HOME |
RSS | 
Lauren McCarthy is the designer responsible for the Happiness Hat — a hat that drives a painful spike into your head when you forget to smile. The Conversacube is one of her more recent projects. It’s a little box that will prompt you on what to say during a first date when you’re not sure what to talk about:
Each outward face of the box has a small screen and a microphone embedded just inside. As the conversation progresses, each person is personally prompted with directions or lines to keep the conversation running seamlessly with minimal awkward or uncomfortable moments. The microphones monitor audio levels of each participant and the cube responds accordingly, adjusting prompts to enliven, mediate conflict, or balance conversation as necessary.
Lauren McCarthy created the Happiness Hat – a gadget that detects whether or not you’re smiling. If you’re not, it drives a small metal spike into the back of your head to encourage to you resolve that problem quickly:
An enclosed bend sensor attaches to the cheek and measures smile size, a servo motor moves a metal spike into the head inversely proportional to the degree of smile. Through repeated use of this conditioning device you can train your brain to smile all the time. The device runs on Arduino.
Link via Geekologie
UPDATE 10/29: The YouTube video’s status was switched to private, so I swapped it out for a Vimeo version.
