Music is a great motivator as long as the right tunes accompany the different emotional stages we go throughout the day. One way to synchronize the tunes to our activity is to plan ahead and work out sophisticated playlists.

A much simple way would be if the music adjusts to our emotional stage automatically. The best emotion indicator is of course our heart(beat). In relaxed mood our heartbeat is going slowly, evenly while in stress situations like a intense workout more powerful tunes are need to keep moving.

Anaid Gomez Ortigoza, student at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU, is working on a project called ‘kokoro‘ which is a wearable playlist generator for the iPod based on the heartbeat.

The concept is simple to use but fully packed with innovative ideas: the heart-rate is picked up by a Polar heart-rate sensor (could be of course also one of the cool heart-rate sports shirts). The signal is received by Anaid’s specially developed electronic which  is housed in a cute textile pouch connected to an iPod.

The software selects songs form your music library that match the current heart rate. But there is an option to disagree with your hearts choice of music: one button to tell the ‘kokoro’ DJ to chose a more powerful song or to slow the music down a bit. If you have a song in your library that fits a heart(beat) but you don’t like to listen to right now – skip it.

The ‘kokoro’ concept is a unique design showing we could interact with our music players in a very sensible, emotional way.

Anaid’s project blog is a great source of inspiration and provides a look into the ‘making off’ the ‘kokoro’ heartbeat DJ.