Distance Display

This idea of the distance a food has traveled is good but we’ve quickly realized that knowing this once you are in the kitchen is not very valuable since you’ve already bought it and brought it home. It needs to happen earlier in the process, before a purchase has been made.

Farm Coop with Dynamic Recipe Options

The idea here is that initial pink block knows what is in your bag from the farm coop. Once placed on the counter, recipes would be displayed and filtered based on what items from the bag are selected by placing them near the block.

We liked this idea of a system in which recipes are presented based on what you have available. However, as evidenced by my small apartment counter top, counter space is incredibly valuable during cooking. Updated displays need to exist as a different model that remains flexible and reactive to the cooking process.

Created in collaboration with Daniel Lara and Scott Liao, our SmashBot video is an investigation into a possible dynamic that could develop between us and the devices we use. The exploration looks at how a model of course correction could be used to manipulate the function and behavior of the objects we use. Imagine instead of fixing source code or updating firmware, you simply nudge, punch or smash a device in order to let it know that it is either doing something that it shouldn’t be doing or isn’t doing something it should be. Within this scenario, the relationship between us and our devices shifts dramatically form our current model of delicate use and precious protection.

This 1 week project came directly out of the combination of our 3 midterm projects. Scott Liao’s project is about multiplicity, Daniel Lara’s was about control and mine explored force as a model for interactions.

The Informed Kitchen (a useless prototype)

This project looks at how unhelpful a great deal of information will be when associated with mundane objects as corporations look to infuse every act with a chance for communication. Consider this inline with the today’s quality of search results and data aggregation. If unchecked or under-considered by designers, it is easy to imagine how our world will continue to present us with information that is of little or no value.

Daniel Lara and I decided to pair our projects together in order to explore how the ridiculous could become even more so. By taping into my sensor data, his system could know what he was touching. By accessing his sensors, I used the information from a person in the space to determine scale and audio volume of the videos so that closer meant larger and louder.

Its been a while since I’ve read a physical news source so in order to know how I interact with the newspaper, I documented myself reading the paper form a few angles in a couple of different environments. The first place had a table to rest the portions I wasn’t reading. For the second place, I chose outside to deal with the a slight breeze and no surface to utilize.

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