OCIO - A Speaker Empowering Social Interaction

In the not so distant future it can be expected that we will use ‘smart’ technology to perform social actions. In most families the important social interaction is low on the priority list, because parents are used to a time efficient way of living and want to sustain their family. Instead of playing with their children, parents give their children a Gameboy or iPad to entertain themselves. Which is not favorable for the child’s creative and social development. Young adolescents could look at their phone as their best friend and think that human friends are not necessary, since the AI in their phone fixes everything for them, wasting the room for discussion and innovation that social interaction gives. This is why the social goal of OCIO is to encourage the users to engage in social interactions. This social goal can be related to the problem of not being able to hear each other properly when music is playing, since it is hard to converse when you can not understand each other. When the speaker is in a difficult to reach place this can discourage people from talking to each other. Which takes away one of the main forms of social interaction. Imagine yourself watching TV in the living room with the sound as loud as physically possible to fully engage in the program you are watching. Suddenly you're beloved child walks in and starts to enthusiastically talk about his/her day. However you can not hear your offspring due to the high volume of your TV speaker and need to find the remote control to lower the volume and ask your child to start again.

A wireless speaker with high quality sound which adapts its volume real time according to the environment. It will feature a web application as user interface where the user can personalize the settings. In the second phase real time adapting light according to the state of mind of the user will be added and an integration with all the smart home devices will be added. The hope is that people will connect more with each other, instead of distancing from one another by shifting their attention to the virtual world. When improperly employed, a speaker playing music can be detrimental to social interaction. However, with smart interventions, the social speaker OCIO can instead, through its qualia, accommodate and encourage social interaction by social integration of technology. The hope is thus that the speaker can keep the mood inducing nature of music and light, but not deter people from conversing with one another.