Example of Item Tracer (without using GSM/GPS)

Item Tracer (without using GSM/GPS):

 1. EMPATHY

In today’s stressful life of ours, we usually have a habit of either forgetting or misplacing our important  belongings. We end up spending lot of time to trace the lost things or at times we lose it forever. Things that we are not able to find at required moment loses its value. For example a document required for an interview if not traceable on the day of interview, it is likely to happen that we incidentally find it after a week or later.

The above such incidences are supported by the well known Murphy’ Law which can be rewritten as, ‘‘anything that can be lost will be lost’’.

The following incident demonstrates the above.

HAPPY STORY

It was yet another working day for Rekha to her office. Rekha is a working woman who handles her family at home as well as employees at her job. Like any other working woman, she has got a stressful life at both the places. She was lucky today to reach office on time. She parks the vehicle and rushes to the work place. At the end of the day, when she gets ready to go home, she realizes that her vehicle key is missing. She searches her drawers, purse and all likely places but she is disappointed. She then remembers that in the morning in hurry she had left behind the keys with the vehicle in the parking place itself. Now she is tensed whether her vehicle will be at its place or not. She rushes towards the parking place. She gets relieved when she sees her vehicle and the key at the place where she had left behind. Rekha thanks the God for the favor.

SAD STORY

Let us see Rahul’s incident.

It was 10 am of Wednesday morning. Rahul was getting late for his office. The bell rings and there arrives the officers from municipal authorities. They wanted to verify the ownership rights of Rahul’s house. They demand for the documents while sipping the cup of tea offered by Rahul’s wife. Even after an extensive search of the asked documents, he could not find them. Rahul started requesting the officers to visit on some other day. But the officers were adamant and coldly told Rahul that they are marking house occupier as tenant and if Rahul wants to change the ownership status, he has to visit the respective office along with necessary documents and carry out the procedure again. Rahul was disappointed as he would have to waste another leave to settle the mess.

The above incidences and many such others prompted us to think of the need of a gadget which could prove handy and save people from avoiding such troubles.

So we grab the opportunity to propose the development strategy for a product which can prove useful in such occasions.

Under this process we had thought of numerous test incidences where need of Item Tracer is felt. We then narrowed down to Users and Stockholders from the test incidences. Then we listed the likely activities in which users may be involved requiring the need of the proposed product. These were systematically listed under the first canvas named ‘Empathize Canvas’.

USERS:

The idea of the product that we have come up with is meant for the following persons:

• Persons having weak memory
• Persons having forgetfulness behavior under tension
• Persons who misplaces important keys or documents readily
• Persons travelling by public transport with luggage
• Persons travelling by public transport carrying important documents

The intended user can be any person, here are some sample users:

• A student going for admission carrying important documents
• An employee parking vehicle in hurry and forgetting the keys behind
• A housewife securing important belongings in some drawer
• An employee misplacing some vital contract papers

STAKEHOLDERS:

Due to such forgetfulness behavior, people or organization who would be indirectly affected are public transport, admission office, interviewing committee, thieves, civil administrators(for eg. police).

ACTIVITIES:

The activities carried  out by our projected users are:

• Travelling with important document and luggage
• Strolling in public places such as street markets, gardens, etc.

THE EMPATHY CANVAS

2. IDEATION

 Within the Ideation phase, we select a test case where we have more have emotional attachment and solutions for the problem faced by the people in the selected test case are considered further.

PEOPLE:

• Persons having forgetfulness behavior under tension
• Persons who misplaces important keys or documents readily
• Travelers
• Students
• Women

ACTIVITIES:

• Travelling with luggage via public transport
• Carrying important documents while approaching for an interview
• Forgetting the keys while parking the vehicle in hurry
• Women wearing ornaments in public places

SITUATION/CONTEXT/LOCATION:

• A person travelling for three days with luggage by train. During night time, there is risk that the luggage is stolen
• A student heading for an interview forgets his important documents in the bus
• A lady wearing ornaments at public place with the risk of ornaments being snatched away
• A working official parking his/her vehicle, forgets the keys with the vehicle in the parking itself

PROPS/POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS:

While analyzing the user problems, we came up with various possible solutions’ scenario as under:

1. We could have a GSM/GPS transceiver module attached with the item to be secured. The module will continuously send information about its location to the smart phone carried by the user.

Pros:

• Accurate location of the item
• All modules are readily available

Cons:

• GSM Transceiver module is costly

2. A Bluetooth device can be attached with the item to be secured. So that when the item goes out of range, the communication between the Bluetooth tag and the smart phone is interrupted, and the user receives an audio message about the same. An android application can be developed for the same.

Pros:

• Cheaper and easily available
• When the item goes out of range immediate information is sent to the user

Cons:

• Doesn’t provide the location information

3. An NFC (Near Field Communication) tag attached with the items that remain close enough to the body within 1cm range. Examples of such items are wallet, ornament, etc..

Pros:

• Cheaper and readily available nowadays

Cons:

• Range is limited within 1 cm

4. We could think of tags that are painted with frequency selective paints. These tags will respond differently to different frequencies. RF transceiver module can be used in smart phones with appropriate android application. The whole system will function analogous to a RADAR.

Pros:

• Cheaper than GSM
• Position data can be readily made available
• Doesn’t depend on GSM Network for functioning

Cons:

• Range is limited to few tens of meters (although apt for our requirement)
• New technological development is required

 3. PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT

 PURPOSE:

The purpose of our project is to design a handy product that should perform the following functions:

• When the user goes out of range of the item, he should get a warning in the form of an audio message
• When the item is within the range but is not traceable, the user should be able to trace it

PEOPLE:

          The people to whom our product may be useful are the persons who wants to keep their things secure.

• Persons who misplaces important keys or documents readily
• Travelers
• Students

PRODUCT EXPERIENCE:

• After the introduction of this product, the user will feel relaxed as he will no more lose his belongings/items/important documents. And if any item or belongings are lost, he will be easily able to trace it.
• As the product is handy, he is not over burdened while using it.

PRODUCT FUNCTIONS:

• To help maintaining things within a safe range
• To help finding the misplaced things

PRODUCT FEATURES:

• The smart tag will be Bluetooth It would be interfaced with the user’s phone and when the communication breaks, the alarm is generated on the phone. This indicates that the product is out of range.
• Moreover the smart tag is easily attachable with the belongings.
• RF Transceiver Section: The suitably modified smart phone will transmit the RF signals that would be responded by the smart tags that are painted with frequency selective paint. Theandroid app will show the location on the phone.
• The phone needs to have auto-rotation function to record the received data from the smart tag.

COMPONENTS:

The final product has two components

CUSTOMER RE-VALIDATION:

          The auto rotation function requires dedicated vibrators that will increase the cost of the product. The auto rotation function can be manually handled.

REJECT, REDESIGN, RETAIN:

The product is redesigned without the auto-rotation function. So the user needs to manually rotate the phone in steps of 90 degree rotation.