Video of product working

In 2016 Americans collectively looked at their phones 9 billion times a day, a 13 percent increase from 2015, and studies have repeatedly found Facebook users to be more depressed than their peers. POST seeks to address this issue through repeatedly instructing children to complete the themed tasks of “follow, post, and scroll” until they become both fatigued and entranced, similar to the way many people respond to prolonged time on devices. As POST puts in its users a sense of futility--multiplied by the fact that if the users make a mistake, their score resets--the device ironically assists children in the specific motor skills of touchscreens, in this case scrolling, swiping, and pushing, each a motion that is rarely used outside of our interactions with technology.

GPS tracking comes in handy when you are lost or want to know how far away your friend is but what happens if it falls into the wrong hands? The Stalking Skull was designed to create awareness of what enabling "location services" really means. The skull is in toy form to get across that the most innocent things can turn out to be the most dangerous.

In today's social media climate, teens feel pressure to appear almost perfect, with the help of Snapchat filters and other Photoshop apps. It is just fine to use filters to make a picture look "dope" or something as I do this a lot myself, but it starts to become damaging when someone They can then becomes attached to this fake version of themselves, that can and only exists online. The Snapchat filter simulator toy [what is the name? I think this one works better] pinches a child's or teen’s cheeks very hard to simulate what a digital filter does trying to make your face look slimmer or skinnier, and shows how painful in real life this process is, if not done healthy. The pain is meant to cause the human subject to reflect on the unrealistic expectations created by online filters and their psychologically harmful side effects.  In terms of completing this project, I faced several technical and conceptual challenges.  It was difficult  to determine how exactly to make this project possible, questioned was the electronic aspect, and the materials these pinchers would be made out of to help represent the fleeting beauty experienced on social media. 

The Waiting Game is a remote-control toy car designed to give children the opportunity to experience the feelings associated with conversational texting before they begin texting with friends. When people first text, they are often unprepared for the lack of control they feel while waiting for a reply; The Waiting Game eases this transition by helping children become comfortable with this feeling in a less fraught context.

The remote-control car drives through a course that simulates the uncertainties and time delays of texting, in contrast to face-to-face conversation. Control over the car’s direction is accomplished through an Arduino, which takes decides which of two motors on the car to turn on, based on inputs from two push switches built into the remote.In order to minimize components in the car itself, all components other that the motors are built into the remote, which is connected to the car by wires. Most significantly, he car delays its responses to commands given through the remote control. This not only gives children the feeling that something might be wrong, but also teaches them patience and confidence that a response will eventually come. After playing with this toy, children should have a better understanding of conversational text messaging and how to handle the anxieties that go along with it.

ObsessiLamp is an engaging, interactive lamp that provides lighting entertainment for children using LED and touch sensors: the more one touches the lamp, the more intense and dynamic the lights become. ObsessiLamp is meant to parallel and comment on the way teens use smartphones to access social media late into the night using their cell phone at night.

The cell phone is an integral part of most adolescents and young adult lives. Teens will spend hours at night, losing much-needed sleep, to alleviate their anxiety over maintaining social connections. A comparable fear for younger children is fear of the dark; ObsessiLamp toys with that fear the way a cell phone activates teens’ fear of social exclusion and irrelevance. 

The more one touches and interacts with it, the more intriguing the lights are - like a cell phone. The ObsessiLamp’s touch sensors activate corresponding RGB LEDs at varying intensities (the greater the sensors touched, the more dynamic it becomes.) It has the shape of an icosagon “sunlike shape” with curves indenting each side;  The "sun shape" is laser-cut several times and stacked to create the base, which is topped off with an acrylic plate to mute the bright LEDs . The shape is hollowed out to allow the electronics to be placed inside. The LEDs are on an Adafruit Neopixel strip powered by an Arduino; this is then attached to the hollowed inside of the "sun shape." There is a capacitive touch sensor attached to the Arduino;. A jumper cable affixed to the copper sticker on the top expands the sensor input. This allows children to touch and watch the bright, and engrossing LED demonstration to keep them up at night like a cellphone.