Future Craft/Love Sounds

After seeing my final project movie, John Maeda recommended me to take a look at designer Noam Toran’s work. Noam’s “Subliminal furniture” installation/movie from 2002 addresses the topic of seductive technology and objects in a very artsy and inspiring way. I quote:

Subliminal Furniture is a set of objects and short film which I developed in partnership with Tom Hulbert (now at Luckybite) and Stijn Ossevoort in 2002. The furniture has built-in, covert electronics which allowed you to transmit subliminal messages in your home, thereby eliminating the need for person-to-person conversation and turning everything into an autonomous form of manipulation. For example, a disgruntled wife might subliminally manipulate her husband into having sex with her, thus avoiding the need to seduce, to compliment, to arouse etc. A distopic satire of sorts…

Noam’s projects are all pretty cool. My favorite is probably Accessories/Objects for Lonely Men (2001).

A promotion video for my final project product “The Fitness Actuation Tool” (FAT). Download a higher resolution version of the movie here.

Download the paper from here:

[PDF]
[Zip]

Here is a list of the references that I used for my work. They are all somehow related to the concepts of persuasive technology/systems.

[1] Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper and Row.
[2] Cyclescore. http://www.cyclescore.com/. (12/08/07)
[3] Flow. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology) (12/08/07)
[4] Fogg, B. J. (1999). Persuasive Technologies. In Communications of the ACM, 42(5): 27-29.
[5] Habituation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habituation. (12/08/07)
[6] Intuitive Automata. http://www.intuitiveautomata.com/. (12/08/07)
[7] Kidd, C. and Breazeal, C. (2006). Designing a Sociable Robot System for Weight Maintenance. http://web.media.mit.edu/~coryk/papers/Kidd_CCNC.pdf/. (12/08/07)
[8] Nike + iPod. http://www.apple.com/ipod/nike/. (12/08/07)
[9] Novelty Effect. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novelty_effect. (12/08/07)
[10] Salen, K. and Zimmerman, E. (2003). Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
[11] W. H. Organization. Obesity and overweight, 2005.

I’d recommend you to read about Captology (B.J. Fogg) and Flow (Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi) if you want to learn about the persuasive qualities of technology and media.

Whereas Captology is defined as:

the study of computers as persuasive technologies

the definition of Flow is broader:

…the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing, characterized by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity.

I’d argue that although neither of these concepts are innately destructive or bad, they both have the potential of being just that.

Possible commercial for my final project product:

Have you ever had to force yourself to go to the gym; you know, on one of those days when all you want to do is crawl up in bed and watch that Netflix movie you just received? Have you ever wished you could be like Oprah and have your own 24-7 personal trainer who would motivate you to exercise?

If your answer to at least one of the questions above is “yes”, I have the solution for you. Fitness Actuation Tool (FAT) is a personal, wearable device that adapts to your needs. That’s right. Not your neighbor’s needs or your mother’s needs, but your needs. FAT lets you choose among eight different intelligent personal motivation coaches, from sexy Honey Monroe to merciless Admirable Admiral, depending on what works best for you. All our coaches are determined to get you to move and lose weight, and will not give up until you have reached your goals.

Unlike most other training devices, FAT, never gives up. If, for some reason, you chose to ignore the instructions, the coach will act accordingly and work even harder to get you to move.

With FAT, the question is not “How far can you go”, but “How far do you want to go?”

Say yes to a new you today. Say yes to FAT.

Teflon Don

Honey Monroe