Greeting Card Hack
Skills
Concept Development, Hacking, Soldering, Electrical Prototyping, Product Prototyping
Tools
Two greeting cards, LEDs, Solder, Soldering iron, Jumper wires, White tshirt
Concept Development, Hacking, Soldering, Electrical Prototyping, Product Prototyping
Tools
Two greeting cards, LEDs, Solder, Soldering iron, Jumper wires, White tshirt
Project Background
The Delaware Design Institute hosted a wearable technology presentation and workshop led by Lucy Dunne, who is the Director of the Wearable Technology Lab at the University of Minnesota. This was an absolutely incredible opportunity, and I learned so many things imperative to wearable technology, such as soldering. There were people from many different departments at UD, and we formed teams that included at least one person with an engineering background and at least one person with an apparel design background. The group that I had the pleasure of working with included an engineering student, an employee from the physical therapy department, and myself. We were all provided with readily available electrical prototyping materials. The most important resource we had was greeting cards, which have a circuit board and power supply already in them, as well as parts such as LEDs, motors, and speakers that play specific songs.
Concept
The incredible group that I worked with decided to make a shirt that displayed the user's mood. We were inspired by the different types of songs the cards played, with some sounding happy and beautiful and others sounding noisy and unpleasant. These different sounds made us think of the different moods and emotions that humans have the ability to display, and how hard it can be to decipher another person's mood. We used yellow LEDs and a speaker playing "Walking on Sunshine" to symbolize the user being in a happy mood. The user of the shirt could activate this embellishment if they were happy and wanted to interact with people. However, if they were having a bad day and didn't want to deal with anybody, they could activate the other embellishment. This is the face of a red-headed boy with two googly eyes and red LEDs. Yellow is often associated with happiness, and red is often associated with anger. These are recognizable cues that make it easier to interact with the people around us.
The Delaware Design Institute hosted a wearable technology presentation and workshop led by Lucy Dunne, who is the Director of the Wearable Technology Lab at the University of Minnesota. This was an absolutely incredible opportunity, and I learned so many things imperative to wearable technology, such as soldering. There were people from many different departments at UD, and we formed teams that included at least one person with an engineering background and at least one person with an apparel design background. The group that I had the pleasure of working with included an engineering student, an employee from the physical therapy department, and myself. We were all provided with readily available electrical prototyping materials. The most important resource we had was greeting cards, which have a circuit board and power supply already in them, as well as parts such as LEDs, motors, and speakers that play specific songs.
Concept
The incredible group that I worked with decided to make a shirt that displayed the user's mood. We were inspired by the different types of songs the cards played, with some sounding happy and beautiful and others sounding noisy and unpleasant. These different sounds made us think of the different moods and emotions that humans have the ability to display, and how hard it can be to decipher another person's mood. We used yellow LEDs and a speaker playing "Walking on Sunshine" to symbolize the user being in a happy mood. The user of the shirt could activate this embellishment if they were happy and wanted to interact with people. However, if they were having a bad day and didn't want to deal with anybody, they could activate the other embellishment. This is the face of a red-headed boy with two googly eyes and red LEDs. Yellow is often associated with happiness, and red is often associated with anger. These are recognizable cues that make it easier to interact with the people around us.