Wearable technology is getting serious. We’ve already seen devices that give us psychic abilities, keep us safe, and help us hear better. The future looks great and these wearables will enable us to do things we never thought possible.
But what about our feelings? Our mental state and emotional wellbeing? While slaving away trying to create a technologically able world have we forgotten a key aspect of living?
Our happiness.
A wearable from Sentio Solutions wants to refocus efforts and tackle our feelings. They (and I quote) want you to “Own your emotions. Hack happiness”. We all deserve to be happy after all.
Mood rings were a big fad back in the 70s and it has taken four decades before we this company realised that the 70s weren’t all about afros and protests; to them, it was about emotional intelligence or EQ.
If you haven’t heard of emotional intelligence, it’s basically our ability (or lack thereof) to understand and recognise emotions, allowing us to differentiate and label what we feel, before using it to think and behave appropriately.
Back to the present, Feel will be today’s technological equivalent of the mood-ring. Much like other wearables, it’ll connect to your smartphone through Bluetooth and via the companion app, you’ll get real-time stats on your current emotional state.
Four sensors inside the wristband allow Feel to measure and track skin temperature, blood volume pulse and galvanic skin response (tracking sweat through your skin). A whole load of gibberish to us but we’ll just nod for the name of science.
The wearable looks like an adjustable rubber bracelet with sensors along its sleek surface. It’ll collect biometric readings coupled with movement tracking to gauge activity levels; then on, it’ll gather the data and illustrate it in the form of a cool graph.
Looking at the visualisation, you’ll get to see when your stress levels peaked and what your moods were like throughout the day. It’ll all be personalised too, in their wellness programme that (hopefully) will allow you to be happier and constantly stay focused towards your emotional goals.
Feel and its app will work hand in hand to give suggestions on how users can mediate stress and improve overall emotions – that’ll include breathing and meditation based exercises to bring you back to Earth. The app will also recommend you to “laugh more” or blow off some steam by exercising.
CEO George Eleftheriou shared with Mashable that the wristband will be really helpful while battling traffic; snapping the user out of their rage by vibrating suddenly on their wrist. He claims that vibration will help calm the user – we’re not sure if this was backed by science.
Those interested can expect Feel to go on pre-order in Spring 2016, with an estimated shipping and store availability in December. The wearable will come in four colours: White, Black, Turquoise and fire Red. Once in stores, it’ll go for US$ 199 (RM 872.44) but during the pre-order period, it’ll cost US$ 149 (RM 654.27).
