This project was presented at the end of Digital Design - Object to be Completed, a one-week workshop organized by Paris 1 University, the ENSCI (National School for Advanced Studies in Design) and Télécom ParisTech.

Based on the workshop’s premise of designing an object to be completed by the user, we focused on the use of biometrics on products and services, asking ourselves: how can we combine the realms of biotechnology and design through an openness approach?

Most of the uses of biometric data, such as identity control or medical diagnosis, are based on bound systems, where input and output are restricted and predictable. On the contrary, our goal is to design an open product – that is, when its parameters and functioning are essentially defined by external input. In other words, an open product is adaptive, it learns from external input and its future configurations are not known in advance.

Therefore, we’ve decided to use biometric data associated with emotional states to create a relational interface – a sensitive environment that responds to people’s emotions and interactions.

Motif is a relational interface that translates biometric indicators of emotional states of one person or a group of people into graphic information. An environment equipped with Motif can display those visual translations of emotions on its surfaces and on people’s skin and clothes.

Each person’s emotions generate singular patterns that are displayed for a certain amount of time. Such individual patterns can eventually be modified when this person interacts with others. Each social interaction generates hybrid patterns and establishes an unique writing form, where individual emotional scripts play with one another and generate collective emotional scripts.

In fact, writing is the key concept behind Motif: the creation of a visual pattern that translates one’s emotions in a singular way, through which people can express themselves and connect with others.