gpTea (2024)
intergenerational storytelling through LLM tea makingCourse: Designing Intelligence, Spring 2024
Instructor: Marcelo Coelho
Project Duration: 4 Weeks
Project by: Kevin Tang, Kelly Fang
Introduction:
“gpTea” is a tea set that preserves and encourages the sharing of untold stories between separated friends and loved ones through generative AI. It enhances the ritual of tea drinking by turning each cup into a shared, interactive storytelling experience, encouraging a slower, more reflective form of communication.
Balancing Ritual with Technology
Hardware
gpTea’s hardware consists of three parts, the cup, the tray, and the teapot. The cup features a 1.28 inch round display, ESP32 microcontroller, microphone, and 1 liPo battery. The body of the cup has a magnifying lens built into its geometry to blend the display into the liquid content once the cup is filled. The tray houses a speaker, a stepper motor that manipulates the teapot’s rotation via a timing belt, and a rotary encoder equipped with 2 haptic motors for user feedback and one hall effect sensor for detecting the presence of the cup. All the electronics housed in the tray are connected to an arduino nano microcontroller.
gpTea’s hardware consists of three parts, the cup, the tray, and the teapot. The cup features a 1.28 inch round display, ESP32 microcontroller, microphone, and 1 liPo battery. The body of the cup has a magnifying lens built into its geometry to blend the display into the liquid content once the cup is filled. The tray houses a speaker, a stepper motor that manipulates the teapot’s rotation via a timing belt, and a rotary encoder equipped with 2 haptic motors for user feedback and one hall effect sensor for detecting the presence of the cup. All the electronics housed in the tray are connected to an arduino nano microcontroller.
Interaction Design:
Cup as Universal Touch Point
System Loading animation
AI speaking indicator
Hall Effect detecting when the cup has been lifted.
Displaying blinking red audio recording light
Rotary Dial
Generated Photograph Display
Prototype Iterations
1st Prototype
Functioning cup display
LED tray
2nd Prototype
Full works-like prototype
Motor and Timing Belt Testing
Teapot integration Testing
3rd Prototype
Motor and Stem Integrated with Tray
All Prototypes
Rotary Encoder Testing4th Prototype
New Teapot with Turned Bearing Pin
Teapot Mounted on Stem
Pour Test
Magnifying Lens
Software Overview
Diagram of gpTea’s two settings
Story Collecting (State diagram + prompt engineering)
Setting1: State diagram of gpTea’s story collecting setting
Story Telling (State diagram + prompt engineering)
Setting 2: State diagram of gpTea’s story-telling setting
Chat completion prompts used by setting 2
