With our hectic, fast-paced lives wherein we barely get a moment to breathe, paying attention to our well being has never been more critical. Benjamin Hubert’s Layer and Panasonic have decided to lend us a helping hand with this! Their recent collaboration led to the creation of ‘Balance of Being’, a collection of six near-future design concepts that were presented at IFA 2019. The collection has one and only one aim: to promote our wellbeing and help us feel better with products that can be used at home! It explores “how we can have meaningful engagements with products and how we take care of ourselves.” The products consist of a smart cooking appliance, a skin analyzing device combined with a smoothie maker, a smart head massager, an LED light treatment for hair and two more smart skincare devices (yes, skincare is high up on their list of concerns). “Balance of Being aims to close this gap between technology and our lifestyles, focusing more on human interaction, comfort, enhancing our lifestyles, and providing truly meaningful experiences with technology allowing us to bond with one another instead of our devices,” added Rowan Williams, creative lead from Panasonic Design’s London team. And I must say, their products do seem to be a reflection of that. in collaboration with Panasonic. The Grow device uses advanced LED light treatment to promote hair growth. Grow understand’s every individual’s hair condition and structure to identify the appropriate treatment for our hair and it’s follicles! Lift is a smart cooking and food maturing appliance which uses advanced heat and pressure technology, along with a sensor positioned within the device to ‘lift’ the food to its optimal nutritional state or in other words to retain all the much-needed nutrients! The device was created with an intention to encourage all members of the family, including younger generations to participate in cooking and healthier eating. The Shot is the device I find the most interesting! It’s a two in one skincare device and smoothie maker! The Shot uses a camera placed at the front of the device and AI to analyze our skin. After receiving the results, Shot creates a smoothie specially curated for our skin type and it’s unique needs using a concoction of frozen fruits and vegetables. The smoothie is jampacked with vitamins and minerals to enhance your health, giving you the perfect radiant skin you have always wanted by addressing your health concerns from the inside. Tone is a skincare device that will sit comfortably on our necks while using LED and steam treatment to improve our complexion and health of our skin. It uses AI to examine our skin, and devices a personalized self-care regime, so our skin has the glow it truly deserves! Need a stress-relieving head massage? Well, that’s exactly what Wave is here for. Wave is a smart massaging device that can be used to relieve stress anywhere at any time (yes, even at work)! The portable massager maps and evaluates the level of tension and then determines the length of time, method and intensity of the treatment. Layer and Panasonic have added another handy skincare device, but one that works when we’re asleep! It understands the needs of skin even in our sleeping state, to provide us with a lighting and steam treatment that enhances our skin. Asleep or awake, it seems like the Balance of Being has got all our needs covered! “We are curious about how we engage with products and the knowledge that they can build of us and our families,” said Panasonic Design’s creative director, Takehiro Ikeda. And it seems like their curiosity has lead to a series of products that provide assistance in almost every aspect of our personal health and well being. We don’t know when these products will be available to the public, but here’s hoping it’s sometime soon because we all need some self-pampering and as for me well I need it ASAP!