SHYNY has three ways of expressing its shyness: locomotion, sound and colour. By using these elements we made SHYNY react to people. At first the comfort zone of SHYNY is rather small, but by slowly getting to know them you that zone increases. You need to gain its trust.

Humans are just as alike. Gaining each other's trust is key in getting to know someone and forming relationships. We use our bodylanguage and speech to convey our intensions and how much we trust someone. SHYNY can be rough and spikey, or round and soft. By changing between those states SHYNY expresses different emotions. The colour of SHYNY conveys both the fear and nervousness of coming to close, but also the blush in someone's face. The stinging sound made us think about electricity going to the veins of SHYNY, which depends on the amount of light it receives and produces. Since SHYNY has many ways of conveying states and emotions, every change in motion, sound and light can be interpreted differently. We might never know what SHYNY is exactly feeling (and thinking?), just as with humans...

We started out with many different ideas for our creature: vanity, gender, mortality, loneliness. Later on, we were excited about making a creature that was needy. We wanted to use a common household object for this, since we liked the role revearsal of an object that normally we need, suddenly needing us. So like a coffee machine that would not make coffee unless you gave it attention first. Or like a light that would scream at you until you petted it. With this idea in our heads, we started to make a first prototype using this Ikea lamp. However, as soon as we had done so, we all agreed neediness was not the primary characteristic anymore. We made a video and asked others to describe what they saw. From their reactions and our own interpretations, we eventually chose shyness as our main characteristic, and tried to make this the most prominent.

Many objects in our lives are used everyday, but are hardly ever cared for. It often happens that objects are just thrown away without any thoughts, but not SHYNY. With SHYNY we created an object that you want to get to know and connect with. This was done by integrating SHYNY with the emotion of being shy and having to gain someone's trust.

By using this combination, we can not only show that we subjectify an object, but we can also learn more about ourselves. Compared to humans, SHYNY is quite expressive in its emotions. SHYNY makes itself big and rough when scared and nervous, while humans make themselves small. SHYNY is closed and smooth when content and trusting, while humans are open and vivid. We think that this paradox can tell and learn us a lot about what trust and fear really are.