New smart bracelet helps alert friends if user too intoxicated

A new bracelet called Vive is meant to target clubs and festivals in the same way 3-D glasses are used at movie theatres, said Dan Doan, the technical director and interaction designer of Vive.

“Everyone in attendance would wear a Vive band,” Doan said via email. “This way, everyone can practice self-awareness and look out for the friends in their designated group.”

Six months ago, a three-minute video about Vive was released on the video-sharing website Vimeo and has recently gained popularity. The video shows three girls drinking alcohol at a club who use Vive to stay connected to each other via social media throughout the night. The wearable device also gets one of the girls out of a dangerous situation in which she ends up alone with a man.

Vive is meant to measure the wearer’s intoxication and dehydration levels, vibrating every so often to make sure the user is conscious and in control, according to the video. Once the user puts on the bracelet and activates it upon walking into a party or club, it connects them to other Vive wearers via BlueTooth. 

A squeeze of the band means the wearer is in control and having fun. Bands are linked to Facebook, which forms a “party group,” so if one user goes too long without squeezing it, his or her friends will be alerted.

Doan, who graduated from the School of Art at the University of Washington, said he and his interdisciplinary team of six came up with Vive for this year’s Microsoft Research Faculty Summit. The Summit holds a Design Expo, a global-scale contest that invites college students to present projects on a given topic.

Doan said this year’s prompt was: “In a world with a billion sensors, how will we make sense of it all?” 

Doan and his team made sense of it through Vive and said they spent more than a class quarter researching and designing the device.

Vive is more than just another accessory for partygoers to don when preparing for a night out — it is an accessory with a purpose, he said. 

Using technology similar to Undercover Colors, a nail polish developed by four students at North Carolina State University, Vive is a device meant to reduce the frequency of sexual assault.

Undercover Colors changes color when a user dips his or her polished finger in a drink spiked with drugs like GBH, Rohypnol or Xanax, according to a previous article published in The Daily Targum.

From Doan and his group’s research, they found that alcohol plays a major part in sexual assault cases — not just for victims, but also for perpetrators — so the bracelet targets both groups.

“When we talk about perpetrators, we’re looking at people who may have reduced inhibitions when drinking, are not cognizant of their own actions and may not understand sexual boundaries,” he said. “For victims, alcohol makes it difficult to be aware of [attacks] and defend [against them].”

Ruth Anne Koenick, director of the Office for Violence Prevention and Victim Assistance, said her initial reaction is that Vive is a gimmick that puts the responsibility to not get assaulted on women.

“The responsibility needs to be on the people who perpetrate,” Koenick said. “Whether it’s the nail polish or bracelet, we are looking at women’s behavior and not that of who is committing the assaults.”

The suggestion that sexual assault always takes place in the presence of alcohol is “ridiculous,” she said. 

“Sexual assaults don’t just happen under those kinds of circumstances,” she said. “Sexual assaults happen when your study partner gets up and locks the door. Sexual assaults happen with the guy you went to church with or the person that you have known from home or your roommate’s boyfriend’s cousin shows up.”

Looking historically at sexual assault, Koenick said early laws were designed to prevent men from false accusations. There was a belief that women lie and cannot be trusted, she said.

Today’s society tends to blame the victim in cases of sexual assault, she said. Blaming the victim creates a facade that society is safer than it is because it lets people shy away from facing the reality that sexual predators exist.

“We are quick to judge women on things that have to do with a sexual nature,” she said. “But it really doesn’t have to do with sex. It has to do with power, control and entitlement.”

Jessica Clark, a School of Arts and Sciences junior involved with Students Challenging Realities and Educating Against Myths Theater, said she takes issue with the messages that these devices are sending.

“If you were assaulted and you didn’t take all of the precautions that were out there, it’s almost like you deserved this,” Clark said. “No one deserves to be victimized.”

Strapping on bracelets and painting nails may prevent assault for one night, Clark said, but the real way to prevent sexual assault is by challenging the culture and holding perpetrators accountable.

“It doesn’t make me angry,” she said. “I think the inventors are coming from a good place. All of these tools and tricks are coming from a place of trying to make the world safer, especially for women.”

What does make Clark angry is the overwhelming amount of support that these items get, and the fact that the larger issue is challenging a culture that allows sexual assault.

“I’m passionate about [this] because I want to live in a world where we don’t have to be talking about these products because we all feel safe,” she said.

As for now, Doan said he and his team are excited about the future of Vive and are currently exploring different options for how to develop their concept.

“We don’t intend Vive to be a solution to stop all sexual assault, but we do believe that a system that can reduce its occurrence is one that’s definitely worthwhile in the world today,” he said.