Students in highschool are under neverending pressure to perform. So when the time comes for us to do so much as take a test... we panic! Melting Time is a stress free timer that is very visually appealing. It works by helping students in stressful situations to relax and focus on what is really important.

Taking tests or exams under a time limit is one of the most stressful activities any student will encounter. The Childline National Exam Stress Survey announced that 96%, of the 1300 students that took the survey, suffered from extreme anxiety before and during exams. Our group decided that students should have a timer to help them stay calm and focused on whatever work they are doing. The first thing we noticed was that time is very incorporated with the melting of ice, so we decided to create an idea off of that. Ice melting is a very relaxing visual, so we figured this would help with highschool students during stressfull moments. For example if your taking a test, you already have enough on your mind. You do not want to see a timer that is counting down the precious seconds. Instead, looking at a calming, silent, very fluid and relaxing object slowly melt will force you to take a step back, and just relax. Our project slowly lowers rings until the object is flat on the ground. It is a very relaxing visual that keeps your mind on what matter. We hope our creation can do good things for students. It is a very helpful tool that we hope can help out.

Beat By Beat is a heart like device that tracks your heart rate, beats in time with the users heart rate, and changes color every two minutes. 

Scientists in the mental health field continually agree that the ability to change the heart rate appropriately in given scenarios will lower stress and lessen anxiety. The benefits of lower stress include improving how the immune system functions, preventing illnesses like the common cold and or physical complaints such as back aches, and increasing your energy levels. The easiest way to control your heart rate is meditation. That is where Beat By Beat comes into play. For someone with ADD or ADHD is may be difficult to sit still and focus on your heart rate. Having an external object to represent the heart beat will help the user focus better.

Beat By Beat will beat in time with users heart rate that is being tracked by the heart rate monitor the user is wearing. The heart will also change color every two minutes as a way to track how long you have been meditating. The heart is made out of milky white acrylic, pink and white 3D printed joint pieces, and bolts. The heart moves with a motor located inside the heart. The motor has a cam to make the heart move up and down. Also inside the heart is a LED strip to make the heart light up. Both the LED strip and the motor are controlled via an Arduino. The hope is that this product will help those who use it live more peaceful and stress free lives.  

A heart that shows how fast or slow your heart is beating, and demonstrates the time passed by flashing specific colors. This heart is used for a peaceful meditation aid while the user doesn't have to keep looking up at a clock, or get easily distracted. 

 Meditation is the key to relaxation and stress relief. Ever have trouble meditating? That could be because of various reasons: distractions, others can't sit still for a long period of time, racing/ random thoughts, and among many other reasons. Personally, I always had trouble meditating because I was always distracted and I always started to think too much. When my partner and I decided to do something with the heart, we both thought about meditation and how it is difficult for one to meditate. That is how we came up with the idea of having someone use this while meditating. While trying to meditate, people tend to start thinking, but meditation is all about not thinking and putting your brain and body to rest. As someone is meditating, their mind is usually everywhere because no one is used to not thinking. When a person starts having random thoughts in their minds like a big essay, or an important presentation, it potentially affects their state of mind because they start to get nervous. Nervousness leads to fast heartbeats, which can easily distract the person because they are supposed to be at rest. With The Beat by Beat, the user is able to control their heartbeats because it can detect how fast or slow their heart is beating.  If they would like to know how long they've been meditating for, they can take a glance and whichever color is shining at the moment then that is how long its been. The Beat by Beat was made for people to feel at their best state of mind. Meditation can become part of your lifestyle just by focusing on your breath and having a clear state of mind. The Beat by Beat solves many issues with meditating which are incorportated within the product itself. Using the led strips in this product gives people a visual representation of time. Having it beat along with your heart helps the person concentrate on their heart rather than thinking about life problems. Meditating is a very important part of life, this product can change your life simply by detecting your heart rate, and allowing you to feel as happy as you could be. Being able to meditate without being distracted can increase happiness in your life because you just took a part of your day to focus on yourself, and your health. Using this product can help discover yourself as a person, and it can help by putting your mind to rest and allowing you to stop and think about how your heart is in correlation with your mind.

Slide 1: Seconds matter. Yes, seconds actually do matter because when you are trying to save someone's life with CPR, every second matters. In education, there is always room for improvement. Aveen and I believe that CPR training can be improved, and that is what we focused on in our project.

Slide 2: Here you see a context image of a person conducting CPR. That person could very well be me because I am a certified CPR responder. For this, I understand the tremendous amount of pressure when one is trying to save another humans beings life. And from my CPR training, I know there is room for improvement and the possibility to save more lives.

Slide 3: This is what lead us to create SECONDS MATTER, a device that incorporates new methods of CPR education. The device focuses on both meditative training in the office as well as live feedback while a first responder is conducting CPR.

Slide 4: Here is one of my precedent images. Much of CPR training is comprised of dummy practice. When practicing, the cycle of CPR compressions is essential. Although we designed a totally different project than the CPR dummy, the basic principles of accuracy and rhythm were incorporated into our project.

Slide 5: This is another one of our precedent images. From this lung, we were inspired by the cycle of breath in addition to potentially adding a basic lung to our project.

Slide 6: Here is one of our original drawings. Our idea was a CPR glove that tracked your rate of compressions and either showed you your speed on a screen or through LEDs.

Slide 7: Here is an original design of our mechanical training device. Notice the lungs that go up and down with every breath and the slots for a ticker(every compression rate).

Slide 8: Our first prototype involved the moving lung. 

Slide 9: We then expanded on this idea and added a mechanical hammer that would tick for every compression. To make the project more challenging, we decided that we would only use one motor and connect the moving lung and hammer with gears.

Slide 10: Our design changed entirely when we created the new big mechanical gear. This gear is powered by one motor, has ticking slots, and has a track for the lung to follow(up and down). We were going to connect it to the bottom through the lower track and wheels.

Slide 11: We made a big decision here and instead scraped the wheel design because it didn't work. We decided to connect the motor to the middle of the big gear and have the mechanical lung be off to one side.

Slide 12: Here is our iteration with the technology part of our project. I used an accelerometer and Arduino to program. Our idea here is that you can attach the circular interface to a wrist band and put the Arduino in a pocket. LEDs will shine indicating your compression speed.

In this studio, students will research naturally occurring periodical events and abstract the ideas to develop interesting and creative devices or installations to re-imagine how people experience time. 

Image source: Droste Clock by Alex A.