The Day Pen is a combination of technologies that present a unique tactile approach to a digital product in the psychotherapy world.
Playground ✎
Research, 3D Design, Speculative Design
Contribution
3D Modeling, UI/UX, Research
Deliverables
Product Design, App and journal
Year
2018
Intitial Concepting
I began this project with the starting idea of wanting to create something within the therapy space. Upon researching further, I found numerous new apps and digital technology that were being marketed in this space. Many of them touched on meditation, breathing exercises and writing (in app) about your thoughts and experiences.
The gap that I noticed, was the lack of a tactile approach to journaling your ideas in this app. Historically, there have been numerous studies on the benefits of physical writing.
“That linkage between hand and mind is intimate,” says anthropologist David F. Armstrong. The importance of the hand-mind link is seen in developing children, for whom the ability to manipulate physical objects tracks uncannily with the acquisition of speech. It is also evident in the clinical literature, which contains many examples of patients with brain lesions that impair their handwriting also struggling to recognize letters by sight. For people who have trouble reading, tracing the outlines of letters with their fingers often helps. ( Brandon Keim, "The Science of Handwriting", The Scientific American, 2013.)
The Challenge
Create a way a solution to bridge physical handwriting with a digital therapy space.
Privacy.
When your therapy app is home to your most personal thoughts and experiences, privacy is of the upmost importance.
With the daypen, you can "sign-in" to your pen by using touch-ID technology at the top of the pen. Once you are identified, whatever is written with the pen will be logged. If you try activating a pen that does not belong to you, the written information will not be stored
The Pen. Bridging data from the pen to an app.
The concepting of bridging the information written by the pen to the digital app comes down to technology within the pen that tracks movement.
The tip of the pen
In the primary part of the pen, technology will track your movement in order to send this data back to the app. Similar technology can be found in an apple pencil when your writing gets translated to text.
Pen Grip
Pressure points on the pen's grip signal additional data to the app to inform your account if you are writing heavy-handed that day (most often attributed to negative moods) or if you are writing in your normal pressure.
Musical Therapy
Once the data is transferred from the pen to the app – the smart technology within the app can generate a playlist for you to help soothe you through a sensory based technique. Science backed research into music and stress suggests that listening to music can:
– lower our heart rate and cortisol levels
– release endorphins and improve our sense of well-being
– distract us, reducing physical and emotional stress levels
– reduce stress-related symptoms, whether used in a clinical environment or in daily life
