Penguin Friend

Interaction Design · UX Design · Product Design

Time - 7 Weeks

Children are easy to get bored from practicing instrument. This project focus on using educational robot to help children having fun with practicing piano.
Penguin piano was designed for this project which is the robot has animal-like appearance which is penguin with five different emotions and body interaction with users.
The interaction mode map the pet feeding, the piano practicing become the food for penguin so the children need to responsible to take care their pets that motivate children keep practicing. The changes of expression on the screen to inform children practice, rest and encouragement.

Process

Learning methods can be music genre specific (for example, a note that is considered wrong in classical music might be considered “cool” in jazz)
How would the game benefit from a robotic approach?
How would a self playing piano learn you to play?
Back to the roots - what was the problem with practice? It wasn’t fun

Problems

Associate playing instruments with having fun
Make playing instrument no different from playing with a toy (explore, improvise)
It doesn’t matter what you play - as long as you’re playing
If you are playing, you will learn the instrument (even though it might take more time than it would when following a strict practice scheme)
When you’re having fun with music - you might want to learn more

Purposes

A social companion pet robot
It wants you to play, but doesn’t care what
Aimed at kids aged 4-12 (the age when many starts to play instruments)
Not genre specific

Ideas

Why Animal ? Why a robotic pet ?

Use human attachment towards pets to motivate children to practice.

Motivator: Take care of the pet. Learning is a consequence and it can be a rewarding experience.

Reflector: The learner needs to frequently play piano in order to make the penguin happy.

Taking care of the pet = taking care of the piano lessons. It can increase the learner’s opportunities to reflect on her/his learning process.

Sustainer: With appropriate reinforcement, the Piano Penguin may be able to sustain desired learning behaviours to become a habit.

Sketch

Initial Design Idea

Children prefer animal-like, compact robots, with rounded edges
Exaggerated facial expressions
Benevolent appearance (Oros, Nikolic, Borovac, Jerkovic)

Final Appearance

The front part of the the penguin's body would be displayed on an egg shaped screen, showing mainly the face and the belly.

The physical hardware is a black, plastic, rounded body, with a flat bottom with feet, to make it stable on all surfaces and different kinds of keyboards, and hands/wings to enable some gesture feedback.

Its rounded body and practical size allow kids to carry it easily or hug it, what potentially could reinforce the bounds between the user and the pet. Besides, all pointy edges were avoided for the kids safety.