Here’s something to beat the morning blues – Philips Design has created a “game” for Orange, a major UK cell phone provider, where the whole concept is that the more you relax, the more you achieve.
In order to play, you have to slide in the device pictured above in between the fingers which measures your skin responses and send the data wirelessly to your cell phone or PC screen where you will see yourself as a friendly dragon. The more you relax, the more the dragon will float and eventually fly.
It’s kind of like a new age tamagotchi, except this time, you’re taking care of you.
Relax to win Sensor
You see yourself on screen as a friendly dragon; the more you relax the more your dragon will float and eventually fly.
Trackback by textually.org — 5/8/2005 @ 1:06 am
Philips ‘Relax to Win’ Sensor
Philips has designed a concept ‘Relax to Win’ sensor, which when worn between two fingers measures galvanic skin response to determine exactly how laid back you are, which in turn causes a dragon to float into the air and buy…
Trackback by Gizmodo — 5/9/2005 @ 2:46 am
The Philips Design guys have done a fantastic job on the sensor design, and fully deserve the awards and plaudits, but their press release is a little misleading as to the evolution of the Relax To Win project. As one of the inventors of the game, perhaps I can set the record straight.
“Relax to Win” was created by the MindGames group in MediaLab Europe (now defunct), back in 2001. The motivation to make the game was as a clinical aid for children with a variety of stress disorders. The three inventors were myself, Phil McDarby and Ned Augenblick, all researchers in MindGames. Originally, the game was developed to run on desktop PC’s. We used an off-the-shelf biosensor, which attached to the tips of the middle and index fingers, to measure the players’ state of relaxation. In order to make a good connection to the skin, we used a conductive electrode gel (a horribly gloopy green substance, which was perhaps the game’s main drawback). You can check out the original game on http://mindgames.mle.ie, at the bottom of the Projects page.
To cut a long story short, Relax To Win was an instant success (it was played by Bono and The Edge, from U2, and the Irish Prime Minister among others), and received a lot of press coverage around the world. When Orange came on board as sponsors of the lab, they really loved the game, and were interested in doing something with it. I approached them with the idea of putting it on mobile phones, using a wireless biosensor. They were very enthusiastic about the idea, so we had a couple of workshops in MediaLab Europe with the Orange and Philips guys. We provided technical expertise, such as the sensor dimensions required to house the electronics, suitable body placements, and also evaluated a selection of conductive materials, to see which had the best electrical properties. The Philips people went away and thought about it for a while, and came back with the wonderful design you see in the photograph.
At that point, for various reasons, the project fizzled out. It’s important to note that the electronics were never made, and the game never implemented on the phone. What you see in the picture, while brilliantly realised and a vital component of the game, is just a housing, for hardware that was never implemented.
Subsequently, myself and two other member of the MindGames team left the lab, and have been working on our own implementation of the game. We have developed the necessary electronics, and our own sensor design. The game is currently up and running on a phone, and we plan to launch the product soon.
With apologies for the length of this post,
Daragh McDonnell,
Managing Director, Vyro Games Ltd.,
http://www.vyro-games.com
Comment by Daragh McDonnell — 5/13/2005 @ 4:14 am