A high-tech sweater has been developed that shows how you feel. Sensors within the sweater’s textile measure the skin conductance and display the results using colour.

As stress levels change, so too does the conductance of your skin, and LED lighting embedded within the fabric automatically adjust to show what your mood is, from calm to anxious.

The mood sweater is designed by Sensoree, a US design lab that specialises in ‘extimacy’, or externalised intimacy. Simply put: making visible the body’s inner workings.

Sensoree states that the wearable piece of technology uses galvanic skin response. This GSR is a measurement of electro-conductivity, which is dependent on levels of moisture on the skin. This is the type of technology that has previously been used in lie-detection.

Here, however, it is put to more inspirational use. Depending on your body temperature and the amount you perspire, the sweater will pick up on signals and display what it thinks is your current mood.

A line of multicolour LEDs, hidden in the curvaceous collar of the sweater, light up to brighten the mood, or perhaps to let people know you don’t feel like talking at the moment. The sweater’s colours make intuitive sense, from green for calm to red for ‘nervous’ – though red also counts for ‘in love’.

Is the high-tech sweater a conversation piece or way of keeping the peace? We could soon find out. The mood sweater has been on exhibition for a few months, and is expected to go on sale early next year.

 

More information: Sensoree.