Mood Glass Concept
In the near future, devices that monitor human behavior and help us maintain ourselves at our optimal best will become prevalent everywhere. While they may be helpful in some situations, it may steal from us our human nature and sensitivity.
Stretching this scenario, Mood Glass showcases situations when an object that instantaneously helps maintain one's mood could be harmful rather than helpful.
Key questions
While remaining happy and positive are desirable on most days, when does becoming happy instantaneously make us less human? What are the situations when allowing oneself to be sad, angry or worried can be critical?
Mood Glass explores these scenarios and leaves open-ended questions for any mood based smart device of today or the future.
Recommendations
There are many matters that this project questions and we think need to be considered when conceptualizing new augmented objects:
1. The metrics on mood or emotion levels, have been somehow explored by other projects in the past. We believe that this is a sensitive issue, since it could send a wrong message that some emotions are considered good (via associations to colors for example) while others should be prevented.
2. We also discussed about the dangers of creating a hyper dependency on devices, as people could start relying more on a sensor information than in themselves. We think that groups like teenagers or young people could be especially vulnerable, discouraging them from identify their own emotions or know when asking for help would be needed.
3. Another issue that should be addressed is the impact of the device among human relations. Many of new connected devices are designed for individual use, as if human existence develops in complete isolation. Potential interactions with other people, and in this case, with other people's emotions must be considered.
4. Erroneous perception of life improvement by complying with certain standards should be avoided. It is concerning when some devices are marketed as life solutions when they are only making some data visible or accesible.