Smartphone usage is spoiling quality time with important people in our lives, especially those closest to us. And the worst kind of interruption comes when somebody is out with their boyfriend/girlfriend – nothing will get her more upset than when he’s playing on his phone in the middle of a date. As such, smartphones are one of the greats barriers to “real connections” in China.

Introducing Moodlock: A fully-functioning tech innovation to remind couples to spend more time with the ones they loved… more time on real connections. The smart phone case, when used by the boyfriend/girlfriend, connects with an app on the partner’s smart watch. The smart watch app monitors the wearer’s heart rate, which increases when the wearer gets angry. When it reaches a certain threshold it sends a signal that, via the smartphone case of the partner, renders their phone useless.

Moodlock, a fully-functioning tech innovation created for beta testing, took five months to prototype and build.

Breakthrough technology, smartglass that alters its transparency when an electric current passed through, was the greatest challenge. The glass had to be thin enough for the touchscreen to function, yet thick enough to be able to blur sufficiently to render the screen unusable. As such, suppliers were engaged from China to Germany, from Korean to Taiwan.

This fully-functioning piece of tangible tech was produced and shared with influencers. A video was produced and shared on social media to show the innovation working in real life, and the benefits it could bring to people. As part of a social media campaign, consumers applied to receive the product so they could take part in its beta testing.

This social-by-design product got the Chinese internet talking like Nescafé had never done before: the backend was flooded with 6,637 applications, 484,513 talked about it online and engaged (170% of KPI), the campaign was seen more than 700 million times, and 3,623,805 viewed the video (362.38% of KPI).