Architec Tradure

Category: product design

  • 12JanTaptap, the affectionate scarf

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    TapTap: A Haptic Wearable for Asynchronous Distributed Touch Therapy

    I continued the development on my conceptual idea touching memories and as a team we came up with a final prototype called ‘taptap’.

    TapTap is a wearable haptic system that allows nurturing human touch to be recorded, broadcast and played back for emotional therapy. Haptic input/output modules in a convenient modular scarf provide affectionate touch that can be personalized.

    Movie of Taptap


    This picture shows the second prototype that is a scarf with large pockets with a power supply. The design of the scarf is intended to make it wearable in a number of ways and allow specific TapTap actuators to be mounted wherever the wearer desires. The outside of the scarf is a public color (gray) while the inside and its intimate actuators are a warm color (pink).

    Based on haptic devices, taptap can be re-configured to record and play back the touch that is most meaningful to each user. It is made from felt in two layers: one grey one that faces the public and a pink layer that touches you and contains the haptic modules in specially designed pockets. Taptap can be worn as a regular scarf, and custom touch modules can be placed in powered pockets within to record and play back touch where and when you want it

    Taptap was blogged by Regine Debatty on we-make-money-not-art.com with a nice summary and useful references 🙂

    Taptap is a team and class project for the Tangible Media class final assignment at MIT Media Lab taught by Dr Hiroshi Ishii. I presented with Leo at CHi’06 as an extended Abstract of Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ‘06), (Montreal, Quebec, Canada. April 22-27, 2006) by Bonanni, L., Lieberman, J., Vaucelle, C., Zuckerman, O. (alphabetical order). Download pdf.

    Taptap was part of the second Seamless fashion show, on February 1, at the Boston Museum of Science.

    On this picture, I wear a second prototype

    A few publications on Taptap and its next steps:
    . A Framework for Haptic Psycho-Therapy Published in the Proceedings of IEEE ICPS Pervasive Health Systems Workshop, Lyon, France, 2006.
    . Affective TouchCasting Published in the Proceedings of SIGGRAPH’06, Boston, USA. Abstract from publisher: ACM Press. Download pdf

  • 16MayMachine Therapy

    I mentioned the work of Kelly Dobson about a year ago. Today, I attended her VERY inspiring thesis defense at the Media Lab, researching on Machine Therapy. I love her personal relationship to machines. I cannot wait to read her thesis!

    Abstract

    In this thesis I describe a new body of work called Machine Therapy, a methodology for revealing the vital relevance of subconscious elements of human-machine interactions that works within art, design, psychodynamics, and engineering. This practice highlights what machines actually do and mean, in contrast to what their designers consciously intended. Machine Therapy is a cyclical process that alternates between discussion of and sessions for empathic relationships with domestic appliances, personal extension and connection via wearable and prosthetic apparatuses, and the design of evocative visceral robots that interact with people’s understandings of themselves and each other. Combining research and practice in digital signal processing and machine learning, mechanical engineering, and textile sensor design, I have been able to create new objects and relationships that are unique in some aspects while maintaining quotidian familiarity in other aspects. This is illustrated through the documented construction of several projects including re-appropriated domestic devices, wearable apparatuses, and machines that act in relation with users’ autonomic signals. These Machine Therapy devices are evaluated in studies of participants’ interactive engagements with the machines as well as participants’ affective responses to the machines. The Machine Therapy projects facilitate unusual explorations of the parapraxis of machine design and use: these usually unconscious elements of our interactions with machines critically affect our sense of self, agency in the social and political world, and shared emotional, cultural, and perceptual development.

    Dissertation Committee

    Christopher Csikszentmihályi

    Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences

    Muriel Cooper Professor of Media Arts and Sciences

    Program in Media Arts and Sciences

    MIT Media Laboratory

    Rosalind W. Picard

    Professor of Media Arts and Sciences

    Program in Media Arts and Sciences

    MIT Media Laboratory

    Edith Ackermann, PhD

    Honorary Professor of Developmental Psychology

    University of Aix-Marseille I, France

    Visiting Scientist, MIT School of Architecture

    Kelly’s Web site

    Computing Culture research group


  • 04MayTouch Sensitive Apparel at Chi 2007

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    Poster presented at Chi 2007

    Our Touch Sensitive apparel is inspired by the vision to leverage stress, comfort, and massage people while they are on the move. When always on the move, as an interview based study has shown, people use technological devices to “tune-out” or express their fear of technology by finding “a place where [their] soul is” . What if objects that people carry with them and even carry on them could offer this sensory comfort that they seem to seek?

    More on our Touch Sensitive Apparel.

    Inspiration In hypermobile societies, people carry objects, information and goods. They develop habits. The notion of habitus coined by Bourdieu relates to everything that someone does, and in fact defines the individual. The search for comfort, to feel at home (to inhabit space through hab-its, habitus) when on the move defines the populations of our hyper-societies.

    Design

    Touch·Sensitive is a work-in-progress to develop a series of haptic modules that allow computational massage therapy to be diffused, customized and controlled by people on the move. It provides individuals with a sensory cocoon. Our current prototypes succeeded in defining a flexible structure, a mechanism of diffusion, and a feedback system for alerting and comforting the user through haptic means.

    In addition, we propose to integrate machine-learning algorithms to understand the massage needs of the users through the analysis over time of the correlation between the motions of the user, the location of the pressure points, the intensity and qualities of the stimulus. We plan to develop these next steps along with specialists in massage therapy.

    Download Chi 2007 WIP paper

    Touch Sensitive Apparel was presented at Chi 2007. Enthusiasm, advices, references, and new ideas inspired by the visitors will lead to a new prototype this summer.


  • 04MayTouch Sensitive Apparel at Chi 2007

    If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed to receive the latest Architectradure’s articles in your reader or via email. Thanks for visiting!


    Poster presented at Chi 2007

    Our Touch Sensitive apparel is inspired by the vision to leverage stress, comfort, and massage people while they are on the move. When always on the move, as an interview based study has shown, people use technological devices to “tune-out” or express their fear of technology by finding “a place where [their] soul is” . What if objects that people carry with them and even carry on them could offer this sensory comfort that they seem to seek?

    More on our Touch Sensitive Apparel.

    Inspiration In hypermobile societies, people carry objects, information and goods. They develop habits. The notion of habitus coined by Bourdieu relates to everything that someone does, and in fact defines the individual. The search for comfort, to feel at home (to inhabit space through hab-its, habitus) when on the move defines the populations of our hyper-societies.

    Design
    Touch·Sensitive is a work-in-progress to develop a series of haptic modules that allow computational massage therapy to be diffused, customized and controlled by people on the move. It provides individuals with a sensory cocoon. Our current prototypes succeeded in defining a flexible structure, a mechanism of diffusion, and a feedback system for alerting and comforting the user through haptic means.
    In addition, we propose to integrate machine-learning algorithms to understand the massage needs of the users through the analysis over time of the correlation between the motions of the user, the location of the pressure points, the intensity and qualities of the stimulus. We plan to develop these next steps along with specialists in massage therapy.

    Download Chi 2007 WIP paper

    Touch Sensitive Apparel was presented at Chi 2007. Enthusiasm, advices, references, and new ideas inspired by the visitors will lead to a new prototype this summer.

  • 03MarSculpting Behavior

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    Hayes Raffle not only just had two full academic papers accepted to the first class conference IDC 2007: Interaction design and Children but he is also a talented sculptor and designer. His Super Cilia Skin reflects his aesthetic sensibility and his ongoing passion for kinetic sculpture.

    Video

    Super Cilia Skin

    After co-creating and designing the award-winning ZOOB building system, Hayes joined the Tangible Media Group at the MIT Media Laboratory and created Topobo, a 3D constructive assembly system with kinetic memory and the ability to record and playback physical motion.
    Video

    a ZOOB creature


    a Topobo creature

    If you happen to be in the bay area, don’t miss Hayes’ talk, open to the public, that he is giving at the Berkeley Institute of Design, UC Berkeley, March 6th, from 1 to 2pm.
    Information about his talk.

    During the talk, he will explain how with Topobo children can assemble sculptures that dance and walk. He will present Fuzzmail a program that allow children to write a message that unfolds in time. He will show how with Jabberstamp children can embed stories, sounds and voices in their original drawings.

  • 02MarRobotic furniture design

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    Woojuin



    Woojuin magazine table

    Designer Victor Vetterlein works on robotic furniture. His Woojuin (2007) is a light fixture inspired by pod architecture & robotics. In the Woojuin magazine table, the reference to robotic is clear, and proposes a critique on automated lives in a digital age.

    More pictures on Moco Loco and Archinect


  • 29NovSemiotic principles for practical design

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    I recently gave a lecture for the Tangible Interfaces class lead by Professor Hiroshi Ishii. I presented my process of design from a Graphical User Interface to a Tangible User Interface. I also introduced semiotic principles for practical design in the form of a design assignment.

    I introduced a visual aesthetic process to bring the students into re-thinking their own process from their first ideas to the conceptualisation of their project.



    The visual aesthetic production process by Howard Riley (2004)

    The main point is that social and individual percepts are codified into material form. Products can then be decomposed into separated features. This help understand that, when combined, these features become cultural choices. Pointing out the combination of features naturally point to cultural implications, i.e. are culture specific.

    The final point is to determine within a concept what are the assumptions while making design choices. It helps articulate a project within a framework and allows the identification of the ‘why’ of the final design choices that will later be encoded into material form.

    I also presented the Semiotic Square by Greimas and Rastier.

    Designers can use semiotic tools for visualizing social ideology embedded in combinations of features.

    A selection of references

    HOWARD RILEY (2004) Perceptual modes, semiotic codes, social mores: a contribution towards a social semiotics of drawing. Visual Communication, Vol. 3, No. 3, 294-315 .pdf

    ALAN RHODES and RODRIGO ZULOAGO (2003) A semiotic analysis of high fashion advertising. 2003. .pdf

    OSBORN J.R. (2005) Theory Pictures as Trails: Diagrams and the Navigation of Theoretical Narratives Cognitive Science Online, 3.2, pp. 15-44 .pdf


  • 16NovSeamless-sensory Interventions

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    Based on my previous work on haptics for psychotherapy, I am now designing Seamless Sensory Interventions for the treatment of mental and neurological disorders.

    My current research proposes haptics as the key to bringing treatment into the social sphere through devices, and providing new ways to mediate between the patient and the therapist both in and outside of therapy. Self-mutilation is a perfect test-case, because of the definitive “physicality” of the symptoms. However, the broader solutions that I am proposing have implications for diseases as diverse as autism, depression, and schizophrenia.


  • 21SepSleep disorders interventions through technology mediated environment

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    Exploring the synthesis of temperature deployed through haptic systems, I have found that researchers have previously considered the effects of an electric blanket on sleep stages and body temperature in young healthy men. They conclude that use of a temperature-controlled electric blankets under low ambient temperature may decrease cold stress to support sleep stability and thermoregulation during sleep.

    Reference of the paper

    Okamoto-Mizuno, Kazue; Tsuzuki, Kazuyo; Ohshiro, Yasushi; Mizuno, Koh (2005) Effects of an electric blanket on sleep stages and body temperature in young men. Ergonomics, Vol. 48 Issue 7, p749.

    Based on research on seasonal affective disorders (SAD), designers have also created bedding that synchronizes the body clock. It is a poetic and transparent manner to support patients with seasonal affective disorder in which the insufficience of day-light causes the onset of depression. Designers have also created the SRE – Sleep & Recovery Enhancer. The SRE guide the user through autogenous exercises to lower the stress-level and reduce time to fall asleep.


  • 21JulFramework for Haptic Psycho Therapy

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    Hurt Me prototype



    Cool Me Down prototype

    It is a pity that just the excellent personalities suffer most from the adverse effects of the atmosphere -Goethe

    Together with Leo we wrote a paper on a framework for Haptic Psycho Therapy. We presented our research at the Health Pervasive Systems Workshop of the IEEE International Conference of Pervasive Services 2006.

    Download the powerpoint slides of our presentation

    Abstract: A growing body of evidence supports touch-based therapy for assisting sensory issues stemming from common social and psychological problems. Simulating touch through haptic devices can complement existing treatments for mental illness by providing soothing sensations that help to ground the senses. We introduce the concept of using computerized touch stimulation as a means for psychological therapy, and present a haptic device that allows touch information to be captured, broadcast and replayed in a wearable garment. To be effective outside the home or care-giving facility, this new type of therapeutic wearable needs to be highly customizable, easily controlled by the user and discrete enough to be worn in public.

    We developped four prototypes that will be exhibited at the A + D Gallery in Chicago, September 7 – October 21, 2006

    The Touchcasting serie consists of:

    COOL ME DOWN – An Electronic Cold Wrap for the Treatment of Schizophrenia

    More info about Cool Me Down

    – Patent pending –

    HURT ME – A Bracelet that Generates Controlled Pain for Psycho-Therapy

    More info about Hurt Me

    – Patent pending –

    SQUEEZE ME – A Vest that Simulates Therapeutic Holding

    More info about Squeeze Me

    – Patent pending –

    TOUCH ME – A System and Method for the Remote Application of Touch Therapy

    More info about Push My Buttons

    – Patent pending –

    I now working independently on Seamless Sensory Interventions for the treatment of mental and neurological disorders.

    My current research proposes haptics as the key to bringing treatment into the social sphere through devices, and providing new ways to mediate between the patient and the therapist both in and outside of therapy. Self-mutilation is a perfect test-case, because of the definitive “physicality” of the symptoms. However, the broader solutions that I am proposing have implications for diseases as diverse as autism, depression, and schizophrenia.