STAY HYDRATED!

Stay Hydrated! is a flower-growing game that reminds and motivates its player to stay hydrated. It consists of a physical controller that takes the shape of a cup holder, and a digital game in which a cute cat-shaped flower can be grown. Players play this game by drinking water from a cup placed on top of the physical controller. The intention of this game is to use the pleasure and reward of gameplay to motivate the players to engage in a more aware and healthy lifestyle.

Interaction

The cupholder, which functions as the game controller, measures how much water the player drinks every time the cup is picked up and then put back, and a digital flower is grown in the game according to this measurement. The flower’s growth, which reflects the player’s water drinking activity, is recorded and accumulated. By consistently drinking water, the player can grow the flower from the size of an actual flower to eventually reaching the outer space. When no drinking activity is detected for a certain period of time, the game reminds the player to drink water.

Design

Iteration - 1

In the first iteration, the game is implemented by the following process:

• Weight change is detected by weight sensor and processed by Arduino

• Arduino sends weight data to a Python script in computer

• Python script calculates the raw data into the drinking activity and stores to a local file

• A web-based application read the local file to render the flower-growing game

The basic gameplay mechanism functions well, but demonstrates a few drawbacks:

• The cupholder has to be connected to the computer, because the weight data is transmitted through the wire, which largely limits the mobility of this device.

• The Python script has to be kept running to receive data and to write it to local file, which is not sustainable and scalable.

• The flower has only one style. After it has been grown once, replay is discouraged by the lack of variability.

Therefore, a second iteration is developed:

Iteration - 2 Improvements

• New design replaces plastic surface with wood surface

• Arduino wirelessly sends data to database

  • No need to keep Python script running

  • No need to keep the cupholder connected to computer

  • No need to keep local file, and game is more scalable

• Multiple flower styles, drinking history, and calendar feature motivate replay and consistency.

Personal Contribution

This project is a collaboration between Zehua Chen and myself. I personally designed the gameplay mechanism and implemented the web-application and backend data processing. I also contributed to the physical computing and hardware implementation.