You enter your bath after a long day, finally you’re alone. You cry out, Hi Pleasure, and the bathroom space reacts accordingly: soothing background music is played, the lights dim, and the sponge vibrates. Through sound and contact, the sponge invites you to a holistic voyage of self-discovery, beautification and sensual stimulation, without embarrassment or self-judgment: it’s just you and the algorithm. 

Studies show that about a quarter of adult women worldwide cannot identify their intimate organs. Other studies have pointed out an “orgasmic gap”: in heterosexual sex, the man experience orgasm almost every time, whereas women do so in only 66% of the time. Ever since Alfred Kinsey’s huge sex habit research in 1948, researchers consistently find that about 40% of adult women have never experienced an orgasm. At the same time, the sex toy and porn industries are constantly booming. These two trends reflect the lives of many women in thecetury, who are ashamed about and estranged from their bodies and sexuality. 

How can these gaps be narrowed? Can we use AI and IOT technologies to shatter myths about sexuality and the body, to liberate women and bring them closer to their own body and sexuality?

The project relies on a substantive connection between learning about one’s body and sexuality and beautification and pleasure. The idea is to create a holistic experience through a sponge that responds tangibly, as well as through an intimate voice interface. In designing the experience, I have been inspired by the ritual and sociocultural contexts of the bathroom, from the Jewish Mikveh, through the Sentō, the Japanese communal bathhouse, to innovative beauty parlors – thereby seeking to mark new possibilities for the future bathing experience.