MindSpheres

red dot
red dot award: design concept 2008

company:

Philips Design

MindSpheres builds on the idea that exercising skilled, playful hand actions is both a relaxing and a rewarding experience.

This device, consisting of two MindSpheres and a charging dock, helps the user to relax in a playful manner. The user can interact with the MindSpheres by making them orbit each other in the palm of the hand. The MindSpheres detect and analyse the user’s movements in real-time and compare them to a number of internally stored, relaxing movement patterns.

Based on how closely the user’s movements match the desired movement patterns, the light and vibration feedback pattern of each MindSphere is changed. At fi rst, when the user’s movements are incoherent, the feedback is random. The closer the match becomes and the longer the user manages to sustain this match, the more structured, restful, beautiful and mesmerising the feedback patterns become.