# What is a Vibe? Vibe is a fairly new word in the zeitgeist, used broadly for the crossover between an **emotional** response, an **instinctive** response, and the **aesthetic quality** of an action, activity, or feeling itself. The word does a lot of work. It is imprecise by design. ## Research Direction: Mapping Vibes to Space **The hypothesis:** A vibe can be captured on an x-y axis. | Axis | Dimension | |------|-----------| | X | Pleasantness (negative ← → positive) | | Y | Tension / Arousal (calm ↓ ↑ activated) | This maps to established emotional research (Russell's Circumplex Model of Affect). Feelings scatter across this plane. - High tension + pleasant = *excited, elated* - Low tension + pleasant = *calm, serene* - High tension + unpleasant = *stressed, anxious* - Low tension + unpleasant = *sad, bored* **The UI metaphor:** A color wheel, or color rectangle on a phone screen, mapped to this emotional plane. - Geometric position provides a vector for a feeling - Tap in the space between labeled emotions - Drag around, the word under your finger changes - Grid explicitly populated with locations tied to a vocabulary of feelings > For *projecting* vibes while reading, and for *reading* your vibe. ## Feedback Session: User J (02.06.26) ### On Idea States > *"Once they have an image, they can help you get there."* > *"They don't want to hear it's not possible. They want to hear: here's what could make it possible."* ### Feature Extractions **Contextual Vibe Capture** - Vibe on where you are (Kindle-style contextualization) - Inputs informing your experience of the reading - Session closure vibe prompt **Temporal Re-experiencing** - Animations and transformations as you scroll through your timeline - Help you *re-feel* what you felt - Capturing of an emotional and intellectual state together **Vibe Selection UI** - Tap/drag on a 2D feeling plane - Word under finger updates based on position - Requires emotional vocabulary research to populate the grid **Idle Session / Background Vibe** - A bucket for capturing thoughts and words outside of active reading - Grouped by day or week (user preference) - A thought, a word can be interesting any time of day **Future Inputs** - Snap a photo - Voice capture ## Visual Language Ideas **Session Timeline** - Meandering journey with wavy lines between sessions and captures - Loose and nonlinear **Session Summary** > *"Your vibe / what caught your eye was..."* ## Open Questions - What emotional vocabulary research exists for populating a feeling grid? - How granular should the x-y plane be? 4 quadrants? 16 zones? Continuous? - Do vibes cluster by book, by time of day, by season? - Can we detect vibe patterns across a reader's history?