The team designed Embrace, an interaction design concept that emerged during CIID's foundation week, focusing on maintaining intimate family connections across geographical distances. The project was inspired by Muskan's personal experience of studying abroad and missing the physical comfort of parental embrace during moments of anxiety.
The system pairs a smart jacket with a parent's wristband. When anxious, the student hugs themselves wearing the jacket, alerting their parents via the wristband. The parent's response - rubbing their band - creates warmth and pressure in the jacket, simulating a hug until they release their touch.
This solution addresses a common challenge many international students and their families face in maintaining emotional support systems despite physical separation. The team's research revealed that while digital communication tools excel at sharing information, they often fail to convey physical comfort and emotional reassurance.
Embrace translates emotional support into tangible sensation, providing immediate comfort during stressful or anxious moments. It creates an intimacy level far beyond that achieved by current communication devices, enabling parents to provide physical comfort even from thousands of miles away.
Learnings
Through this project, the team learned the importance of incorporating physical interaction in emotional support systems and how technology can bridge the gap between digital communication and physical presence. The deliberate inclusion of prolonged physical interaction - requiring the parent to maintain contact for the duration of the comfort - adds meaningful friction to the exchange, making it more intentional and intimate than a simple text message or emoji could ever be.
