Step 1: ABOUT DIY EMOTIONAL

On the one hand, our project, the DIYEmotional bracelet, is an speculative design object that acts somehow as a counselor and gives you the opportunity to self-manage your mental health. The bracelet itself contains three buttons that enable you to rate your mood from better to worse and a screen that shows you a range of emojis that are specifically made to represent new emotions that might have appeared during the next 50 years. It also includes a speaker to be able to hear what this pocket counselor is saying loud and clear. For instance, if you are in love with someone through the net, you could choose the “cyber-love” emoji, rate the intensity of the feeling from more to less intense and then receive a piece of advice from the DIYEmotional.

On the other hand, regarding the formalization of the device, there was a certain point of complexity we were not able to reach. We present this idea as an intelligent object that is able to listen to your worries and think of a piece of advice or something to answer you. We do not have those programming skills so we created a prototype that gives the user the interactive experience but that has some premade messages recorded. This interaction was possible using a tool called Touchboard, that creates a sensor out of almost everything using 12 electrodes. This tool is incredibly easy to use since it comes already programmed and with an audio guide incorporated to lead you through the process. For the bracelet we embroided three buttons to the leather that we then connected to the Touchboard with thread in order to make the buttons tactile. Then, for the emoji part, he used an Apple Watch in which we placed some of our emojis basically because it was giving us a small screen to work on that was easy to manage and fitted perfectly on the bracelet.

However, any device that gives you the option to save images on it and has a tactile screen will work for this. In relation to the answers the bracelet gives the user, we recorded a few messages in the SDCard that goes inside the Touchboard and those are the ones that sound when the user presses the buttons.

As a conclusion, this design object is functionable to a certain point, it works as an interactive prototype but it does not reflect exactly what we had in mind when we presented the idea, so we encourage you to try to recreate this project and even improve it. Nevetheless, if you don’t feel like trying our project you could also incorporate the Touchboard to your projects and prototypes to bring them to life, it has an incredibly wide range of options to take your project to the next level.

Step 2: MATERIALS

1. Portable device with screen (We used an Apple Watch)

2. Mini speaker Fabric (of your preference)

3. Leather

4. Impact glue

5. Velcro

6. Conductive thread (or conductive material of your choice)

Step 3: TOOLS

1. Cutter

2. Ruler

3. Touchboard

Step 4: ELABORATION

1. Cut the rubber with precision to the required size with ruler and a cutter

2. Stick the fabric to the rubber with the hard glue, to the surface and also to the sides.

3. Trace the stencil of the Apple Watch or the device with screen that you are using.

4. Make the buttons with cloth or fabric of your choice.

5. Install the Touchboard and the speaker to the device.

Step 5: CONSTRUCTION OF THE BRACELET

To create our device we will start by cutting the rubber to the proper size (20x10x3cm). After that, we will cover the rubber with the piece of fabric, that is one or two centimeters larger than the rubber, as the fabric is going to cover the laterals as well.

Be careful!

Depending on the type of rubber you’re using, velcro won’t keep the bracelet together around your wrist. If that’s the case, you will have to get a stronger grip.

Step 6: INSTALLATION OF THE WATCH

Secondly, we are going to set up the emoji screen, which in our case is going to be an Apple Watch but it can work with any kind of smartwatch or device with screen. The built-in watch