on a planet that they have no clue about and whips out their Life Analyzer, what would be the most important aspect? The color? No. The style? No. Rather, they would want clarity. This is what our product offers. Never once should Zen be confused about their own body. Through the Life Changing Life Analyzer (LCLA), our inspiration was our goal towards maximum clarity. We wanted them to be able to understand the workings of their body with just one look. We are proud to say, this goal has been achieved. Through teamwork, collaboration and a lot of worthwhile memory-making, we, The SparkSisters, made a product that is not just our entry, but also our testimony to our learning.

Our inspiration is quite simple. We brought in elements of user-friendly design that we experience in the daily world, and used them within our project.

What it does

The Life Changing Life Analyzer is a revolutionary product that encompasses multiple purposes, all serving the health demands of entering a new world. Our product integrates health needs with style and convenience through a robust watch design with futuristic holographic display screens. When Zen first opens their watch and runs the program, they are prompted to place their finger on the conveniently located oximeter. Their blood oxygen saturation and heart rate will then be processed internally, and the results will be emitted in the form of light. The colors available include red, green and yellow, which are all colors we are conditioned to associate with an emotion. How so? Just think of traffic lights. When we see red, we associate it with danger. Yellow implies caution. Finally, green is good to go. LCLA works the same way. Red means danger, yellow means try again and green means healthy.

To clear any confusion, an LCD screen is added. In events of low oxygen levels, patients experience confusion. With the help of an LCD screen, Zen is provided with further clarity. LCLA is by no means a professional medical practitioner, but rather, a source of comfort and a first step in ensuring peak medical performance.

How we built it

To say LCLA is the product of blood, sweat and tears is no joke, but let’s go beyond the cliche. As a team, we began by breaking down the scenario given to truly understand Zen’s needs. We wanted our focus to be narrowed down to what is truly necessary. As beginners, however, a large portion of time was dedicated to understanding the coding and the wiring process. After the huge hurdle of understanding hardware, we noticed parallels between what we learned, and what features we wanted to add. From that seedling of an idea, we branched further out to create the product we have now. Experimenting with simply turning one led on turned to turning three on. From there, it turned into making three lights blink in order. The key here was to finally gain control. Rather than having unpredictable outputs from our hardware, the joy and confidence came from the feeling of finally seeing our hardware do exactly what we specified. LCLA was a progress. It is a mix of fun, some setbacks, hard work, and a lot of pride.

Challenges we ran into

The initial, completely obvious challenge was our lack of experience. The oximeter was our first biggest roadblock as no one was quite sure about the functionality or the software needed to yield those functionalities. In addition to this, time was a further substantial restriction. For a project to be made within just the span of a day is quite a daunting task. On top of that, components of one product had to be made on 4 different laptops, making the final integration a menacing step. As expected, the final integration was indeed difficult. While one person’s code worked on its own, integrating it into a bigger system required further modification. This became more difficult as our code grew. Any slight modification, regardless of software or hardware, could result in a complete collapse of our project. Despite these daunting restrictions and hurdles, the SparkSisters are proud to present LCLA as a tried and true product.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

As the SparkSisters, our product is our pride. Seeing the fruits of our labour is our pride. Despite being beginners, we are amazed at how far our combined efforts have brought us. Aside from the product itself, we are each proud to see how skills that are unique to us came together in a synchronized manner to create a beautiful experience. Timing was yet another big constraint, however, we managed to overcome that hurdle and put together a product we all cherish.

In addition, we achieved the goal we strived for; the need for clarity. We, as a team, put together a final product that does indeed communicate what it needs to in a timely and clear manner.

What we learned

Our learning can be separated into two categories; one in relation to product development, the other, in relation to who we are as women in STEM. As complete beginners, we learned the various functionalities that we can make use of when incorporating hardware into our solutions. We learned the basics of hardware design and wiring, while also understanding how different parts can be connected to serve a greater purpose. In addition to this, we got to explore how to maneuver the electricity to enable an efficiently connected system. One of our biggest learning experiences was in regards to planning the placement. As a team, we began wiring without giving much thought to the room available. This became a bigger issue when we wanted to add more features. The second time around, we understood how planning the spacing ahead of time dictates the amount of features we can fit on a breadboard.

The second category, however, is arguably more important. Despite being new, we learned what we, as women in STEM, are capable of. Our joined efforts and experimentation yielded a result we truly did not expect at the beginning. Quite honestly speaking, the field of hardware sounds a lot less intimidating. It went from a foreign concept to a field we now have some experience in. We proved ourselves to be capable of turning our thoughts into physical projects, which is a great accomplishment.

What's next for SparkSisters

While we take immense pride in our product, it would be wonderful to see what other features can be implemented. In addition to heart rate and blood-oxygen levels, the oximeter is also capable of measuring the environmental temperature. This is a feature that we would love to incorporate into our system given more time and resources. Some of our ideas include incorporating a fan that can aid in the event of high-temperature surroundings. In addition to this, further assessing the make-up of the atmosphere would allow for better accuracy. Finally, we would love to add a predictive feature to our product. As of now, we assess the user at the time of being introduced to the environment. However, our product can be significantly elevated if there is a predictive component that gives precautionary warnings to allow the user to be prepared.