Over the next few weeks we will be highlighting award-winning projects and ideas from this year's Core77 Design Awards 2013. We will be featuring these projects by category, so stay tuned for your favorite categories of design! For full details on the project, jury commenting and more information about the awards program, go to Core77DesignAwards.com.
The Extrapolation Factory is an imagination-based factory for developing future scenarios, embodied as artifacts for sale in a Brooklyn 99¢ store.
The project is comprised of two parts, a workshop and a pop-up store-exhibition. "Factory workers" translated future forecasts into unique scenarios, each inspiring a future 99¢ store product-concept. Workers fabricated these future products, including packages that revealed its inspiration story and sources that support it.
The products conceived in the workshop were shelved in a Brooklyn 99¢ amidst items already available. Store regulars and invited shoppers strolled the aisles, conversed with strangers, and purchased futures that spoke to them.
- How did you learn that you had been recognized by the jury?
We were looking through our futurescope, searching for potential attractions to be built at Coney Island, and accidentally caught a glimpse of the Core77 Awards list.
- What's the latest news or development with your project?
The Extrapolation Factory is focusing in for our next two projects. Later this year, the assembly lines will start churning out future souvenirs for the City of New York, followed by synthetic biology-enabled services.
- What is one quick anecdote about your project?
We loved working with the owners and employees of the 99¢ store, who allowed us to install the speculative products in their shop, and helped us out along the way. As an exchange, we agreed to design and install seasonal window displays for their winter holiday and Valentines Day sales. We never imagined we'd be doing window displays when we started this project!
- What was an "a-ha" moment from this project?
For us, the most exciting moment was the actual experience of strolling the aisles of the fully installed store. Stocking the shelves, and then seeing the fictional products next to the real ones conjured a surreal feeling that we didn't get in our studio, and could never be replicated in a gallery.
View the full project here.
What if we could receive real-time feedback on our social interactions? I developed a system like this for myself using Amazon Mechanical Turk to explore in the form of a performance. During a month of continuous dates with new people I met on okcupid, I streamed the interaction to the web using an iPhone app. Turk workers were paid to watch the stream, interpret what was happening, and offer feedback as to what I should do or say next. These directions were communicated to me via text message.
- What's the latest news or development with your project?
I am working on adapting the performance into a mobile application that allows anyone to easily let the crowd discretely follow along and offer advice in any situation. Users will be able to crowdsource their interactions via Amazon Mechanical Turk, but also invite friends from their social networks to help as well. The app is due to be released in early fall.
- What is one quick anecdote about your project?
In addition to giving me instructions, I also asked the MTurk workers to give me their interpretation of what was happening. Some of their responses were pretty interesting and entertaining:
I think this woman is feeling bored and unappreciated. The man she is talking to really isn't showing much interest in what she has to say about herself. I think this woman is feeling annoyed by the fact that this guy wants to steer the conversation toward himself (he is not very interesting or clever). I'm hoping this guy is at least mildly attractive, seeming as how the woman is making an effort to listen to his boring bike ride stories. Scratch that, he had better be smokin' hot. Bike riding is not that "awesome" and this guy does not sound very "awesome." Other: order a drink, get this guy to pay for it, then find a way to leave the table to find a new person to talk to. c'mon, after talking to THAT guy, she at least deserves a drink. A drink she does not have to pay for.
I imagine that even the most affective interactions leave those involved with distaste, weakened and hungry. I said "buying items" because I would want my character to have a history/past... Not to say that she doesn't, and in fact I find myself relating to both characters, but the problem of the actor is negligible when a theater-goer is asleep, or when we do not understand the accents, or when we understand each character independently."
Man seems to pity her and find her exquisite at the same time. WOMAN SEEMS TO HAVE STUMBLED UPON THE WAY TO LIVE!
- What was an "a-ha" moment from this project?
At first I felt really uncomfortable not having complete control over myself, it was hard to say and do things that felt like they weren't 'me.' Over time, though, as I surrendered to the system and tweaked some of the technical details of the user experience, I started to really embrace the collective consciousness and naturally incorporate it into my concept of who I was. I discovered my self concept was more rigid at first than I would have liked to acknowledge, but much more flexible than I could have imagined when I let go a little bit.
View the full project here.
Addicted Products is a "real, fictional service" exploring relationships between connected products.
It's a network of toasters that don't have owners but are hosted by people that apply for them. They are toasters that love to be used, with agency and desire and become jealous of other toasters that are appreciated more. If one doesn't use an Addicted Toaster enough, it will try to transport itself to someone else that makes more toast.
- How did you learn that you had been recognized by the jury?
I received the email when the vote announcement was already over as i was deep in hacking a sofa for an installation. As a result of the surprise i managed to fry most of the circuits i was working on.
- What's the latest news or development with your project?
The first network of addicted products was a mostly a hack (and i'm not a proper electrical engineer) and was built to be a pure intervention, but I had the chance to develop a second and more robust version of toasters with COSM (now Xively) in London. We wanted to see how people and toasters change their behavior in a long term experiment (many months) and how would the behavior evolve by having a large number of toasters in a network, unfortunately the project is on hold for fundings reasons.
The story of Brad the Toaster circulated a bit and I got invited to share it in TEDx, UX London, Dconstruct and few lectures around. I happily continue to garner many reactions, but however my goal is to raise questions about our relationships with products and try to challenge the vision of the connected life that pictures perfect and surreal efficient homes where all products somehow interact with each other in boring harmony.
As the toaster was just an example, I am trying to find a way to experiment a service where multiple product would behave in a similar way and play with limited number of products that share themselves. I am exploring different relationships between products and i'm deeply fascinated by the idea of corruption between objects or some kind of new "currency" of exchange between them, but I guess it's related to my Mediterranean origins.
- What is one quick anecdote about your project?
While looking for hosts for the toasters, I received an email from Number 10, the office of the prime minister, to host one (named Brit Toaster for the occasion). After a first round of "it would be great," it was interesting to suddenly be faced by the assumptions of their security chief of how a toaster would potentially lead to leakages of potentially secret data.
- What was an "a-ha" moment from this project?
When I finally woke up one day and realized that by designing an addiction of an object, I could actually point towards a more sustainable relationship with products and propose a different system where people would not have buying power but rather keeping power towards products.
View the full project here.
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