Amidst finals week, we coordinated to converse with Dr. Nalaka and finally found time the day before public demo day.   Our focus was determining a metric to test how effective our prototype is. We talked to him about how to determine efficacy in two different ways: whether the product actually does what it is supposed to, and whether it helps with stiff neck. For the first, we decided on (in order to show head movement throughout the night) using a headband with an accelerometer to measure how much the head moves throughout the night and thus ensuring that the pillow actually does inflate and deflate. Given the time constraints on our project, we identify this as a way to potentially further the progress on the auto-adjust pillow, but was not something we could reasonably implement by the next day, nor could we find a way to build it in a way that would not detract from the comfort of the subject.  Furthermore, using specified weights on the pressure sensors to mirror the weight of a human head and moving them to ensure that the mbed is actually registering these changes in pressure was a determined-upon goal. Meanwhile for patient effectiveness, after discussing with Dr. Nalaka, we realized that the only true way to analyze ultimate efficacy is to actually run a clinical trial on the effect the product has on a subset of people in a controlled study.  We would do a qualitative analysis each day of how their neck is feeling over the course of several weeks, which is something we would do if we continue working with him after the semester ends. Alongside this, the other way of measuring effectiveness would to be have clinicians conduct range of motion tests of the necks of patients over the similar timeframe.

With all of this done, we finally finished the project! We hope you enjoyed our blog and here are some pictures of the final working product at public demo day!