The REMind exists to capture ideas that strike in the car, in the shower, or while falling asleep.
Ideas come most freely during these periods of relaxation because the mental mechanism that critiques and filters ideas has mostly turned off. Finding a light, paper, pen, or phone, especially duing the almost-asleep state called hypnagogia which yields copious new ideas, would interrupt relaxation and thereby inspiration.
How can we save those precious ideas without interruption?
A sensitive microphone inside the REMind begins capturing high quality audio when a user speaks the command to begin recording. Recordings are stored as audio and transmitted to a paired app, which also converts the audio recording to text. At the end of each recording, users can tag their recording by simply saying, "tag: groceries" or "tag: china essay", for example.
Recordings converted to text are listed in the app, and can be sorted by tag, date, length, and searched by contents.
Clicking an entry expands it, allowing users to read the whole text or edit tags.
The form of the product aims to convey that it's always listening. This mood board of various "listening" elements provided inspiration for that goal. Most noticably, two dogs and two people pictured have skewed their head positions from their natural resting position. The REMind is raised up off the table when the outer ring is bent down, in a similar skewed-for-listening posture.
An quick clay mockup of the form direction chosen.
Mesh study
A render of the 3-piece mold I created to cast silicone into the final form. The mold was 3D printed, and silicone was actually poured to create a silicone part.
This was a group project between computer engineering, marketing, and industrial design students. The product concept was a group effort. The final form was entirely my work, as was the app shown.
Thanks for reading!
