Therapeutic massages via facebook!

Put your online friends in your pocket and ... in your jacket! Based on our online communication style with social networks such as facebook and the research on remote physical communication, you can now be anonymously/friends-only massaged. Brainchild of Keywon Chung, Carnaven Chiu, Xiao Xiao, Peggy Pei-Yu Chi and Hiroshi Ishii, Stress OutSourced (SOS) is a peer-to-peer network that allows anonymous users to send each other therapeutic massages to relieve stress. By applying the emerging concept of crowdsourcing to haptic therapy, SOS brings physical and affective dimensions to our already networked lifestyle while preserving the privacy of its members. SOS is an exploration and illustration of a new field of haptic social networking.




Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure

Therapeutic objects

Having researched and designed haptic devices to support psychotherapeutic treatments, I am fascinated by French designer :) Mathieu Lehanneur's work on therapeutic objects he conceived with psychiatric consultants: Bernard Lachaux, Patrick Lemoine and model makers: Alban Danguy des Deserts. These objects are part of the permanent collection of the MOMA, NYC.

He proposes a series of objects not only as an attempt to bring design into the medical sphere, but essentially to design medications from the perspective of the patient and his/her illness relationship.

His scenario envisions: the placebo effect, a participation of the patient in his/her treatment, making the medication a communicative and sensory object, debating on the mechanistic approach of modern pharmacology, playing on emotions of attraction, desire, fear and repulsion towards a device or a particular form using gestures, usage practices and rituals.


Therapeutic felt-tip pen, 2001.

This analgesic for chronic pain is a systemic medication, which acts on all symptoms together. All that is required is to write on the painful area of the body each day and to remove the used cartridge at the end of each day. This transdermal product is coupled with a user-friendly ink that disappears after several minutes.




The Third Lung, 2001.

This project consists of a base treatment for asthma. The patient who refuses to accept his illness will reject even more the idea of taking medication unnecessary. The idea behind this therapeutic object is to establish a relationship of dependence.

But in this case the medication is dependent on the patient. Between two doses, the volume of the medication increases, this displaying its own physiological problem and indicating to the patient the urgency of taking the medication. Once the dose is administered, the volume decreases and returns to its normal level, only to expand once again until the next dose is administered.


The First Mouthful


Posted by Cati Vaucelle
♥ Architectradure

Sweet logo

To design psychohaptic's logo, I searched a visual identity for the research. The logo that I ended up creating visually represents a mix between therapy and artificial comfort: a cross pink. The pink reminded me of artificial candy' sweetness, and the cross aimed to connect to medical care. Creating an artificial sensation of touch with Psychohaptics for therapy, the pink cross logo worked pretty well.

I recently discovered Happy Pills, a sweet shop in Barcelona designed in homage to traditional pharmacies. The logo is exactly the same one than the one I made for our project at MIT. I started to be interested in the common points between projects with similar logos. I envision a database of logos with a few keywords on the rationale for their design choices and their corresponding projects. As for a navigation system through design works, that would be very exciting!

M designed the branding and packaging as well as the interior of the store. “When you get candy in your mouth, your mood lifts, you feel better,” says M partner Marion Donneweg. “It’s like a bite of happiness.”

Take comfort seriously!

Sometimes you want to blog, read a book, channel surf, eat popcorn or play World of Warcraft and it is chilly in your home. It is hard to lie on the couch or in bed and play video games without your shoulders and upper body exposed to the elements. Well I found the solution: the Slanket, a blanket that wraps you up and you end up snugged like a toasty burrito in the middle of winter!
NB: Works especially well for Boston area!

Scarf with electrically operated massager

Scarf with electrically operated massager United States Patent 6537235, by Connor, Clara (Fountain Valley, CA, US) and Busto, Ernest J. (Cypress, CA, US), March 2003.

A combination massager and scarf assembly having a number of electrical motors secured in a flexible casing, which flexible casing is removably secured in the interior of the scarf. The scarf is wrapped around the flexible casing and the motors in the casing are electrically connected to a control box having an A.C. or D.C. power supply to actuate the electrical motors. The control box includes a knob to regulate the speed of vibration of the motors.

A breathing robot

Few weeks ago, I carried in my arms Omo, Kelly Dobson's new companion robot. A very therapeutic robot, it expands and matches your breathing. Made of rubber, shaped like an egg to be carried in your arms, it feels soft and alive.

Omo is an alternative relational object. While similar to "carebots" and companion robots, Omo draws on ongoing Machine Therapy work revealing the psychological, social, and political dynamics between people and machines. As a result, Omo's role is empathic and sometimes unexpected rather than normative. Omo breathes and senses the breathing of anyone interacting closely with it, matching—or seeking to lead—patterns of breathing. Omo does not always privilege soothing.

Psychophysical Elements of Wearability

Looking for references on the relationship between specific mechanisms of the body and wearable computing, I never accross anything relevant to my research. During Chi 2007, I discovered the work of Lucy Dunne: Psychophysical Elements of Wearability. She has a large number of publications on the subject and her research is fascinating.

My primary research focus is wearable technology design, a new field that is only recently beginning to gain direction and depth. As a functional apparel designer, I approach wearable technology with the goal of expanding garment functionality through use of technology. One of the most useful and salient applications of technology to garment functionality is in the area of body sensing: knowledge of the physical, emotional, and situational state of the user is essential to many next-generation computing applications, particularly in the areas of ubiquitous computing and adaptive information delivery, as well as the more direct areas of medical and sports monitoring. However, while many sensing technologies are predominantly well-established and reliable, they have also emerged from an engineering tradition that rarely includes the geometric, dynamic, cognitive, and emotional unpredictability that is the human body.

One of the most significant themes in my work has been the importance of designing truly wearable technology: defining the elements that influence wearability and overcoming the technical challenges of gathering data in a comfortable and unobtrusive manner. Most of my recent work has been applied to deducing the position and movement of the human body by detecting forces and bends in worn garments, with a wearability focus on moving sensing technology out of the electronically reliable but often awkward and uncomfortable medical standard and re-designing it to function adequately in “normal” clothing.

My doctoral dissertation, Wearable Sensing of Body Position and Movement Through Body-Garment Interactions, establishes the psychophysical elements that comprise “wearability” of technology and argues that in wearable technology, the influence of wearability extends to the user’s physical functionality, cognitive processing, and acceptance of innovation in worn artefacts. The design considerations that are established in the theoretical portion of the work are then applied to the problem of sensing the movement and position of the human body by detecting the shape and dynamics of worn garments, rather than by sensing (unwearably) the body itself. - Lucy Dunne

Machine 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