Telepathy Lamp: Remote Affective Interaction Based on Ambient Metaphor for Emotional Caring of the Elderly

This paper presents a remote affective interactive design: Telepathy Lamp, which focuses on the “Empty Nest” problem. It is a device for the parents and children who live far away from each other, focusing on transferring remote emotional communication based on the metaphor of ambient media. It consists of two lamps, one for parents, and the other for the children. The lamps can detect the presence of users and send the signal to the other lamp through network. Then the lamp on the other side would turn on. It makes the families have the conscious that they´re companied by the families far away. This paper promotes a hypothesis that neo technology would have a better performance on interaction of the elderly if we choose better medium, such as the daily use objects. It also describes the process of interaction medium choosing, the implementation, and the valuation from users.