Target Audience?

I was thinking to myself, who the hell would use this thing?

I first thought that it would be a fun socialising tool, with the use to entertain and keep people in touch…much like how people use myspace or facebook.

But this is too simple.

People have been hinting to me to develop this application for a certain target audience, and the overwhelming theme of suggestions pointed to people who had difficulty with expressing their thought. This could help persons undergoing mental healthcare  who don’t know how to express their feelings. Or to people who are generally too shy to tell people how they generally feel.

But that got me thinking, would these people really use an iphone to start with? Would they agree to use a device that measures their emotions? Would it be practical for someone with such a mental state to use such an expensive device?

Practicality?

I was just thinking about how this application would be useful in everyday life.

Luckily for me, Rob forced us to do this in class today, so now I feel that my idea is half practical.

 So, if someone is having a bad day, the sensor in their wristband would be able to detect that and send it to their iPhone. The iPhone could then send the info to the people that subscribe to the feed, the same way that RSS works. A friend on the other side of town would then know how they are feeling without having to talk to them to start with, and be able to call them to see if they are alright, or know to be nice to them when they next meet.

Sound reasonable?

 So now I have to work on:

-How can you control who sees this information

-Implementing it into your social/study calendar

-How to ‘tone down’ the information so that it doesn’t alarm other users

-How to implement it into an interface thats practical for the iPhone

In The Wrist?

It just occurred to me that you can feel the pulse through the wrist. Therefore, it would be a great place to put an emotion senor. I thought it would be good because it doesn’t need to be worn under the clothing, and can be disguised in a wristband or something similar. It could then send signals to the iPhone in a way similar to what a heart rate monitor does. Does this idea seem plausible?

iPhone User status

Expanding on the idea from last night.

So myspace has introduced a new function that allows users to share their status and emotions.

This is surely to allow users to interact with and understand each other without having to have an actual conversation.

I was thinking that this could easily be done on the iPhone as well.

Because its a touch screen, it already has sensors built in.

What if the screen had the ability to detect the emotion of the user based on the temperature of the hand, as well as the speed of the vibrations in the hand. (OK, I know I’m dreaming here, but I can’t think of another way for it to pick up your emotions)

This data could be shown to nearby users via a bluetooth network, or on a larger scale, to people all over the world, who subscribe to that phone, much like how RSS feeds are currently used.

Of course this function could be turned on and off, just like any other plugin, so people don’t have to share their emotions when they don’t want to.

So is this idea too ridiculous or too simple?

I’m trying to implement web 2.0 and being fairly realistic at the same time.