This week, we primarily worked on finalizing our designs for the device and software. We also decided to add a new device to our project where users will wear ankle straps with pressure sensors hooked onto them that they place under their foot in the shoe. This new addition allows us to measure the weight the user is carrying such that we can help them better track their progress. Since we will be building and testing an additional device, our schedule has been modified. The main risk for this project is getting our devices to work and being able to correctly determine back positioning. To manage this issue, we did thorough research to ensure the components are compatible. In addition, we have also begun discussing and researching which libraries we will be using to develop our algorithms on back orientation and curvature. Currently, we are looking into Quartenion libraries to get proper positioning values of the sensors.
With our research conducted last week on use case requirements and stakeholders, we were able to apply different engineering principles to design our devices and software. To design the weight detection device and back orientation and curvature device, we had to use hardware design principles where we had to figure out what we wanted our system to do, what we need for it to carry out its function, and how we will connect them together. When it comes to the designing of hardware systems, lots of research was put into gathering necessary components, such as sensors, and ensuring they were compatible with other components. In addition, we incorporated mobile design principles for our frontend design, such as Lund’s Usability Maxims, to ensure we have a simple and well-designed user interface. For the backend of our software, we used object-oriented design principles to understand the components we will need and then define the solution.
