1D. Documentation of Prototype

In our future scenario, the upper class society longs for natural environments and genuine relationship. With this in mind I thought about what’s something that can contribute to this society. Since the upper class are the creative ones, that designs new technologies and ideas in the society. I made my first prototype, a pen that can translate colours from thoughts to paper. I researched about how brain waves can actually be detected to show what state brain is at and how much a person is concentrating or how alert they are. Then redesigned my prototype to two-piece that is stuck to the temples of your head and connected to your finger. After body storming with that prototype, it wasn’t practical and it didn’t feel secure when using it. I made it into an earpiece so it can be secured onto the ear and by having a glove like prototype for the hand. It means you can utilise all 5 finger to design.

Here is the final prototype, since our future scenario is set in Japan, I named this prototype Iroironairo (Iro), which translates to various colours in Japanese. The logo is also inspiration from the circle in the Japanese flag and the Japanese in the centre is the kanji for colours. I named it that because any colours you think about can be reproduced with this device. It has two pieces; one is wrapped around the ear to secure and connected to the temples to receive your brain waves to produce the colours. After it receives your thought it translates the colours through to your fingertips. This specialised glove is a made out of thin clear skin like material, which is super comfortable to wear.

Documentation of prototype in use:

Here is a video of Iro in use. The user demonstrates how her thought translates into colours. From the ear piece that is connected to the temple, which detects her brain waves, then sends signals down to the glove that is made from skin like material. Her sweat glands trapped in the glove helps produces the ink onto the paper. She is in a happy mood so the colour red is vibrant.

Everybody translates the colour differently as the colours are affected by your mood/ emotions. When you aren’t thinking of any colour in particular and just purely designing, the colours will come out as whatever mood you’re in. For example, if you are in a happy mood, the colours you think of are going to be vibrant and when you are in a sad mood the colours you think of are going to be dull.

I think the most challenging part for this prototype is technology now hasn’t advance to the stage where you can detect emotions with brain waves. EEG can only detect the state of the brain, if it’s relaxed or concentrated. Also for human sweat glands to reproduce colours are nothing that has been done before so further research into it would make this prototype somehow work. However, I think if the glove has RGB ink powder in it, mixing it with the sweat glands can be another possibility to reproduce colours, similar to the Scribble pen, I’ve talked about in prototype 1.

 

REFERENCE

Scribble, 2017, Feels Like Living In The Future, San Francisco, viewed 7 October 2017. <https://www.scribblepen.com/>.

Omar Saadi Alshear, 2016, brain Wave Sensors for Every Body, ResearchGate, viewed 11 October 2017, <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/311582768_Brain_Wave_Sensors_for_Every_Body>