The Me Within: Navigating Layers of Self
Jiayuan (Wren) Wang's thesis, The Me Within: Navigating Layers of Self, explores the duality of existence that spans physical and digital realms. Inspired by the convergence of visible, tangible elements and invisible, private aspects of our identities, her research delves into the challenges and opportunities of expressing and understanding these complex layers. Wren’s thesis proposes innovative ways to bridge the gap between internal experiences and external perceptions, enabling a fuller expression of identity that encompasses both seen and unseen elements. This investigation challenges traditional notions of identity and raises crucial questions about the nature of self in modern society.
"Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart.
Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes."
- Carl Jung
Wren’s research began with insight gained from role-playing video games, where the blending of player and character identities sparked her interest in the duality of self. This concept was further explored during a co-creation workshop where participants created digital avatars that embodied both their physical appearance and unseen inner elements.
These findings illustrated how our outer self in the physical world—much like our bodies—houses an inner self composed of our thoughts, feelings, and dreams. Recognizing that our lives extend beyond physical reality into digital spaces, Wren connected these ideas to the concept of mixed reality, emphasizing the continuous interplay between our digital and physical identities.
“One effective tool we use is visualization. It's quite powerful in therapy because it helps them connect more deeply with these experiences and understand their own behaviors and motivations better.”
- Holly Fu, Clinical Social Work/Therapist, LCSW
GlowTalk: An AI-Driven Chat Lamp to Illuminate Inner Thoughts
GlowTalk is a cutting-edge chat lamp designed to facilitate deep personal reflection and emotional understanding from the comfort of your home. Positioned ideally on a bedside table or a home office desk, it serves as a supportive companion, perfect for end-of-day reflections or moments of personal insight.
At the heart of GlowTalk is Luna, an intelligent AI that engages with users through voice interaction. Luna is programmed to initiate thoughtful conversations, encouraging users to delve into their thoughts and feelings, which can be particularly soothing before sleep or during quiet moments of the day.
Activation and Interaction Process:
Voice Activation: By pulling out the receiver, users activate the device and initiate interaction. Luna is immediately ready to engage, creating a seamless user experience that feels intuitive and responsive.
Adaptive Dialogue: Luna dynamically tailors its responses to fit the flow of the conversation, providing insights and encouraging deeper personal reflection. This adaptive response system ensures that conversations are deeply personalized and meaningful.
Visual Feedback:
Plate Light: Adjusts colors and brightness to reflect the conversation's emotional tone, setting the mood and providing contextual ambiance.
Receiver Light: Responds to the user's voice, enhancing engagement by lighting up during speech, mimicking the natural rhythm of conversation.
“Luna is not just a feature,” Wren explains. “It's the interactive voice of GlowTalk, designed to make the process of exploring personal emotions as intuitive as having a conversation with a friend. Its responses are crafted to help users articulate and explore their feelings, guiding them toward deeper personal insights.”
AuraWear: Smart Wearable Technology for Emotional Expression
AuraWear is a wearable smart device that utilizes advanced sensor technology to monitor and interpret the wearer’s emotional states. Designed for daily wear, this earpiece captures subtle physiological changes and translates them into easy-to-understand visual and auditory signals, enhancing personal emotional awareness and management.
The innovative concept of AuraWear is to externalize one’s inner self, making personal emotions visible and audible through wearable technology, significantly enhancing emotional awareness and connectivity. This device transforms advanced physical health monitoring technology to enhance mental well-being, addressing a largely untapped market for emotional health.
Advanced Sensing Technology: Equipped with heart rate variability sensors, AuraWear meticulously tracks emotional fluctuations, providing users with real-time insights into their feelings.
Visual Feedback: Integrated LEDs adjust their colors to reflect the wearer’s mood, offering a visual representation of emotional states that can aid in communication and personal understanding.
Seamless Music Integration: In partnership with the PulsePlay app, AuraWear influences music playback based on detected emotions, either reinforcing the current state or helping to shift to a more desired emotional condition.
PulsePlay: Revolutionizing Music Through Emotional Insight
PulsePlay acts as a sophisticated companion app to AuraWear, enhancing the wearable’s functionality by providing a personalized music experience that adjusts dynamically to the wearer’s emotional data. This app is pivotal in transforming biometric insights into therapeutic and adaptive music interventions.
Personalized Playlists: Leveraging the biometric data from AuraWear, PulsePlay customizes music playlists that resonate with the wearer's current mood or assist in achieving a desired emotional state through carefully selected tracks.
Intelligent Algorithm: The app’s core algorithm combines emotional analysis with user music preferences to generate music recommendations that are finely tuned to the user’s emotional needs and historical listening patterns.
Dynamic Adaptation: PulsePlay’s features such as EmoSense and MoodShift not only cater to immediate emotional needs but also learn from user interactions, continually refining music suggestions to enhance emotional well-being and engagement.
Together, AuraWear and PulsePlay offer a comprehensive solution for emotional regulation and self-discovery. These technologies work in harmony to provide users with an unprecedented level of insight into their emotional lives, empowering them to manage and express their feelings more effectively through the innovative use of wearable technology and personalized music therapy.
Mind Avatar: A Creative Tool for Visualizing Personal Identity
Mind Avatar is a unique design experience that incorporates the principles of art therapy into a visual exploration tool, allowing users to deeply explore and visualize their multifaceted identities. It combines the creative processes of collage-making and kaleidoscope visualization to create a dynamic method for users to engage with their inner selves.
Users begin their experience with Mind Avatar by engaging in a reflective activity using prompt cards. These cards encourage users to ponder specific topics related to their emotions and aspirations, which they then express through drawing, writing, and collage. This step facilitates a deep, personal reflection, setting the foundation for meaningful self-exploration.
After creating their collage, users place their artwork into a kaleidoscope viewer. The kaleidoscope transforms the static images into a dynamic visual symphony, continuously changing as the viewer interacts with it. This visual transformation allows users to see their thoughts and feelings from new and evolving perspectives, offering a powerful visual metaphor for the complexities of personal identity.
The changing visuals help users connect more deeply with their inner world, enhancing self-awareness and understanding. Therapist Holly Fu said she found Mind Avatar particularly effective in therapy settings because it helps individuals better understand their behaviors and motivations by externalizing and visualizing their emotional experiences.
Mind Avatar transforms the abstract process of self-discovery into a tangible, visual, and interactive experience. It not only facilitates a deeper understanding of one's self but also provides a memorable and shareable output that users can keep as a lasting reflection of their emotional journey.
To learn more about Jiayuan (Wren) Wang's work, take a look at her projects in more detail at wrenwang.com.