MOOD MOLD

The Mood Mold is an attempt at emulating music browsing and environment control through the perception of one’s body signals of stress and comfort recorded through the whole day.

An evolution of the classic stress ball that is able to detect your mood by the way the user interact with it.

At the end of a stressing day the Mood Mold plays relaxing music for you and soften the lights. And if you had a great day it will respond to your party mood.

SKILLS

Scenario, Arduino, Working Prototype & Testing, Hardware Connections

TEAM

Diego Hernandez, Vincent Primeau, Zhang Yizin, Me

ROLE

MORE

Programmer and hardware

Tangible Interaction Class,

HK Polytechnic University, 5 weeks

RESEARCH This was a practical project for our Tangible Design class. We didn't focus on User research but rather on experimentation on materials. Goal of the project was to reinvent a classic object and make it interactive. The ‘‘Mood Mold’’ reminds of those ‘‘stress’’ balls people use in a repetitive fashion, making an habit out of playing with an object.
It had to be: FLEXIBLE MALLEABLE INTUITIVE INTELLIGENT

CONCEPT

Combining the idea of a small, unnoticeable item with the power of different software technologies, we can achieve the design of a system that participate seamlessly in the overall day of a person, using their personal preferences as well as the collected data from their usage to generate the adequate content.

The more you use the Mood Mold, the more it shapes itself to your preferences, both physically and in its interactive responsiveness.

Not only participating in adjusting and generating an adequate environment for the user, it ‘‘learns’’ through its collection of the data to better accomodate the different situations in which a person would, for example, desire a relaxing moment even after an equally slow day.

PROTOTYPE

Although we had a very clear idea of what we wanted to build, it proved difficult to actually put it into practice.

The working prototype is multilayered. The outer shell is made of a spongy material similar to a microphone cover. This material have the right tensile strength in order to protect the delicate core. The inner part is a ping pong ball equipped with several switches, connected to the Arduino board.

The prototype is able to count and distinguish different pressure when you squeeze it.

After prolonged interaction the Mood Mold send instructions to the output devices setting the right music and light.

For the final demonstration all the components (Arduino board, Mp3 player, speakers and wires) were hided insight to a wood box in order to simulate the desktop surface.

THAT'S ALL FOLKS!