Student Project Ask

Explore the making of a Tangible User Interface with the concept of ‘Metaphorical Mapping’. Draw similarities between concrete and abstract by not just connecting two unrelated things from two domains, but also generating something new by combining them. Ultimately try to achieve a digital output to a physical input.

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The Solution

The project focuses on the mental health of employees at their workplace. It taps into the domain of stress, commonly portrayed through the act of fidgeting, people portray in a state of nervousness or strain. Small research including a conversation with working professionals highlighted the STRESS BALL as an intuitive and convenient stress buster. The act of squeezing the ball tends to calm down nerves. Moreover, it blends well in an office space. This became the physical input for the project. 

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We also related the squeezing of the ball to that of orange while taking out its juice. The more the number of squeezes, the more juice an orange gives out. This was metaphorically similar to a stressful situation and the usage of the ball. This was opted as a digital output to indicate the level of stress. The orange stress ball contains a flex sensor that maps the stress output as juice covering up a user’s phone screen. Once the level increases to the max, the screen freezes, prompting the employee to take a small break, playing calming music as well as sending a message to one of their frequent close contacts helping them monitor their mental health.

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My Roles and Responsibility

• Concept building and trying to establish connections and metaphors across different domains

• Create visuals and animations for the project as well as presentations & reports

• Develop data input and processing in the

• Noodl software with the help of an Arduino board along with my teammate.

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Key Deliverables

Conceptualisation & Ideation of the Metaphors / Building physical Input / Establishing Data Flow & Data Structure / Visualisation Digital Output / Working Model of Concept / Testing Results

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Design Team

2 Interaction Design Students 

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All material produced in an Interaction Design Masters Programme at Hong Kong Polytechnic University.