Modio, mood radio
Lifestyle Goods
Modio is a personal documentary that records emotions and translates daily experience into a charming melody. As a mood radio, it helps people to form a ritual of keeping a mood journal, and thus they can connect with themselves better.
Briefly saying that Modio is a mood radio that records your emotions every day; play music every month, and you can rewind it every season.
Inside Modio is a music box kit. You can easily make music notes yourself: just punching holes on the paper sheet wherever you want, send the sheet into the box and wind up. Here comes the music! I find this mechanism very intricate and inspired by this simple yet interesting interaction.
If putting the Modio paper sheet in the 3D axis, we can find X as time, Y as Pitch, and Z as music. Modio paper sheet splits time into days, every dot means a record for the day. And as days accumulate, it’ll form a unique pattern.
In this way, the music box is a good tool for recording or documenting something at a daily basis. Modio can translate the recorded data into visualization and also audialization.
I researched what people keep track of, and the majority are mood trackers. What is a mood tracker? Using a series of colors to represent different emotions, and everyday fill in with mood of the day.
Since mood tracker is often a section of journal, so I researched this group of people via Zhihu, a question and answer website. Among the community of journalers, the objectives of a journal include live consciously, a platform that they can talk to themselves and thus performs a ritual of life.
On the other hand, some people list the reasons they stop doing this anymore; Since keeping a mood tracker is very meaningful, but people will easily get missing in the form of decorating but ignore what’s the real purpose: think and document.
My insight is to create a tool for those who would love to have a mood tracker but being tracked or worried by their aesthetic or illustration skills. A mood radio that has a delightful experience that goes directly with documenting their emotion, but also has interesting features of the music box that their everyday moods become a melody eventually.
Modio functions within three time period: day, month and season. The purpose of Modio is to help people connect with themselves, reflect on their feelings and clear their mind. Music here is the reward of the time accumulation, and something unknown, like an Easter egg.
With this concept in mind, I made this Modio testing kit in a manual way and invite people to be the experiencer. And I got some essential feedbacks from them and made some modifications.
Modio contains four parts: a mood box, a mood checking tool, mood paper sheets in four seasons and also four mood color charts.
The color palette for each month changes with the seasons.
For the form of Modio, inspired by a Muji desk organizer, I love the way it feels at hand, and the oblique allows it facing user at a perfect angle.
Some quick one on one scale mock-ups using foam core.
I draw a series of sketches with the reference of my sketch models. I want Modio to have this modern retro vibe. And I especially put emphasis on the inner structure that the housing has transparency so the user could see the fascinating mechanism inside.
From sketch to 3D model.
For the material, I considered wood and metal, but decided on Poly Propylene and using injection molding to manufacture. I develop the housing combines transparency with pastel colors, that works well with the colorful paper sheet.
To replace the paper sheet, opening Modio box on the left side, the paper sheet comes in a cylinder just like the old film camera. Changing is also similar with that of the film; pull the paper sheet out, feed it into the music box and advance the handle.
For branding Modio, I design the logo originated from the Mobius strip. I see similarity between the Mobius strip and Modio: provides sense of surprise, the infinity combos of the melody, and hoping people can obtain awareness of time. In Modio, the mood paper sheet is the represent of time, every month you wind up, you can see time flash by. User can also keep the paper sheet in the Modio canister.
In this project, I want to find a poetic way to interpret the concept of time and emotion. As a designer, I always want to have a project that starts from completely abstract ideas and gradually translating them into an item that is relevant with our own daily life. This experience of using logic thinking to find a path through abstract to concrete is wonderful. Just like Mobius strip continues connects with itself, Modio help you connect with yourself!
I also made a one on one scale look-like model, put it into the real scenario: everyone’s home. The exquisite form makes Modio fits everywhere at your apartment: you can put it by the window, on the shelf, in your desk, or even beside your bed.