PositiviTea Concept
Designed by Maija Sardiko, Jura Afanasjevs, Caoimhe Lavelle, Amanda Lennon and Shannen Jalal, Ireland.
The concept behind the PositiviTea brand is ‘Tea Fixes Everything’. The touch sensitive cups are filled not only with the tea, but also with the positive digital content contributed by the users. While enjoying the tea in a company or alone the tea drinkers may rise their mood by watching/listening/reading just the positive content of PositiviTea.
The cups are touch sensitive with the help of the conductive ink. When a user touches the certain icon on the cup it activates the app on iPhone or iPad nearby.
The project shows how the real or physical world and the Internet can be blended together.
For the project, we wanted to pay particular attention to the idea of ‘The Internet of Things’, a concept that describes a future where everyday physical objects will be connected to the Internet and will be able to identify themselves to other devices. It is significant because an object can represent itself digitally becomes more intelligent than when the object existed by itself, connecting to the Internet, objects around it and real world data.
Because of this we decided to explore the idea of promoting an object that people already use frequently in their everyday lives. Our aim was to use conductive ink in order to bridge the gap between digital and print media.
Conductive Ink is a product that has become more and more commercially available over the last few years. Like regular ink, it can be screen-printed and drawn with but unlike regular ink, it conducts electricity meaning it is now possible to create amazing interactive paper products and interfaces that can exist beyond the printed page.
We focused on the disposable cup as an object as we noticed now regularly people use this printed item. We felt we could add to the experience of drinking a cup of tea by using conductive ink to combine it with multiple types of media. We decided to try to connect the positive emotional feeling of drinking tea together with applying a more interacting physical use of the cup.
