Creatures for Affirmation

Element of Creatureness

When thinking about this assignment, my mind immediately went to words such as hope, consolation, comfort and affirmation. I made an association to therapy dogs, who are able to notice when humans are in a state where they need their presence. The word "affirmation" to me summed this up most properly. So, that's the element of creatureness that I'm going with.

Examples of Affirmation in Artificial Creatures

There has already been a lot of research and production of artificial creatures that are aimed at empathy. On the left you can see the 3E-A18 robot by Honda. This robot can react to audio ques and will act accordingly. You might call it over and it might notice that you are sad. Through it's visual display, which represents facial features, it might try to cheer you up. Moreover, it has audio to go along with these visuals and if you touch the robot both the audio and the visual can also respond. On the right you can see PARO which is a therapeutic plush seal that can react physically to patients touching it.

Affirmation Creation

A lot of the examples that I've found are physical. Therefore, I thought it would be a nice challenge to see this concept in a digital environment. This creature will make its appearance when you haven't been active for a while on your computer or have been using the mouse but haven't typed anything in Word for example. It may ask how you are doing and if needed provide some words of affirmation and motivation.