Merge a mood light, mirror and some Internet of Things connectivity and you’ve got the gist of the concept behind the mood prognosticating, “Emotion Collector“, a laser cut and 3D printed prototype that purports to reflect the mood of its users right back in the colorful feedback form of colored lighting.
Designed by Thai designers Lalita Kitcha and Wongsathon Choonhavan in collaboration with design team 3minutes under the moniker CODE Studio, the tabletop device imagines collecting the emotional data of its users and compiling an emotional average in the form of light colors displayed across a spherical mood light evocative of a crystal ball.
CODE Studio describes the premise and features of their emotional lighting functions as:
• The mirror gives us to reflect ourselves by seeing from outside in.
• Interactive devices to give users answers such as sensor, emoticon display, maybe connect with a webapp in the future.
• Color Lighting represents variety emotion such as white(normal) yellow(happy) red(angry) blue(sad) green(bore) purple(anxious).
• IOT calculate average result of data and visualizes it in the gradient lighting color form to represent mixing of emotions.
• The cover we use freeform profiles inspired by movement of emotion.
As noted above, the concept imagines connecting with a mobile app to work in conjunction with smartphones and/or smartwatches, which likely already actively and passively collects a wealth of data about user emotions through their facial expressions, heart rate and even the emoji and emoticons used while texting.
The Emotion Collector is one of the participating designs showcased as part of the Design Plant 2021 exhibition at ATT19 in June during Bangkok Design Week 2021.