Ｍia

A wearable camera using mood sensors to trigger video capture of memories, and create immersive experiences for retrieval.

Mia
Life is full of meaningful and exciting moments. However, we can't possibly memorize all the small moments that we have been through. What happens when we forget those precious experiences? Mia (Mood Intelligent Assistant) is a wearable line of sight camera that uses mood sensors to capture memories, and creates immersive experience for retrieval. When Mia is activated, it records video and biometric data that get stored in the cloud. Each memory is assigned a variety of parametric information based on users' emotions. This also enables users to alter or enhance their mood in the future by re-experiencing memories suggested by Mia.

An easy and spontaneous way for modern women to exercise more

Warm-Up and Hooray
To help physically inactive women to start doing more exercise, we worked to eliminate the obstacles that prevent them from doing so. These interactive tools well blend into home-setting environment. That allows users to exercise more spontaneously while they are doing leisure activities at home. Warm Up and Hooray's bouncy and interactive feedback also entice users to exercise a little bit more each day.

A wearable camera using mood sensors to trigger video capture of memories, and create immersive experiences for retrieval.

Overview
The goal of this project was to explore new interactions for a line of sight camera. It was a three-week long group project in an interaction design course. We designed from an overall systemic perspective, thinking about what it meant to see the world through a line of sight camera. What would we want to capture? How does it get stored, and what happens to the information in the future? We produced a video prototype to communicate our design concept and to give potential contexts of future use. During the project, I learned that a good interaction designer creates an environment for interactions between people and artifacts, and turns operations into experiences. The key point was to always focus on designing relationships - the interactions between people, products and the world - instead of simply designing the product itself. I took this as the mantra in my every future design project.

Team Member
Adam Riddle
James Pai
Ann Lin
Elsa Ho
DD Ding

Timeline
Nov 2016 - Dec 2016

Understand

Exploring new concepts for line of sight camera

Functional Decomposition

We first started with understanding a camera's functional purpose to better explore new concepts for line of sight camera. What does it mean to see the world by line of sight camera ? What was it designed for ? We deconstructed concrete ideas of a camera step-by-step into abstraction, from its physical form, physical function to the functional purpose. The result of our decomposition was the core of a line of sight camera : create amazing moments that can be re-lived. Using it as a baseline, our team decided to focus the design on personal memory retrieval. We wanted to bring users back to cherished memories and experience them as if they were there again.

Design

Creating a personal memories retrieval experience

Ideation

After a series of team brainstorming sessions, we built a new camera concept: a wearable camera that could both capture sensory information and recreate the mood of an experience based on the user’s mood. For example, the device would know when the user is in a cheerful mood and record the moment for retrieval. Beyond that, when the user is feeling stressed out, it can also suggest a calming experience and project it to aid in relaxation. We then fleshed out a complete usage scenario given the context of our design. This helped us define what it can do, who uses it, what situation they are in, why they use it, and how they use it.

Brainstorming Sessions and the final concept

Scenario : a wearable camera that can record and project video based on users' mood

How Warm-Up and Hooray fit into the home-setting environment.

Scenario : what do users see when they play videos

Build

Prototyping the interactive system

Interaction model

The concept led to two interaction touch points: capturing videos and retrieving memories. For the physical device, we incorporated a mood sensing mechanism based on EEG technology that would automatically record experiences. For memory retrieval, we designed an interactive mood wheel for the dashboard concept. The wheel enables users to choose suggested videos based on a mood color value. Somber memories are darker colors; cheerful memories are lighter. Since emotion can be more fuzzy and abstract than precise adjectives, we offered a visual way to represent the concept of moods instead of a traditional search menu. The mood wheel was designed to lift the burden of searching and browsing from the viewer.

Physical Device

Interactive mood wheel

Building the interactive system

Deliverable

Mia (Mood Intelligent Assistant) is a wearable line of sight camera using mood sensors to capture memories, and create immersive experiences for retrieval. At its core, Mia can be a mood-altering device. Users can lift or enhance their moods by re-experiencing wonderful moments they have.

The gesture-based interface allows the wearer to take control of curation and fine tune the experience based on preference.

This thin device loops over the ear and record/project video, from the same line of sight, visually, as the user sees.