Physical interaction design DH2400

The Happiness Blanket is a revolutionary device that visually shows the wellbeing of a passenger in real time by changing colour to reflect their mood while on-board. One of the innovative aspects of the Happiness Blanket is the mode of interaction which measures brain waves to understand the user mood and feelings. It could also be categorized as a wearable and made of natural materials. As the blanket change color depending on the mood of the user it is interesting to reflect on what color represent what feeling and how users could be affected by these colors.

Project Link

Nod is a gesture control ring. The ring concept is inline with the course theme since it is wearable and can be made by natural material (metal). It proves that gesture control can be really accurate and feasible even in a small form factor. In a way it blends in and its intractability is not obvious.

Project Link

This is a project from kobakant, a interaction design collective. The solar T-shirt is a wearable for a sunny place, it has a feather spinning by your neck. The project is interesting for this course as it uses natural materials, with the fabric and the feather. It is also interesting as they explore using a circuit that harvest energy from a solar cell and use conductive traces.

http://www.kobakant.at/DIY/?p=1314

warning signs from Susan Ngo on Vimeo.

Durr the vibrating watch

Durr is a clock that has no hands or numbers. Instead, it vibrates every 5 minutes, like a metronome.
Made by two Norwegian designers, the idea behind it was to explore the non-linear way that we humans experience time. When you are doing something pleasurable, time flies, but other times it will crawl by very slowly. With the watch, you become aware of time passing (and thereby your own perception of it) in a very tangible way.

The watch contains a stripped-down Arduino micro controller, a simple vibrator and clock battery that lasts 5 months.

We liked the idea because of the simplicity of both the concept and the implementation. We also liked that it forces its users to reconsider the concept of “time”. Maybe feeling the passage of time is not completely pleasant, but it would nevertheless be very interesting to try it for ourselves.

Ring

It’s a ring that allows you to interact with any device just with moments of your finger.

Why we liked it

We liked that it could represent a big change on how people interact with technology. This potentially allows users to interact with simple hand gestures like pointing with the finger with any application or device. Allows you to send texts, control home appliances with just your finger. This has a lot of potential for specific situations where the use of devices like keyboards, mouses or touch screens is not suitable.

How it works

Gets the input movements from accelerometers and touch sensors. Then communicates with an app on a mobile phone trough low consumption bluetooth. The phone then communicates with other apps or devices. It also gives the user feedback trough built-in vibration.

Like-a-hug

Like-a-hug is an interactive jacket developed at MIT Media Lab’s Tangible Media Group. The jacket is connected to the wearers Facebook account and gives the wearer a hug each time that person gets a like. In turn you can respond to a like by hugging (yourself) which then triggers a hug to the responder. A hug is simulated by inflating the jacket, more or less squeezing the wearer. When a hug is sent the jacket respond to the pressure put on the wearer's jacket. The jacket is connected to Facebook via a phone.

The project is interesting because it connects social media, otherwise only available on phones and computers, to the physical world. A "like" on Facebook is easy to send without putting that much meaning into the action. However, when you know that the person receives a physical hug one may put more meaning into what a "like" actually means.