Christoff Trexler

asana

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Asana is a redesigned hammock to help people become more productive by giving them a way to create time for relaxation. Asana extends a person’s physical location by immersing the user in a sound bath that reacts to the motion of the hammock.

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This project was part of a two-week exploration of using sensors with Arduino. Asana was designed and built in one week and explored motion sensors and touch sensors and how they can impact the user experience. The team prototyped each part individually before combining them onto a hammock. The technology was designed to be unobtrusive and fit seamlessly within the hammock.

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When someone is feeling stressed, they can go over to the hammock and set a time with the capacitive touch light slider. Each light represents 1 minute, with a maximum of 30 min each session. The sounds are activated when the user rests their head on the hammock so that the activated pressure sensors can play sounds through embedded speakers. The sounds can change based on how one swings on the hammock and can range from an ocean setting to a forest setting to a mountain top setting and everything in between. The more one swings, the louder the sounds of waves crashing against each other. When the hammock is still, soft sounds of the forest begin. When time is up, Asana plays a calming gong to bring the use out of the experience and back to their day.