The Empathic Home

As we grow more comfortable using technology to sense us as individuals — from wearables that track biometric data to devices that read facial and gestural characteristics — NewTerritory is asking what these technologies might mean for our homes in the years ahead.

We are exploring how such technologies can be designed to sense us and our needs and shape future experiences that matter. We call this Emphatic Technology.

What would it mean if a product or even fixture in your home can see if you are happy or sad or if your shoulders are slumped? How would the home change if you have company or if you are alone? What can we do with this information, and how can we use the data that we capture to improve our lives?

Curated Content

If a light switch or a floor surface can sense our mood or physical state, we should consider how this can tailor some of the services becoming commonplace in our homes. Perhaps content streamers and creators could align with Sense data to recommend entertainment based on mood. Without any thought on our part, services could flex to provide the most appropriate listening, viewing or gaming that best reflects complex dynamics and changing needs in a household.

Connected Wellbeing

Similarly, connected home fitness systems could create bespoke experiences which combine the exercise data they receive already with broader wellness and lifestyle information from a customer’s sense data, creating an ultra-bespoke and holistic programme of mental and physical wellbeing.

Bespoke Nutrition

Utilising sense data for our benefit needn’t be limited to brands that have a defined physical or digital presence within the home. Future food and fulfilment services could connect with our home technology to pre-empt orders based on behavioural data, or tune an order and include more nutritionally perfect alternatives that our bodies and minds need in that moment.

Digital / Physical Blends

From data that informs what we can touch and feel, to data that shapes the intangible. With the metaverse moving closer as a mass digital experience, how could the data sensed across our homes contribute to a better blend of digital and physical? What if our physical and mental needs could shape experiences in VR or AR, making virtual or augmented spaces automatically tune themselves to energise, nurture or focus.

Across all of these areas, as we gather more and more data from our bodies and minds and from the environments of our homes and neighbourhoods, it’s crucial that we explore what opportunities there are for products, spaces and services that make truly meaningful enhancements to these different moments in our lives.

By Hugo Jamson, Strategy Director at NewTerritory.