Brush your teeth
This is a very well known action that we do each day. We spent 3 to 4 minutes in front of the mirror, moving our hand to clean our teeth, but we are not conscious about what we are doing. We never spent those 3 minutes thinking about our teeth, it is such a learned action that are not fully conscious about the action.  Dentist recommend brushing your teeth 3 times a day and make it a very carefully process.
The idea is to create a toothbrush with a photosensitive sensor and speakers. This toothbrush is special it will be smaller and depending on the tooth that is cleaning, it will produce a musical note, so when you move the toothbrush in your mouth, you will be creating music.

Researching about Para- Functionality, I found the colombian artist Gabriel Sierra. His work its around the “real function of objects and the shifting cultural ideas of what the functions of objects are.

Adriano Pedrosa describes that for Gabriel, “function follows form: In an inversion of the old modernist dictum, his objects seem as if they are useful, but just what for is often ambiguous.”

His work could be placed between art and design. His work develop from the observation and experience of everyday situations, sometimes finding inspiration in the Colombian popular culture.

Between 1998 and 2004, Sierra worked on what he calls his “para-functional” objects and inventions. Sometimes attaining more of a poetic function than a practical one, these objects were created by translating popular local beliefs as well as Sierra’s domestic observations into carefully crafted and functional objects. Within the series Sierra references a local Colombian practice of using tobacco to deter worms from trees by making bespoke tobacco-filled cuffs for their branches. In another work from the series, Sierra designs socks for furniture to stop them getting cold as well as scratching the floor and making noise.

My first system is about Hypothyroidism. I did a lot of research about this disease and I realized that I needed to understand it really well. This system explains how is treated my disease and what are the things that I can track besides the blood test.

My second system is related with the first one. If I control my weight, I might be able to fight against the hypothyroidism symptoms.

This last system is related with another project I’m working on. I wanted to see if by ratings or analytics of the terms of use and privacy policy, people can be more aware of what they are signing for, by giving information to an specific site.

This week I continue with my experiment to move my father’s schedule half an hour, so he can wake up at 4:30am or 5 and go to bed between 9 and 9:30pm.
So I wanted to continue being the trigger, based in the results of last week experiment.
After reading Pryor’s reading and Fogg’s design process, I implement some things differently.
I try different positive and negative reinforcements like:
- Call him after dinner: It worked. I always let the conversation open, so that he knows that the next day I will call again.
- Call him during dinner: Is was distracting, but I can make the dinner last longer.
- Call him before dinner: Is was too early and he continues to sleep early.
- Call him when he is sleep: Sometimes he speaks but very sleep.
- Call him through the phone: Doesn’t need to be in front of the computer, so he can talked from his bed. Doesn’t work
- Call him through skype: The best instrument, because he seats in front of the computer and not in his bed.
- Send him an email message so he is aware that I will call later. Here, he start calling me, thinking that something wrong is happening.
- Tell me mother to call me when she sees he will start preparing to sleep. This one worked.

There are certain things to take into account. If I wanted to change his behavior I need to analyzed the entire process. Why is he getting up so early? How is his sleep? Is he willing to change the behavior? Why does he sleep too early? So I did my research. He normally needs 6 hours of sleep. He wake up everyday when the newspaper arrives. If it doesn’t arrive in time, he doesn’t do much.

I started to use positive reinforcements and this week I try Pryor’s untrained method number eight: change the motivation. The motivation ended up to be the same trigger. Speaking with me.

The lack of ability that my father has to use Skype, was solve by my mother. I still trying to teach everyday something new to my father about technology, which has encourage his interest in speaking with me, besides the regular conversation.

To summarize this were the 8 steps of the design process:

1. Choose a simple behavior to target: The simple behavior is to go to be half an hour late than the usual.

2. Choose a receptive Audience: I already speak with my father at least 3 or 4 times a week.

3. Find what prevents the target behavior: He is getting to sleep early, because he doesn’t have any activity after work, so he the easiest thing is to get to sleep. Another thing is that he likes to wake up at 4:00 to read the newspaper. His motivation to stay awake is high, but he just can’t do it, if he feels sleepy.

4. Choose a familiar technology channel: Skype

5. Find relevant examples of persuasive technology:

There are products to monitoring the sleep like: Zeo or Fitbit.

Skype is used to have meetings with people outside your city, is also used to share screens, so that the other person is looking at your screen, and this is useful for education.

6. Imitate successful examples:

I’m calling my father by Skype and I’m trying to teach him how to use his iPad. So he has to be super awake and to pay attention at what I’m teaching him. Sometimes I shared my screen and we always used the video.

I also keep him interested in my stories, so that the next day, he wants to hear how it was.

7. Test and iterate quickly:

Everyday I call 5 min later than the day before. It seems that 8:20 is a good time to call, he doesn’t have distractions and he is not very sleepy.

8. Expand and success:

I want to try to put him some homework to see if he will be able to do it before I call him. I need to keep his interested high, so I will have to invent stories, or make like a series that we can get addicted to.  So far, I can’t think in any other ideas.

I decided to change my behavior experiment from last week. The reason is that I realized that I was working on one, without noticing before.

This is the new experiment:

My father is 58 years old. He is used to wake up at 4 am. So he has a problem. He gets sleepy at 6 pm. Usually after work, he likes to do crosswords, watching tv in a couch, that later, he changes to his bed. So, he is getting to be really early, like 7:30 or maximum 8pm.

My mother always complains that they can’t do anything at night, not even a dinner, because my father is always sleepy.

So we decided that we will do an experiment to see if we can make him sleep at 9 pm, to start changing his schedule.

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Here is the deck