Chubbs are chubby animals that will guide you through the city with their cuteness and amazing personality.

The idea of the chubbs started out of a school assignment on urban mining devices. An urban mining device is a device that collects data from its surroundings like wifi signals, temperature, movement, and more. The assignment was to create our own urban mining device in a small group. I worked on this project with two of my friends. 

The project is made up out of two parts, a small device with sensors and a website where each individual device can be tracked. When someone visits a city they can pick a device at a pickup point in a station or tourist center. From there they can take it wherever they. Once they have finished their visit, they return the device back to a pickup point. A new user can then take that device with them. 

The device itself has the shape of a pokémon ball and no bigger than a tennis ball. We decided we wanted something quite small so it would be easy for the user to take everywhere.Inside of the device are two sensors: an accelerometer and a temperature sensor. These sensors are used to track in what kind of environment the user is, like whether it is warm or cold, or if the user is running or walking. Each device also gets a number, which is used to track each device. 

We never got around to building the device itself since our combined technical skills are not that great. Our focus therefore was on building a strong brand. 

Since we wanted people to get a real connection with the project, we decided to create a character (or characters) that are linked to each the device. The characters we ended up creating were CHUBBS, round and chubby little animals. Puck, the penguin, is the first chubb that we created.

Each Chubb has one basic shape. Based on the data from the device like the temperature the chubb takes on a different shape. For example when it is cold the chubb gets a scarf and hat. If you get the conditions just right, meaning it is the right temperature and speed, the chubb is very happy. On the poster below is an overview of all the different looks Puck (the first chubb) can have, depending on its surroundings. 

To visualize the data from each device we decided to built a website. On this website users can see their own chubb and the measured temperature and their movement. This way they can keep an eye on him and see if he is happy or not. 

To log into the website the user has to enter the number on his/her device. The user also has to enter some basic information about themselves like their name and email. This information is only used to give the user a more personalised experience. 

Once the user is logged in, they can see what chubb is linked to the device, what temperature it is, at what speed they are walking and the route they have already walked. 

Below is a little video about how the website works. Disclaimer: it is in Dutch. 

For each part of the project and the process we made little books. Each book is written from Puck's perspective to give the reader an even closer connection to him and the project. Below is one of these books that describes the project and how it started, which we named the journal. It is written like Puck wrote something in his journal.