The last few days we have given trendtours at het Klokgebouw during Dutch Design Week. With a group of eight enthusiastic students we did a lot of research and we have spotted five trends. The trendtour consisted out of three of those trends from our trend book; Disaster Independency, Nature’s Apprentice and Digital Empathy. The tour gave concrete manifestations of the trends.
Digital Empathy is about new forms of digital technology that is becoming increasingly empathic; it can understand a person’s mood and react to their feelings. It can also improve interaction between two people. These new forms of technology help us feel comfortable and understood. The following designs give more insight into the trend Digital Empathy.
HYPERFACE
Created by: Eun Kyung Shin
The Hyperface was specially designed for people with autism and people who are blind by Eun Kyung Shin. The face and its expressions are the interface society sees. The Hyperface works as a mask that shows emotions with the use of virtual reality. It reacts to the facial expression of the person with whom the user is interacting and shows a fitting expression with Artificial Intelligence. It will help make communication more fluent and less socially awkward, and it helps to improve the mood of the user. You can communicate more directly, powerfully, and also emotionally, with the Hyperface.
DYNAMIC BALANCE
Created by: Valerie Mencke
Dynamic Balance is an interactive watch designed by Valerie Mencke. Mencke designed this product specially for people with autism. The watch is connected to an app and offers comfort to control and helps the user to understand their emotions. For example, whenever the user has a stressful moment, the watch will notice and help release stress by playing a message or some music the user spoke into their device. In this way, the Dynamic Balance helps to improve the mood of the user by calming them down.
KOZIE
Created by: Roos Meerman
This is Kozie, a product designed by designers of studio Roos Meerman in cooperation with Kunstlab. Kozie is a sensorial pillow which reacts on human touch by producing sounds. It was specially designed for people who suffer from dementia. The purpose of the design team was to a give the dementia patients a feeling of recognition by producing familiar sounds, like audio recordings from their family or their favorite music. Because of this, dementia patients are able to create a more peaceful mindset. This product belongs perfectly to the trend trend digital empathy, because the pillow can understand a person’s mood and reacts by producing recognizable sounds to improve a man’s mood.
If you have any questions about the trends or our studies, please leave a comment or contact us. We hope you enjoyed our tours and we hope to see you next year!
