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.
Graduation Project
Tu Delft and Haque Design Research
THE CONCEPT
A truly smart product probably would do something that we may not agree with, but could lead to a more positive outcomes.
What if in the future people may not have "buying power," but rather "keeping power" towards products?
The Preview
The Story
The Experiment
THE SETTING
Addicted Products was a self-initiated exploration about addictions and particularly about how they bring about drastic decisions and actions. It was a speculative approach to the theme: what if a product is addicted and what is it addicted to?
It was done in collaboration with Haque Design Research in London: the studio was looking for new projects that could explore emerging relationships between people and connected products/environments and work often in the realm of behavioral model applied to products or installations.
To know more on the messy process behind designing a behavior of a product with an iterative bottom up approach you can go here
THE PROCESS
In every vision of future homes, households products (such as toasters) are those ones that are connected to each other and always work together in harmony, creating that perfect, modern, and yet somewhat boring scenario. But what if products do not do that? What if they have their own goals?
In this sense an addicted product could, as an addict, act in ways that are not completely understandable by humans, but that are solely driven by the increasing need for pleasure and relief -which in the case of a product is being used. Its perception of pleasure would then change because it could be put in comparison to other products when connected to the web and suffer form a sort of peer product pressure, one of the main forces that influences addictions.
Therefore, the product would have to express this suffering and act in some way to obtain pleasure and relief by subtly convincing or tricking the owner. Ultimately it may lead to more extreme decisions. What would be its ultimate extreme decision? Stop working? Sell itself? Suicide?
Creating a service in which a set of these toaster where given and hosted by people was a way to test the different possibilities and understand reactions of people to a product that has its own goal.
The Addiction of a product
Counting the use of a product or it's inner pleasure
Peer pressure by comparing
How to calm a toaster
Building
The brain
The identity
Creating a service branding
Create a platform to apply
Bringing around the unsatisfied toasters
The machine that doesn't really know what it wants but want more, is an experiment in applying a behaviour in a product that is not communicated or comprehensible by the person interacting with it.
The machine has 3 inputs, that constantly reads randomly. Every time it is turned on, it sets certain values to be satisfied from each of the 3 inputs. If satisfied a light turns on, but then the value necessary to be happy becomes higher.
In a sort of fight and nonsense set of action the person can only try to do something and sometimes realize he did something right to satisfy the machine, but it is just temporary and still not replicable.
Thinkering
Haque Design Research
THE MACHINE
The interiors of the machine
The inputs
The scary front
Just practically under construction, mentally is done
Still more on the right.
Colors of recycling is an exploration to find new materials from scraps of digital fabrication and try to feed them back in the fabrication system
It is a DIY solution for creating a new material from dust: Bioplastic and incremental percentage of particles of MDF dust from a C&C milling machine. Color and tactile palette are defined by the incremental quantity of recycled dust in a bioplastic mix (0 to 40%)
Material Exploration
Somewhere in the docks in Rotterdam
Developed with Hironori Yoshida and Yoann Rouillac
THE PROCESS
Scraps from a CNC Mill
The cooking set
The semi-scientific approach
Ready to Fabrication was a 3-day marathon workshop aimed at the fabrication of a proliferation of parametric architectural components on a big scale. From paper, to lasercut components, to 3d models, to grasshopper proliferation, to RhinoCam for miliing, to a rush in molding and assembling with little sleep and breathing.
The behaviour and the solution emerged from a bottom up experimentation with materials and by the definition of parameters of connections between components.
Digital Fabrication and Generative Modelling
Hyperbody/Tu Delft and Biodelab/Elisava Barcelona
Tutors: Jordi Truco, Marco Verde
With: Andrea Buttarini, Fernando Gorka de Lecea, Belen Torres (ELISAVA), Claudio Saccucci, Yinghao Lin (TUD)
THE PROCESS
Paper studies
Lasercut components
Study of connections parametres
Proliferation logic
Geometry of the components
Phisycal proliferation with lasercutted components
Proliferation Renderings
Molds for the pieces
Molding with fiber
The first of many
Supports for the structure
The set of parts to create two full components
Connection Logic
Assembling
Two assembled components
Performative proliferation is an exploration of dynamic architectural structures defined by parametrically designed components and connections between them. The behaviour emerges from the material proporties and a set of parameters that can be variable.
A single component is proliferated with a set of rules and explored in behaviour both physically and virtually. As a result of the process we achieved a mechanized segment of the proliferation that is connected to the virtual model in grasshoper and a an architectural proposal that show the potential of the components in the space.
Digital Fabrication and Generative Modelling
Hyperbody/Tu Delft
Tutors: Marco Verde
With: Claudio Saccucci
Phisycal model
Architectural proposal
PROLIFERATION STUDY
At the basis of the process is the definition of a component that create space and can be connected in a so called propliferation. By experimenting with the material and by finding a set of parameters that can change, a behavior emerged. We explored the behaviour both phisically with laser cutted component and the virtually by studing more complex situation in Grasshopper.
MOVEMENT STUDY
On a parallel track the dynamic study allowed to explore how the structure could be mechanized and so hypetetically adapt to the space or interact with people.
Sketchonary is a tool for designers approaching the world of interactivity that helps them translating ideas into programming logic.
It functions as a dictionary of the basic components (sensors and actuators) and also as a practical platform for sketching. Sketches can be augmented by logic blocks that mimick relationships between inputs and outputs (tranlation, proximity and rotation). The sketch can be augmented in real time on the table and the result is directly compiled into code for an Arduino
Tangible interfaces and Toolkit for design
Tu Delft and Studiolab
With:Enrica Masi, Sohyun Kim, Karla Rosales, Myengsoo Shin
THE CONCEPT
Sketchonary is a way to bridge the knowledge and language gap and enable people with no experience to discover the world of physical computing by visually adding information and by discovering interactivity through sketching.
THE LOGIC
THE PLATFORM
DICTIONARY MODE
SKETCHING MODE
Newschromia is my own way of answering the question, What is the color of every year? Beside listening to Vogue or some other newspaper, the color is determined by the one that was actually "said" more. By parsing every time Red, Green and Blue was said in a specific year, a color could emerge and not be decided. I guess that in the last years sustainability is pushing towards the green...
Data visualization
Some night in Rotterdam with Processing and NY Times API