Commiticator: Enhancing Non-verbal Communication by Means of Magnetic Vision

摘要

Commitment is a key element in social behavior, especially when it comes to communication between two individuals in close relation to each other. Between people who have known each other for a longer period of time, communication often revolves around recent events and the act of sending a life sign takes precedence to the actual content of the information itself. Furthermore the constant accessibility through mobile media devices is increasingly creating the expectation of permanent communication between couples. The ongoing spread of wearable devices allows a permanent communication across physical distance but it sometimes also supports a leakage of situat awareness among their users. The main concern of the Commiticator project lies within the development of a wearable device that can support the expression of commitment as an act of social interaction between two wearers. To study the acceptance of such a device, the already culturally established character of jewelry is used to create a jewelry set consisting of a ring and a locket. To make an intuitive form of communication possible, the wearer's tactile sense is enhanced by the jewelry giving them a sense for a magnetic field that is enabled by the locket if it is activated by the partner. This creates a ping-pong like interaction between the wearers.