Modern life is so busy that we often fail to keep track of some important messages sent over the phone, Facebook, or MSN from our family and friends and thus miss some chances of getting together. Over time, the intensity of interpersonal relationships declines. Our team attempts to come up with a solution for the problem through the medium of a simple interactive device. The interactive device preserves all the messages in audio form to catch the user’s attention, hence enabling the user to go over the messages in his/her free time and to review his/her relationships with family and friends.

The interactive device consists of four pieces of wood in arc form. The four wooden arcs are circularly arranged like annual rings of trees, implying that messages are enveloped within. The innermost arc stands for the earliest received message. The four wooden arcs are able to respectively close up and open out. When an arc opens out, no message is enclosed within the shy tree. On the other hand, as soon as a message is transmitted to the user of the shy tree, one of the arcs closes up and makes the message fast enclosed, requesting the owner to open it out to get the message.

When a series of messages are conveyed to the user of the shy tree, the wooden arcs will respectively close up from the innermost one to the outermost. Each arc encloses a message. The number of arcs that close up facilitates the user of the shy tree to figure out the number of received messages. While the user wants to read the messages, he or she can peel away the arcs to receive the enclosed contents in sequence. Based on the image of embodying enveloped messages as annual rings of trees, Shy Tree guides the user to review important words and intense emotions from family and friends by means of disclosing the envelopment of messages and exploring the interior layer by layer.

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