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

It all started out with an accelerometer that I built a while ago. I wanted to do something with it. I thought of exercise. I thought of how people (myself included) are continuously looking for external things, such as Personal Trainers, classes, applications, and now robots, to motivate ourselves to move, since our modern society is designed to help us avoid physical activity. How far are we willing to go? Will current systems develop in a similar way?

So I thought, why not design a (sarcastic/critical) system that addresses this cultural aspect? A system that, unlike existing applications and robots (see image 1) has the ability be more like (sad) real life coaches - angry, moody, pushy, inpatient (see image 2). If that is what you want and need. Different levels of anger depending on how unmotivated you are at the moment.

Videos:

Autom: A Robotic Weight Loss Coach
Angry NFL coaches

So, basically, I propose:

• A smart and realistic (read: emotional, moody, etc.) exercise companion.
• Lets the user choose one of several stereotypical characters of different anger level: the disappointed coach, the angry black woman, the understanding teacher, the sadistic sergeant.
• Hopefully questions our relationship to moving/exercising, as well as stereotypes and controversial features of both real and machine-based coaching/characters.

The system will consist of:

• Accelerometer that can sense whether you are sitting, walking or running (hardware already done).
• Application that keeps track of how long and often you are active each day and gives you more or less angry/moody audio instructions based on your behavior (and other factors) and choice.

Resources:

• Python to write analysis program and coaching algorithm
• Speakers
• Subjects for user study
• Video camera for filming

Deliverables:

• Working prototype
• Video of ethnographic study

We might have talked about aerogel in class, but if we did I completely missed it. Anyway, the material seems very cool. Cool hunting writes:

The porous substance is composed of dehydrogenated silicon dioxide filled with gas. Described as “frozen smoke” or the “ultimate sponge,” it’s the most lightweight and least dense solid on earth.

A colleague of mine talked about designing a gender issue focused organizational setup where men grow breast if they exceed the number of women. This made me consider creating a similar setup where people (men) would grow breasts if they say something disparaging about women.

So far, the only thing I have found online regarding inflatable breast projects is Doria Fan’s inflatable breast dress.

Jegan, Justin, Alexander, and I (Paulina) are working on a system that incorporates both bad and good aspects of computer-supported communication in face-to-face communication. Some of the bad aspects that we are trying to implement are delays, unnatural or non-existing eye-contact, and mono-modality. Reduced gender and race bias is a good feature that we have chosen to empathize.

The most central component of the system is a helmet that isolates the user/wearer from all natural inputs and outputs. Both incoming and outgoing speech is distorted to avoid gender bias. The user will not be able to see anything, but his or her eyes will be displayed on a screen. Thus, the “fuzzy” helmet will strictly limit and form the user’s perception of his environment.

Jegan’s eyes…or somebody else’s:

A diagram of the system setup:

The “Weymouthian” helmet that we found on Craig’s wonderful list for $25:

Pictures of the isolated helmet:

One eye:

And two:

Jegan and Justin working hard:

Videos:

This is a direct response to the chapter Waste Equals Food in McDonough’s book Cradle To Cradle. McDonough’s concept of “waste equals food” basically means that it is possible to design industrial systems and processes so that the products manufactured are completely recyclable and that all the by-products of the production process are usable in the creation of other products. Ideally, in such a system, garbage and pollution would not exist.

Wired writes:

Herein lies the Big McDonough Idea: “The materials go back to soils safely, or they go back to industry. That’s it. That’s the new paradigm.”

I find these things really important to talk about. The problems with combining different kinds of materials, i.e., disposable/non-disposable, in one product is indeed a pressing issue. Still, somehow McDonough makes it all sound so easy - “too good to be true”, so to speak. As somebody pointed out in class: if the concept of full recycling is so easy and advantageous, why haven’t more companies and manufacturers actually implemented it yet? I guess the answer is, it takes time to (as Swedes say) “teach an old dog to sit“.

As an human-computer interface designer, I quickly learned that usability is considered a “luxury”. It is something companies invest in when they have the time and money to do so. Well, either that, or when they are really desperate. Maybe it’s the same with recycling and green thinking? Why change a seemingly well-functioning process unless somebody or something forces you to change it?

Weak incentives, maybe that’s what it is all about.

Mindless(?) people eating burgers while watching a reBurger presentation by the Yes Men.