final project ideas
  • assignment
    • starting to outline the final project.
  • motivation

    • technology can bring people together over long distances, but often at the cost of a lost face to face meeting or physical contact. it can also isolate us from other people: listening to music on the subway prevents casual conversation with strangers; text messaging distracts from face to face conversations; getting a phone call can interrupt a lecture, meeting, or social gathering. i want to experiment with technologies that bring people closer together instead of pushing them apart.

  • concept

    • use technology to amplify and broadcast feelings and emotions that are usually private, to create intimate connections between people. most of these ideas revolve around making the human heartbeat visible, tangible, and audible at an unusual distance, and also making the human body an interface for information exchange (instead of a computer). some possible applications are:

      touch my heartbeat use a vibrating motor to simulate a person's heartbeat.

      • roombeat visualize the heartbeats of occupants of a room, broadcast on the wall for all to see.

      infotouch exchange information by touching hands with another person, instead of hooking up electronic devices. a digital handshake? a digital business card?

  • technology

    • heart beat sensor: a couple of options here. build my own ekg. order a commercial heartrate sensor. use a piezo strapped to a tight wristband? other options to be discussed in class.

      capacitive sensing: for sensing contact between two different people, proximity of different devices.