SOS the first project I worked on for Prof. Hiroshi Ishii's fall 2008 Tangible Interfaces class. Over the course of two weeks, I worked with my team to conceptualize and mock up the project. For more information on SOS, please visit the project web site.

In this day and age, people often lead very stressful lives. As we go through our day, we rarely have the time or opportunity to contact friends to relieve our stress. Because many people undoubtedly share this problem, is there a way that we can help each other?

SOS consists of a jacket, which is distributed to people all over the world. The jacket has a sensor on one cuff, which allows people to send signals out indicating that they are stressed. On the other cuff, the jacket has a vibrating panel, which indicates that someone has sent out a stress signal, and a sensor that allows people to send out a response to calm down the stressed person. On the back of the jacket are massage panels that get activated as calming responses are received. Different panels on the back turn on based on how far the calming response are from,

A person is stressed out and grips her cuff to send out a signal. Around the world, people receive her signal and feel their cuff vibrate. They put their hand on the cuff to calm it down, which sends a signal back to the original stressed person. Each calming signal contributes to form a massage, calming her down. SOS also has an accompanying web site, which users can check for where exactly their responses came from.