Feel the News is a bluetooth enabled pendant that when paired with your phone will vibrate softly or violently based on push notifications. Inspired in part by the disconnect between the number of people reported violently murdered or killed in terrorist attacks around the world and our emotional responses to them versus the events closer to home, Feel the News attempts to remind you that we are all interconnected and that the statistics buried in the story relates to real people and real tragedies.

Background
We created this piece as our final in the class Rest Of You. Presented as a somewhat tongue-in-cheek hypothetical device, the piece creates a conversation about the impact of violence at a distance on the larger community. Would we be more inspired toward peace if we realized at a tactile level that if one person suffers a violent injustice, we all suffer along with them?

Audience
human beings

User Scenario
Two user case scenarios:

1) The user wheres the pendant. When reading news online, words indicating violence from handguns cause a light vibration in the pendant, requiring the user to feel something about the pain caused.

2) In a more positivity focused version, a complimentary pendant, designed to be alerted of heroism and progress towards peace gives the wearer a tactile indication that encourages positivity and motivation to add to the good that is happening in the world.




Implementation
the version instigating empathy for violence in the news is an anti-gun sign on plexi with a bulletshell contained vibration motor.



the heroism pendant is a locket.



Each has a builtin bluetooth that talks with their computer or android phone.

Conclusion
We learned how to use bluetooth modules, creating chrome extensions to send data to a microcontroller when certain words appear on a webpage. we learned how to scrape data from twitter and cause a motor to vibrate when certain words are tweeted.