Our fantasy device

By Dipika Titus

Faculty: David Rios

For our first physical computing class, we were tasked with making our own fantasy device. It could be anything, the world was our oyster.

Cesar, Sarah and I were put into a group. The three of us came up with a bunch of ideas but we had to pick one so we tried to combine as many of those as we could. All of them seemed to have an underlying theme of understanding others’ emotions and feelings.

We therefore imagined and created a prototype of a device that would allow people in the New York subway to be aware of their fellow traveller's emotions.

How would our device work?

1. As the commuters swipe their card or tap to pay, they would step onto a plate that recorded their basic body statics - temperature and heartbeat.
2. The data would then be collected and portrayed on the screens inside each train compartment.
3. The data would be in the form of colours, allowing for a language of universal understanding.
4. Either the predominant emotion or feeling would be portrayed like hues on the Empire Estate building or in the form of bouncing balls on a screen displaying the different emotions in proportion to the data collected.

Questions that came up during our brainstorming and presentation

1. Would everyone want to share their bio-data? - Privacy issues? They could have the option to say no.
2. How accurate would the collection of the data, considering the massive footfall?