By Stephanie M. McPherson
Imagine putting on a pair of glasses and the outside world melts away. Chat notifications turn off. Pings from the never-ending news cycle are silenced. Your mind is gently nudged to focus on the one task that demands your full attention.
This is what happens when you slip on AttentivU, a pair of smart glasses designed by Nataliya Kos’myna and Pattie Maes, both of the Fluid Interfaces group within the MIT Media Lab. Supported by a grant from the MIT Integrated Learning Initiative (MITili), the AttentivU project is designed to help students improve their ability to focus on a given task, such as homework.