TangibleHeart - Enabling Critical and Shared Reflections of Heart Behaviors

TangibleHeart is a design that seeks to encourage critical reflection by bringing to the foreground the “ugly and beautiful” ways of how one’s own heart works outside explicit awareness. The artefact resembles a real heart in size and behaviour and physically beats in synchrony with the user’s real heart. It allows users to experience their own heart’s real-time behaviour through physical computing sensors and actuators. It can be held in ones own hands or given to the hands of onlookers for shared and contextual reflection. TangibleHeart aims to trigger a variety of feelings from users and onlookers, ranging from discomfort or uneasiness caused by the realization of the artefact’s cruel embodiment to fascination and joy due to the familiar resonance produced by the artefact’s behaviour.