Sensing Prototype: Collabright

Ninety percent of communication is nonverbal. Though everyday life is full of nonverbal communication such as traffic signals, morning alarms, and even facial expressions, people often find themselves unable to work as a team once they can no longer verbally speak to one other.

So our group posed the question, what if we forced two people to work together by communicating through outputs appealing to two different senses?

Collabright bridges two users by allowing one to control sound output in the form of the classic “Happy Birthday” and the other to control visual output in the form of a strip of LED lights. The user whose output is sound controls the song by running a piece of wire down a length of rubber tubing at varying speeds and positions while the user who changes the LEDs controls the lights by running a piece of wire around a color wheel, also composed of rubber tubing.

The idea is that the users can create an experience together that is more powerful than when either one works alone.