Design Iterations

It was decided to use water as a metric of where you are in the relationship as water is easy to manipulate and carries a weight that can a user can feel and understand - enabling something abstract ("moving forward") to become tangible.

Initially, we wanted to use a cup which users would continually fill to indicate their (hopefully) increasing interest in the relationship. It was decided that when both users filled the cup to its maximum capacity, the cups would pour over to create a waterfall effect to indicate both users are ready to speak to one another.

After discussing this idea further, the team chose to move to vibration instead of pour over effect.  A speaker and solenoid were explored for this effect but they were not compelling to the team. Finally, the team chose to add bubbles to the system instead.

The bubbles were the used to indicate users were at the same stage of the relationship (mapped to equal levels of water), with a light indicating that both users are ready to talk.