Pen that Reduces Stress

                                        The world is changing at a rapid speed and everyday we are coming up with new technologies and devices of which we can not even think few years back. In the coming future, more and more interactive products are going to come in the market. These products will be able to read between the lines what users are feeling and use that information in a smart way to reform or reconstruct their behavior. Miguel Bruns Alonso, an Industrial Design PhD student from the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, came up with an innovative and unthinkable idea of creating an anti-stress pen. Miguel Bruns Alonso has developed a pen which can measure the stress levels of the person using it, and can actually help to reduce that stress. In experiments, the heart rate of people who used the anti-stress pen fell by an average of five percent.According to the inventor, the prototype pen is able to spot short-term stress in a person that uses it and it does not stop here but it has a mechanism to reduce some of that stress. The device identifies stress when it is being fidgeted with. As soon as the anti-stress pen detects fidgeting, it gets the person to stop by its special sensitive electromagnetic mechanism.
According to Alonso, experiments performed in the course of his research indicated that people tend to play with their pens when they're tense – We all know that we tend to do so when we are bored, but perhaps boredom counts as a type of stress or tension too. The inventor has kept this idea in mind and has equipped his invention with motion sensors. These are used to identify nervous movement and when that happens, the built-in magnets create a counterweight effect, which makes it difficult for the user to move the pen. Once the nervous movements stop, so do the effects of the electromagnets. The user, by this means is rewarded for ceasing behavior that not only indicates but sometimes apparently worsens the mental stress.
                                                     When the pen was tested on human subjects, those receiving feedback through the device had an average heart rate five percent lower than those who received none. These study groups did not know that the pen was equipped with any kind of motion sensors and it was designed to provide feedback, and the group that did receive it didn't claim to feel any less stress than the control group. 
                                     The conclusion to be drawn from this is that products which seek to reduce short-term stress should, preferably, intervene directly to modify that behavior, rather than warning the user about their stress levels, for instance. This could allow products to reduce stress in an unobtrusive way.” At present this pen is a prototype and not yet available for purchase, but it could become more useful invention with the passage of time to make a person's life much better by reducing some percentage of his stress and tension.