“I really miss my family and friends from back home. Though I can keep in touch through texting, calling or messaging throughout the day, it’s not the same as having them around,” says OCAD U Digital Futures grad student Lee Jones. “As a result, I’ve started thinking a lot about telepresence — creating the feeling of presence.”

Lee, together with ubiquitous computing classmates Yashodha Deshpande and Janmesh Gharat, created a pair of connected devices that create the feeling of someone.

Thinking of You is a pair of objects for telepresence that connect over wifi. Each friend gets one of the objects that they can wave when they are thinking of the other person. The corresponding object will then duplicate the wave by vibrating with the same tone. 

The goal of Thinking of You is to convey the physical communication that doesn’t come across through texts or online messages. Unlike a poke or notification, Thinking of You focuses on the tone of your message. Wave the object a few times to convey a friendly wave, and your friend will receive that message on the other end.

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