Blackberry Empathy

THIS IS NOT A REAL PHONE

Awhile ago RIM, held a sponsored project held at the Art Center College of Design, designers Kiki Tang and Daniel Yoon, had to incorporate an interface that integrates human emotions with the concept of social networking. The result was a kinetic phone that could express how you’re feeling using a biometric ring. The ring is worn by the user and feeds information or as they put it “emotional data” to the phone.

Spec-wise it features a transparent OLED screen that becomes transparent when not in use and opaque during interaction. The front is all touch surface, while on the back there is a physical keyboard.

As Daniel describes the interface:

“It is of course touch based and all the user’s connections are shown graphically so you can see who is connected to whom. Each contact has an avatar that is encompassed by two colored rings. The inner colored ring shows the contact’s previous emotional state, and the outer ring represents the contact’s current emotional state. It is important to show the shift in emotions in order to see how an event has affected that contact.

Another important feature that we felt was important was the “Emotional Health Chart”. This chart would monitor the user’s emotional health through an indefinite period of time. One would be able to see how a certain event, or phone call/ message has affected the user. Obviously, if the chart shows someone is always upset, there would be a problem… If permitted, a user would be able to view other user’s charts as well.”

As cool a design and as innovative as this phone concept is the interface is something worth looking into if RIM plans to stay in the game. Innovation and experimentation should help them in designing software (new software – not just continuous updates) and hardware. We need Blackberry to be the forward thinkers that they used to be. And this phone as old as the concept is shows how innovative they can be. Just a thought.

Designers: Kiki Tang & Daniel Yoon

the grass is always greener on the welded side