Aluminum, wood, leather, galvanic skin
response (GSR) sensor, smoke grenade,
switch, and glass tube
13 3/4 x 7 7/8
x 5 1/2" (35 x 20 x 14 cm)
The suppression of feelings in the
workplace in the hope of greater
professional success, notes designer
Jonas Loh, has led to unusually high
rates of employee suicide; a particularly
troubling statistic comes from France
Télécom, where 23 employees
ended their lives over the span of
18 months in 2008 and 2009.
To counteract this stifling and dangerous
social conundrum, Loh created the Amæ
Apparatus, which makes a person’s
feelings explicit. Loh calls it an early-warning
system for stressed-out people,
soliciting sympathy and allowing assistance
to be provided in a timely manner.
Amæ, whose name comes from a subtle
Japanese concept describing the desire
for attention and care from a person
of authority, is worn like a backpack
and interprets the wearer’s stress
levels through a skin sensor; color-coded
smoke erupts from a spout in a canister
to alert coworkers to various emotional
states.
