This week was focused on gathering information. We had multiple interviews with professionals, professors, and veterans. They all served as great sources of information and also gave us different perspectives on the project. 

We started the week off by interviewing Alex Benavides, an army veteran who specialized in servicing helicopters. The interview was very beneficial for our project because we learned much about what active-duty soldiers do during their daily lives and tasks while in the field or on patrol. Alex brought up various design ideas for the vibrational cues, specifically about the directions from which they should receive information. He suggested a system that would not only give feedback to the user of the helmet based on a 360 surrounding but also utilize a method for alerting the user of a threat above and below their main line of sight. This is an interesting idea that we can research and possibly incorporate into our design. He also suggested other ideas about low visibility situations, helmet weight/design, and other interesting points that have helped us learn more about what improvements can be made to the standard military helmet.

Next, we spoke to Dr. Philip Kortum, a professor at Rice with a background in engineering who specializes in human factors and user testing. He gave us great ideas about how we can test our design in the future. He also brought up an interesting idea about what type of information we should convey to the user. He explained to us that the number of tactors correlated to the number of messages we want to send the user. Naturally, more cues mean more training to remember the message of each cue. However, we are currently thinking of a system that uses different tactors to show directional threats around the user.

Lastly, we spoke to Brett Pugsley, a retired Navy pilot with a background in mechanical engineering. He provided us with very detailed descriptions and videos/simulations of what alerts and warnings pilots experience when flying. On that side of things, the helmet could be programmed to give the same directional cues based on the positions of enemy aircrafts. After explaining and showing us the warning aircrafts give their pilots when threatened, he recommended a system that matched the current tones and audio cues from the aircraft with vibrational cues to reinforce the pilot’s detection of an enemy threat. The idea is very interesting and seems beneficial for pilots.

Overall, we learned a lot this week about what improvements can be made to the standard helmet and what information we want the helmet to process and then provide to the user. Next week will be focused on creating a concrete idea for our solution and starting the prototyping process.