Team:Nanjing High School/Human Practices
Integraged Human Practices
Design
Prof. Cheng（Specializing in Social Psychology at Nanjing University）
Professor Cheng is a Professor of Social Psychology at Nanjing University. At the beginning of our project, we have limited clue about what we are going to do. Coincidentally, one day, when we were preparing to travel to another place in the waiting room of the station, we found that almost everyone in the waiting room bowed their heads to play with their mobile phones, and even some young children were addicted to games or videos on their mobile phones or iPads. . The people in the waiting room hardly communicated with each other，and the atmosphere was a bit scared. Suddenly an idea hit us: what about trying to use biology methods to change the fact that people prefer to talk to someone in the virtual world rather than the person sitting next to them. However, before we take actions, we decide to confirm that whether it is case-by-case an ignored circumstance. To figure out this, we go for Professor Cheng to see if he can give us the answer. According to Professor Cheng, it is definitively not an exception to the present social environment, and the picture in the waiting room may explain why people feel even more lonely. To forster a friendship in the real world, people need to invest time and emotions, sometimes even money, to the contrast, to develop friendsship in the virtual world,people just needs to chat with each other. When people need someone for help, no friends from the virtual world will offer help because they didn’t form a strong bond with each other due to the lack of investment on it. Failure to receive help from those friends in the virtual world make people feel lonely. So Prof. Cheng believes that if we can manage to make people put down their mobile phones, computers or any other electronic device, and spend this kind of time communicating with friends in the real world can help change the social environment.
Prof. Xiao （Specializing in Synthetic biology at China Pharmaceutical University）
After visiting Prof.. Cheng, we met Prof. Xiao at China Pharmaceutical University. The professor suggested that we could create a microorganism to detect how long people are exposed to blue light. If people know how much blue light they actually suffer, they may feel uneasy and put away their electronic devices. To sum up, we need two characteristics of the microorganism: one is senstivity to blue light, the other is that the microorganism needs to record the time of exposure to blue light. However, it is difficult to produce a microorganism that can record time directly. So we used gene editing techniques to design microorganisms specifically - once exposed to blue lights, they begin to grow. By measuring its growth in the experimental environment and comparing it with the standard statistical data measured in the laboratory, we can infer that how much time it was exposed to blue light. Although this is difficult to achieve, the professor still encourages us to think that it is still possible to create such microbes through teamwork. He also suggested that we may further develop the microbes into a wearable devices, which was the prototype of our conceptual product. Through our later group discussion, we were determined to make a conceptual product like a wearable jewelry. As a result, our team was divided into two parts to work together: dry group and wet group. Team members who are good at doing experiments or have a stronger theoretical foundation in biology joined the latter team, while those who are more good at social research and practice joined the dry group.
So far, the framework of our project design has been basically completed.
Modify
Prof. Peng（Specializing in Business at Nanjing University）
A few days later, when we finished the first version of our project, we went to Prof. Peng for advice. Unlike the professor we've seen before, Prof. Peng suggests that we can make our goals more concrete and visualized. Prof. Peng said that we could consider which groups have the longest exposure to electronic screens at work or in life. What we immediately think of is the white-collar class. Nowadays, in China, many employees, especially white-collar workers, are forced to work overtime, and most of the work that requires employees to work overtime is related to or based on electronic equipment. Therefore, blue light has the greatest impact on it. For our project, if we don't know what we need to focus, it's hard to make it accessible to the public. In addition, smaller people make it easier for us to improve our projects. In addition, Prof. Peng shared his view on the concept of "corporate culture" with us.: corporate culture is necessary for a company in trouble. Prof. Peng believes that if we can think about it, can we find a way to combine the products we are going to design with corporate culture,. We may even add our potential product to the corporate wealfare list. If so, we can expand our audience and the corporate leadership may be more receptive to our views. We all think this is reasonable; in the next step, we will include companies as the potential clients of our incoming products. .
Dr. Yuan(The Director of Ophthalmology at Jiangsu People’s Hospital)
In order to further verify the damage of blue light to people's eyes, we interviewed Dr. Yuan, an ophthalmologist of Jiangsu People's Hospital. According to Dr. Yuan, blue light may lead to myopia and age-related macular degeneration. In acquired ophthalmopathy, the intensity and duration of blue light play a decisive role. The wavelength of blue light also determines its damage range: the shorter the wavelength, the more damage it will cause. Although no data or studies have shown that blue light directly causes some diseases, it is certain that blue light is a potential cause of a large number of eye diseases. Watching videos or movies without blinking for a long time can dry the cornea, which can lead to some eye inflammation. At the end of the interview, we discussed the use of blue-light glasses. Dr. Yuan claims that wearing such glasses is absolutely good for our eyes. However, we should be cautious in choosing glasses because some of them may be fake: some businessmen sell glasses with yellow lenses, claiming that they are anti-blue; however, the appearance of yellow lenses may be the result of their own particle properties, rather than reflecting all blue lights. Also, Dr. Yuan suggested that we visit some factories that actually produce blue-light glasses.
Subo Medical Co., Ltd.
A week later, we went to Subo Medical Co., Ltd., a listed company in gene sequencing and testing to demonstrate our project. Dr. Wang,&Dr. Su, who have been working as researhers there, on behalf of their company shared their points on our projects with us. They described their working experience working the United States, wherea special device to detect radiation was in place to read data and compare it with standard values. The two researcher suggested it would be feasbile and beneficial to design a digital device to tell people how much blue light they were exposed to in order to attract their attention. In addition, the two researchers suggested that in the promotion of our future products, we should make full use of psychology. They specially suggested that we should connect our product design with children’s heatlh since children have already become center in modern China’s families. Every parent carefully handles the things we will introduce to them if they are related to their children's health. Public promotion needs to pay attention to the richness and fun of the content and delineate the key target group: parents in order to capture their psychological concern for children's health. In addition, impressive stories always attract children's attention. These stories can play an important role in conveying the message we want to convey to their parents. Parents will be more worried if they know the harm of blue light to their children. We all thought it was a good suggestion, so in our fundraising event, we invited parents and their children to the scene. Thanks to these valuable suggestions, this proved to be an excellent activity.
The inventor of a new anti-blue light glasses
After visiting Subo Medical Company, we interviewed Dr. Yu, the inventor of the new blue-light glasses. He obtained his Ph.D degree from Shanghai Institute of Technical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Dr. Yu explained that he currently only has an innovative vision. At present, in the Chinese market, all Blu-light glass is made of a specially designed anti-Blu-light coating, but this is not a very smart and durable way to prevent Blu-light, because the coating may not exist for a long time. Therefore, he came up with the idea of designing a special anti-blue glasses, which have the same effect only in physical structure. In other words, the material used to make lenses is very different from ordinary materials because it reflects all the wavelengths of blue light. In addition, glass can also reflect harmful ultraviolet lights, double protection of human eyes. Therefore, once the glass is exposed to strong blue light and ultraviolet light, it is completely blue. Dr. Yu believes that what we are doing is a very meaningful project, because the blue light sensing jewelry we ultimately want to design can serve as a symbol to remind people: "Well, you stare at the screen too long, it's time for your eyes to rest!" If we can find a suitable cooperative product, such as Blu-light glasses and the products we designed, we can try to combine the two elements together, and ultimately present a perfect result.
Generalize
Prof. Chu（Professor,School of Management, Fudan University, Shanghai）
After several days of preparation, we took the project to Shanghai, where we met Professor Chu. Because we still have some problem on the future business expansion of our products, we went to visit Prof.Chu for further suggestions.. In China, impulse consumption is a very common phenomenon. We want to know if we can use these phenomena to promote our products. Mr. Chu explained that sellers need to create an environment in which consumers feel they can do anything for impulsive phenomenon. So, how to make consumers impulsive is a sociological problem.He said that we should strive to create an environment to convince our audience that our products are socially beneficial and that they, the audience, play an important role in the project. We should not let consumers enter the mode of currency conversion, but should guide them into the mode of social transformation, so that their consumption can be sublimated. Motivating consumers and touching their heartswill be the most powerful way for us to do social popularization. At the end of the interview, Prof.r Chu expressed his appreciation for our starting point based on social problems.
Ms. Wu（Partner, Shanghai Branch of Ernst & Young）
After leaving Fudan University, we go to visit Ms. Wu (Partner at Shanghai Branch of Ernst & Young). According to Ms. Wu, even after work, it is almost impossible for her to put her cell phone or computer aside because of her industry, consultancy service. She always needs to keep in touch with all kinds of clients, even in foreign countries, which means that there may be time differences between her clients and herself. Therefore, she needs to make sure that her clients can contact her anytime and anywhere. Ms. Wu also introduced the general work style and career development in consulting industry, from which we learned that in such a highly-pressured and fast-paced industry, almost all the staff need to work over time in front of their computer or with their cell phones, otherwise, they will fall off the right career track. Seeing this, we tried our best to explain the negative effects of using electronic devices over time and especially at night. On the basis of that we promoted our conceptual product-a wearable jewelry that may record the time exposed to blue light, which may serve as a reminder for a healthy lifestyle. Ms. Wu agreed with our product design and expressed that she may consider to help us with promote this product for her staff at Ernst & Young if it is fully developed.
Dr. He（Vice President, Kingnet Network Co., Ltd）
Dr. He’s knowledge on "blue light" is limited to anti-blue light cell phone membrane, anti-blue light glasses and some other items, but he has not had a thorough understanding. He said he spend about eight hours a day in front of a computer and checks his phone before bed. According to Dr. He, many Internet companies in China, such as Alibaba and Toutiao, have employees working more than 12 hours a day, and the way the IT industry works is really boring. In addition, the competition among employees is very fierce. Although the company does not monitor all the working hours of employees in real time, the company will eventually compare their salary with the results presented by employees. Therefore, many people may not even pass the probation period. At the same time, the company will create a more relaxed working environment for employees, such as some equipment for playing ball games, running, and playing games. Knowing that the network companies have not taken effective preventive measures on the harm of blue light to human body, we still start from the harm of blue light and introduce our project to Dr. He. In particular, after talking about the significant negative effects of blue light on people's sleep, Dr. He immediately became acutely aware of the seriousness of blue light hazards. According to Dr. He, many employees do mention poor sleep quality. In the following layout of the company, he said he would try to promote the anti-blue light project.
Sinopec Nanjing
Finally, we arrived at Sinopec Nanjing to continue our generalizing programme. Because of the basic work, the knowledge level of most employees is not high, most of them graduated from junior middle school. They know little about blue light and pay little attention to its harm to the body. However, the factory still formulates effective protective measures, such as equipping every welder with an effective filter of harmful radiation (including: Ultraviolet and blue light masks). After explaining the seriousness of the hazards caused by blue light and our project to the factory director, he expressed that in the next step of the development of the enterprise, they will strive to replace computer screens with anti-blue light screens, and give more blue-light glasses to employees.
Community Outreach
The experience in the Sinopec Nanjing give us inspiration that many elder people, just like the workers in the factory, are not familiar with the topic related to the blue light as they do not use electronic devices as often as young people do. However, most of them used to watching television, which also generates much blue light before going to bed. Some of them even forget to turn off the TV before they fall asleep. As a result, we define that the blue light may also do harm to their health. Then we decide to do a lecture in the community in order to popularize our anti-blue light project. Those elder people in the Huaihai Road Community do not know much about the harm of blue light as expected. So we provided brochures related to how to reduce the harm of the blue light for free, and it turns out to be that we are so popular that the director of that community invites us to do a second lecture in the next day. For the purpose of proliferating the impact of our anti-blue light project, we finally give another lecture in the second day.
Improve and further practices
The blue light has drawn the attention of some physicians and scientists, and they reveal the effects of blue light to the public. As more and more people realize the “stealth killer” hidden by their side, we provide them with the chance to monitor their blue light absorption amount.
In today’s society, people tend to use electronic devices more often and easily get drown into the sea of artificial blue light. While more tasks require computers to accomplish the world-wide communication, blue light invades our lives and raises the chance of blue light induced ailment. To suppress the negative effects of blue light, many anti blue light items are made. The prevalence of smart phones is the main obstacle to anti blue light project.
Using our blue light detector, you will be able to measure the amount of blue light you are exposure to and this detector will alarm you to maintain a healthy life style. Since people now are aware of hidden hazard, the detector plays a role more like an alarm clock. For the group of people who lacks self-control like children, the detector would be the best alarm.
Have them power down their electronics, including the TV, an hour or two before bedtime so their bodies can start producing more melatonin. If that’s just not possible—if they’re madly finishing their homework on a computer, for instance—it helps to dim the brightness on the screen. Or, you can install an app that automatically warms up the colors on the screen—away from blues and toward reds and yellows—at sunset. Also, avoid using energy-efficient (blue) bulbs in nightlights in bedrooms and bathrooms; opt for dim red lights instead because red light has a higher wavelength and does not suppress the release of melatonin.