Whether across town or across the world, it can be difficult to keep in touch with distant friends and loved ones. TouchStone extends your reach to bring you the same sense of peace and togetherness you get when you are with them.

Simply exchange beads to stay connected, even when apart. Just touch their bead, and their bracelet will light up, wherever they are. If they touch your bead, your bracelet will light up in return, letting you know that you are in their thoughts as well.

Process

In our studio class, we were tasked with leveraging breakthroughs in ubiquitous and social computing to design a device which would enhance tranquility, togetherness and a sense of the divine.

We began with an extensive research phase, interviewing 11 people across a variety of religions and belief systems and went on site visits to a number of places of worship around Pittsburgh.

We compiled our results in an affinity diagram and extracted the emerging trends:

• Religion helps me feel connected with a community.
• Religion improves my mood.
• Religion relaxes me physically and mentally.
• Prayer helps me find direction.
• Religion helps me understand and deal with the world around me.
• Religion helps me come to terms with my limitations.

We ran a brainstorming session to quickly generate 100 ideas, then ran a round of excellence voting to narrow our ideas down. We took these top ideas and created a series of storyboards based on each one.