Self- 💫

Overview

Self- is a project I worked on with a few friends from USC and UT Austin for a senior-year final project in the Iovine and Young Academy. We had all met through a nonprofit organization I was volunteering for at the time, AI LA. I met Monique in December 2018 and connected with Trent and Tara shortly after.

Monique, Trent, and Tara brought an incredible and diverse skill set that bred creativity and innovation. Monique is well-versed in the fashion and design industry, with a deep interest in mental wellness, wearables, and the integration of tech and wellbeing. Trent is a wonderful builder who can create something out of nothing and has an intelligent mind for hardware. Tara is extremely talented with materials and textiles, and her knowledge of the latest inventions and creations was absolutely invaluable. I joined the team because of our shared interest: we all wanted to create a brand-new product that would integrate mental wellness, wearable technology, sustainability, and fashion into one.

The problem we tackled

We recognized a new, inevitable side effect of the technology boom: technological fatigue. People were spending more and more time on their phones and devices, worrying about charging, protection, security, and more. With so many new things coming out, people were constantly being bombarded with notifications and pings, and it started to feel overwhelming just to get through the day.

Our ultimate goal was to start a conversation on how to re-train our minds to interact with technology in a mindful, more positive way. We wanted technology to be more than just a source of alerts and texts; we wanted it to gently remind us to return to the present and be mindful of our surroundings. We combined known physiological phenomena, sustainable and effective materials, useful and encouraging design, a robust build, and efficient software to tackle the problem we identified.

What we built

From the many incredible talks on mental health and physical sensation, we created Self-. The purpose of Self- was to provide an internal mental escape through technology — reactive and personal, but not intrusive like our devices today.

As a product, it was a tag that you could place on the inside of clothing. It had haptic motors, a flexible battery, a heart rate sensor, and a Bluetooth transmitter on the board our builder Trent built. We used a PulseSensor sensor and an Arduino Uno board to gather heart rate data, using the out-of-the-box C++ code to pull data. The tag was chargeable from a distance, so it didn't need to be hooked up directly to a charger every night.

We wanted to use physiological metrics like heart rate variability to measure stress levels in an individual's day-to-day actions. The haptic motors provided physical responses that would elicit mindfulness by gently buzzing the wearer to bring their attention back to the present. The Bluetooth addition made the tag mobile, allowing it to connect to an individual's phone while they were on the move. Beyond the tag, our goal was to create an entire label that promoted sustainability in our environment and in our emotions, and a communal space for individuals to feel truly reconnected through technology.

For the final project, we also created a garment to show how we wanted the tag incorporated into clothing, and to give a better understanding of what our creation was all about.

What I learned

The finished product and project were a culmination of months of hard work, late nights, and long talks. Although we never completely finished what we set out to do, the experience of creating something from start to finish with some of my closest friends was invaluable and wonderful — one of my biggest learning experiences at USC.

Our love for addressing mental wellness issues, for sustainable design and materials, and for human-centered hardware and software brought us to this project, and I have no doubt we'll all work on something similar again in the future. At the end of the day, we're all extremely happy and proud of how this project turned out. We poured our hearts and souls into it, extended our skills as far as we could take them in a short amount of time, and while we know that wearable technology in fashion isn't the current norm, it's very much the future.