Background
Do you know the feeling when you are nervous before a presentation or an important meeting?
Your legs shake, your hands are restless, and your thoughts start to drift away.
This feeling was the starting point of our project "dufte". During interviews with partners from medicine, science, and phytotherapy, we learned that scents can have a positive effect on patients.
Concept
We transferred the principle of classical conditioning into our concept. Our system collects emotional data through different sensors. An artificial intelligence analyzes this data to understand the user’s current emotional state. The goal is to support emotional balance in situations the user experiences as stressful. This could help, for example, people with exam anxiety. Whenever the user is relaxed, a personalized scent is released. Over time, the brain connects this scent with relaxation. After the conditioning phase, the scent can be released in stressful situations, such as an exam, to help the user feel calmer.
Kit
The dufte kit consists of three main components:
Five personalized scents that can be ordered in advance.
A necklace with an integrated scent diffuser, where a scent ampoule can be inserted. The necklace includes a microphone to analyze emotional valence through the voice.
A wristband with sensors that measure electrodermal activity (EDA). This data helps determine the emotional arousal level of the user.
App
To support the user, we designed an app with the same name: dufte. The app visualizes emotional data and scent activation through different graphs. During onboarding, the product is personalized to the user’s needs. The app also includes an information section about conditioning, scents, emotions, and artificial intelligence. To see how the product works in practice, feel free to watch our product video for a concrete example of the concept.