KF-project-1-BrainstormDownload
  • Mimicking the pattering of rain through LEDs
    • Activated when my partner makes sounds or vibrations that resemble rain, like short quick thumps (for example, the sound of swift keyboard movements almost mimics the sound of rain)
  • Recreate crunching/eating sounds through the movement of a metallic foil-like sheet or crinkle fabric. Getting it to scrunch up could be a potential way to replicate such sounds.
    • I have always found comfort in the way other people find comfort in food, especially being Asian, where being loud while eating demonstrates your enjoyment of the food.
  • Muffled chatter is: sporadic shifts in volume, bursts of laughter (your wavelengths peak, high activity), deep silence (are they pondering? Fighting? Done with the conversation?)
    • Replicated through pacing. Can be done visually (eg. more aggressive colors when you really hear the reverberations of voices, frequent flickering in active parts of convo) or audibly (playing with high and low frequencies, constant buzzing, creating white noise, etc)
    • Sometimes working in silence is uncomfortable so I’ll play ASMR bar noises or cafe sounds. This project has the same energy.
  • Guided breathing exercises
    • (Communicate through signals [1, 2, 3]: 1. I need you to squeeze my hand; 2. back rubs; 3. breathing exercises)
    • Pacer, for grounding: 5 things you can see → 5 spaced out deep vibrations, 4 things you can touch → 4 vibrations, 3, 2, 1…
    • Headspace guides you through breathing exercises through vibrations. We could implement something similar here — like 2 quick flashes or vibrations to signal “inhale,” a deep long vibration to signal “hold,” three vibrations for “exhale”). This is different from Headspace because you actually your partner there so you’ll feel more like a person who is asking a friend for guidance and less like a client or an app user.
  • A trigger leads another device to dip a watering pot and water something.
    • potential trigger: attaching inclinometer to a glass of water, and when you lift your glass to have a drink, you are also giving life to another form. nourishing relationships 🙂
  • Reproduce grunts and coughs and gruffness, all the less pretty and human parts of us, through vibrations on the Adafruit or sudden, twitchy movements on the servo motor
    • Could/should probably be included in a project that replicates other noises too to convey these particular sounds through a contrast
  • Footsteps: create an echo, distortion
    • Use flashes to recreate pace, frequency of footsteps
    • Exploring rhythm, sounds (hearing footsteps, knowing who someone in the house is based on their footsteps)
  • Device responds to heartbeat, ie. using a servo motor to create swinging movements at a pace proportional to the pace of one’s heartbeat, or the Adafruit, with more glaring colors when fast and more soothing colors when normal.
    • Doesn’t require partner to actively tell you what’s going on in their head but having a sense of where someone is at physiologically can also give you an idea of where they’re at mentally
    • My best friend and I both get palpitations and will text each other about our heart rates (and about every other minuscule aspect of our lives). This is a truth from my life I got this idea from!
  • A device that responds to the sounds of doors
    • I realize that when I’m in a house with other people I’m hyperaware about the sounds of doors opening and closing. I realized I could physically represent how I respond to these sounds this with the tools from this course — for example, having adjacent LEDs quickly up one after another would very much convey the alarmed behavior in my head. After this data is transmitted to my partner, they can press a button to release a counteractive signal to my display.
  • A habits tracker. There are blind spots when we look at our own behavior, but when we relay our habits to our partners, we can better track our tendencies. For example, the inclinometer on the Bluefruit could emit a signal to one’s partner every time an individual picks up their phone, a pack of cigs, other vices…
  • Blinds raise in response to light. Could be fun (or extremely annoying) to do with a partner in a different timezone, like in a sort of uniting, kind of codependent “we rise together” type of way?