{"id":1403,"date":"2010-11-25T16:45:53","date_gmt":"2010-11-25T16:45:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.joswassink.nl\/insight\/?p=1403"},"modified":"2010-11-25T16:45:53","modified_gmt":"2010-11-25T16:45:53","slug":"your-pen-your-pal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.joswassink.nl\/insight\/?p=1403","title":{"rendered":"Your pen, your pal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Squeezing, rolling, wiggling \u2013 the things people do when they are  stressed. Now here&#8217;s a pen that not only knows when people are stressed  but also relaxes them.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Empathic technology, devices that know how you feel and act  correspondingly, is the next big thing in man-machine interaction.  Already there are cars that give feedback on your driving style, or  alarm clocks that wait to ring until the person moves. PhD researcher  Miguel Bruns Alonso (Industrial Design) now wants to take this concept  one step further: devices that interact subconsciously with the user. As  a contrasting example, he mentions the anti-RSI computer programme,  Workpace, which simply tells people when to relax or might temporarily  block your work in progress for your own well-being. \u201cIt&#8217;s so in your  face,\u201d Bruns says.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Instead, he has developed an affective pen to  explore how a product could provide feedback directly, coupled to the  actions of the user. He noticed that when students take exams, they tend  to endlessly fidget with their pens, rather than simply writing down  the correct answers. The affective pen not only notices this stressed  shaking and twirling but also counteracts these movements by means of  built-in electronics and electro magnets. \u201cPeople like the feeling of  the loose ball in the top of the pen,\u201d Bruns says. \u201cWhen users move the  pen less, the magnet gradually loosens the ball more.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Frankly,  tests comparing the pen&#8217;s active feedback with the feedback switched-off  were a bit disappointing \u2013 people didn&#8217;t really notice the difference.  Nor did they report that they felt more relaxed when working with the  pen. So had it all been in vain? Perhaps not. Although people didn&#8217;t  feel more relaxed, their heartbeats were actually 5 percent lower thanks  to the magic pen. It seems then that the feedback had worked  subliminally.<\/p>\n<p><em>Miguel Bruns Alonso, &#8216;Relax! Inherent feedback  during product interaction to reduce stress&#8217;, 23 December 2010, PhD  supervisors Professor Paul Hekkert and Professor David Keyson.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Squeezing, rolling, wiggling \u2013 the things people do when they are stressed. Now here&#8217;s a pen that not only knows when people are stressed but also relaxes them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,6],"tags":[155,211],"class_list":["post-1403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-delta","tag-empathic-technology","tag-haptic-pen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joswassink.nl\/insight\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joswassink.nl\/insight\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joswassink.nl\/insight\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joswassink.nl\/insight\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joswassink.nl\/insight\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.joswassink.nl\/insight\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1403\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joswassink.nl\/insight\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joswassink.nl\/insight\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joswassink.nl\/insight\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}