Talkative Cushion: A Phatic Audio Device to Support Family Communication

摘要

The 'Talkative Cushion' is a novel audio recorder which transforms recorded voices into humorous and ludicrous sounds. It is proposed as a phatic device for homes. It is designed to make people playful and funny when communicating in homes because a delightful situation makes people active to talk. In this paper, we describe why and how a cushion is selected as our target object and how the concept of phatic technologies applied to the cushion.