Wish-To-Go
Project Overview
A pair of hands come together in a quiet gesture—seeking hope, reflection, or simply a moment of connection. What if that small act could spark something more?
Wish-to-Go transforms this fleeting motion into a tangible experience using machine learning. Detecting the gesture, the system listens, processes it through AI, and generates a personalized blessing, printing it onto a small receipt—an ephemeral token of encouragement. Blending machine intelligence with human sentiment, it turns an intimate wish into something to hold, share, or carry forward.
My Role
Interaction Designer
Type
Group
Date
November 2024 - December 2024
Tool
Discover
Inspiration
The user folds their hands in prayer, ready to invoke their wish, awaiting the system's response.
Interaction Process Diagrams
Delivery
Process
User Interaction
The user performs a prayer gesture to start the interaction. Once the prayer gesture is recognized, the LED lights illuminate, providing visual feedback to the user.
The user speaks their wish into the system, using voice input.
System Architecture Diagram
Sequence Diagram
The user initiates the interaction with a hand gesture, preparing to make a wish.
Define
Research Plan - Designing meaningful interactions
In this project, we set out on a journey to transform the simple act of making a wish into something much more meaningful. Imagine a world where every wish you make is not just a fleeting thought, but a tangible experience—something that surprises, delights, and connects. By blending gesture detection, machine learning, an LLM API, and thermal printing, we aimed to create an interaction that feels both playful and deeply personal. Each gesture becomes a step in a larger story, where technology amplifies the emotional impact of a wish, turning it into a heartfelt, lasting memory. Through this process, we sought to bridge the digital and emotional, making each wish a moment of joy and meaningful connection.
Storyboards
Turning wishes into blessings.
Wish-To-Go draws inspiration from the concept of fortune cookies, transforming user wishes into personalized blessings. Much like how opening a fortune cookie can unexpectedly reveal a meaningful message, our system uses gesture detection, audio transcription, and blessing generation to create a surprising and heartfelt interaction. Each gesture triggers an unexpected moment of connection, where the user receives a personalized blessing, bridging the digital and emotional. This project reimagines the joy of receiving messages in a way that feels spontaneous, interactive, and filled with warmth—turning a simple wish into an emotional, meaningful experience.
Gesture Recognition
The system detects the prayer gesture using ultrasonic sensors and classifies it using machine learning models.
The system prints the blessing on a receipt, and the user prepares to receive it.
The system generates a blessing and displays it on the screen, glowing with warmth.
The user smiles as they receive the printed blessing, feeling joy and contentment.
Voice Input & Blessing Generation
The user speaks their wish aloud, and the system captures the audio using the microphone. The system then uses LLM to generate a personalized blessing based on the user’s wish.
Sharing with the Public
Printing the Blessing
The blessing is printed on a thermal receipt printer, providing the user with a physical token.
Final Outcome
At the Berkeley public showcase, we had the opportunity to present our Wish-To-Go demo, and to our surprise, our booth drew a long line of enthusiastic visitors!
At one point, we even ran out of thermal paper (thankfully, we managed to restock in time—special thanks to Uber! ). It was incredibly heartwarming to see so many people enjoying our project.
Every time someone read the blessing printed on their receipt and smiled , it filled me with joy. This was the very reason I wanted to create this project: to use technology to spread warmth and bring genuine moments of happiness and connection to those who experienced it.
