VIDEO: Wearable Confidence - Exploring how vibration can change people's self-perception.
Smart wearables are becoming increasingly present in our everyday lives. But what about the wearables that can make us feel in a certain way, for instance, more confident before giving a presentation?
Smart wearables are becoming increasingly present in our everyday lives, motivating us to exercise more often, hydrate ourselves or help us to remember an important meeting. But what about the wearables that can make us feel in a certain way, for instance, more confident before giving a presentation, more focused, and even make us feel like “water ripples”?
During the STARTS.EE Arts and Science Residency, PhD student of School of Digital Technologies, Yulia Zhiglova, in cooperation with a researcher from Estonian Academy of Arts, Kristi Kuusk, have created Wearable Confidence -- a dress that outputs vibrotactile feedback to make the wearer feel more confident. The dress has been recently showcased at the 16th Tallinn Design Festival.
Yulia took the concept of Wearable Confidence further and conducted an exploratory study where she evaluated whether a complex sound, such as a happy song or a sound of rain, can systematically influence a person's emotional state when only presented via a tactile channel. The study found that most vibrational patterns have different and significant effects on our emotions, both on a physiological level and in self-reported responses.
These results will be used in the future to test whether the vibrations coming from the Wearable Confidence prototype can make a person more confident even in a truly stressful situation, such as during a public appearance.
Photos: Marin Sild
Video: Bohdana Korohod