Process - Emotional Totems

Ingrid Wang - Sun 22 March 2020, 11:38 pm

Concept

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The design is based on things to represent, communicate and mediate emotions. The flower is designed to let user be comforted by natural plant smell and colourful lights. Users can record their thoughts or simply speak out to the flower when they are in low mood. Also, when they are clipping their hands, the flower will shine colourful lights and release natural smell to comfort them.

Research

Smell and Emotion

An experiment by [1]Weber and Heuberger (2008) exposed the effects of smells impacted on the cognitive states. The experimental participants smelled different plants and then rated the pleasantness of smell, their mood, calmness, and alertness on a scale. Compared to a controlled group, participants smelling the plants evaluated themselves more positively in mood, alertness, and calmness. However, there was a follow-up experiment that found artificial smells did not improve emotional functioning as natural effects.

A study by Pollatos et al. (2007) focused on the relationship of affective pictures, oflactory performance and sex. The sample consists of 32 subjects (16 males). Olfactory performance was examined after flowing unpleasant pictures presentation for all subjects and pleasant pictures for male subjects only. The level of pleasantness and intensity of neutral over-threshold odors is related to the valence of the picture. The odor was rated as unpleasant after viewing the unpleasant visual experience. However, positive presentation of pictures induced a significant increase in reported odor pleasantness. Besides, the results showed male may be susceptible to this cognitive and top-down influence.

[1] Weber and Heuberger, “The impact of natural odors on affective states in humans”, 2008. [Online]. Available : https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18353767

[2] Pollatos et al, “Emotional Stimulation Alters Olfactory Sensitivity and Odor Judgment”, 2007. [Online]. Available:

https://academic.oup.com/chemse/article/32/6/583/317236

Technique Supports

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  1. High quality LEDs: super bright 2835 SMD RGB LED, waterproof, long life span (in excess of 50,000 hours). Low power consumption and environmental friendly.
  2. WIFI wireless smart controller:16 million colors, smart phone control, timer mode, work with Alexa. It can also make the lights lighting with the rhythm of music in your smart phone, by using 1 App to control many Wi-Fi controllers at the same time.
  3. Support for color and dynamic mode customization and preservation
  4. Lights and music sync functions
  5. A variety of built-in dynamic model, and the custom dynamic model
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The aroma diffuser will be used to support smell function. Frangance put inside the container and smell come out from the top. The diffuser will be shaped like a green pot for flower.

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Record Key: Press the button to start record the voice.

Play Key: Press the button to start playing recorded voice.

There are two control buttons, one for recording, the other for play.

The sound clear and loudly, can help you express feelings, or message tips,

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The sound sensor switch is consider to control the led lights by clapping hands or speaking loud.