Final project ideas
Visualising data is one of my interests especially when it involves visualisations of society or human beings. So, this is something I want to do for my final project. For my final presentations I have two different ideas, in the end I will pick one of them.
- Honest emoticons
- Happiness lamp
Honest emoticons:
When researching the topic of interpassivity for an essay, I became interested in the fact of how virtual interaction influences peoples —especially juveniles— and their behaviour. The fact nowadays more and more interaction is going through a short message service or instant messaging application, this makes, in my opinion interaction less honest. One can write something without showing any real emotions or even show a different emotion through the use of an emoticon than what she or he is feeling at that time. This is why I want to create “Honest Emoticons”, this is a visualisation of the brain emotions through emoticons. Sensors will read the signals of the brain and translates this in a certain mood, this mood is translated to an emoticon that can be displayed in a chat window or maybe even a tangible product. The person on the other end of the chat will receive an honest emotion.
Happiness toolbox:
I want to create a toolbox with different solutions to facilitate happiness for people. This toolbox needs to be easy to use and easy to carry around for people with a busy schedule. In modern society, a lot of people are stressed because of daily life routine. With the toolbox I want to give the user different options to take a break from this and find a way to do something fun, relaxing or social. By doing this, people will have more energy to work and will become more productive. This will hopefully increasing the person's happiness.
- Happiness lamp:
As an interaction designer I have always been interested to make things easier for people. Create programs that do not cause stress or anger. When we look at the products we use in our daily lives, they do have an influence on our happiness. I do not mean this in a materialistic way, but the case is many products make us unhappy. A lot of people in modern society suffer from stress or are generally feeling unhappy. This is something I want to measure and visualise in the form of a lamp: “The Happiness Lamp”. The Happiness Lamp can show through colour, brightness and maybe even shape, how happy you are feeling at that moment. The lamp will tell you when to take a break and relax or change you current activity to a less stressful one.
The lamp could give a signal when someone should use the happiness toolbox to improve their happiness level.
- Buddha lamp:
Matthieu Ricard is maybe the happiest man alive. He is a French Buddhist monk who lives in Nepal, who after finishing his studies decided to start living as a Tibetan monk. I want to create a physical object that notifies a person when he or she is stressed, since many people might not be fully aware of the stress certain tasks or environment are causing them. When the person is notified, the user is supposed to take a 5 minute break for meditation. Different studies have showed that meditation has a big influence on our well-being, hence this tool will help people feel more relaxed. The lamp can for example simulate the rhythm the user is supposed to breath by the use of lighting, the lamp might light up and down to help the user simulate the breathing pace.
