Student Work Examples: Pollen

Loss of close companions is often a consequence of growing old. Such loss can lead to feelings of isolation, a primary cause of depression among older people. With this in mind, we believe there may be potential value in designing and developing technologies that offer "artificial" companionship.

The challenge for the CHI 2005 Student Design Competition was to design for artificial companionship to support the social well-being of seniors above the age of 65 years. Pollen is an affordable product that provides companionship through the exchange of meaningful artifacts.

Pollen won second place at the Computer/Human Interaction 2005 Student Design Competition. A .pdf of the winning paper is available here.

Shown: Pollen poster, by Payaal Patel and Stefanie Danhope-Smith