How Time and Memory Shape Products and Places
Arjun Anil Kalyanpur Introduction
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Invisible Tethers How Time and Memory Shape Products and Places
Arjun Anil Kalyanpur
The universe is made of stories, not atoms. Muriel Rukeyser
Copyright 2017 by Arjun Kalyanpur All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommerical uses permitted by copyright law. For inquiries, contact akalyanpur@sva.edu School of Visual Arts MFA Products of Design 136 West 21st Street 7th Floor New York, NY 10011
Arjun Anil Kalyanpur Author and Designer
Tina Lee Editor
Allan Chochinov
Chair, MFA Products of Design Thesis Advisor
Andrew Schloss Thesis Advisor
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Invisible Tethers: How Time and Memory Shapes Products and Places
Preface The Products of Design Program Before a detailed discussion of this year’s worth of exploration and design work can begin, it is prudent to give an overview of what the Products of Design program and its pedagogy. First, the name. Products of Design (PoD) sums up the overarching pedagogy of our department Chair, Allan Chochinov. As he put it in his now famous quote, designers are not “in the artifact business, but the consequence business”. We must be held responsible for our actions in an era where designers are more in demand than ever before. In that vein, all designs are in fact products of design themselves. They, and the effects they have, are products and consequences of the design process itself. The PoD program seeks to educate, emphasize and instill this sense of responsibility in its designers across every potential field of design—product design, service design, interaction design and experience design. Additionally, the department educates it students in the matters of business and finance. In essence, this program produces holistic designers with a strong voice who are able to design and critique their work and decisions from multiple points of view. This pedagogy is reflected in the products of design you are about to view.
Preface
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Contents I. Introduction
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II. Lexicon
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III. Goals and Objectives
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IV. Audience
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V. Research and Methodology Subject Matter Expert Interviews Media Immersive Theater
46 57 78 85
VI. Exploratory Work Co-Creation Workshop
89 107
VII. Design Sprints Medical Social Sustainable
135 137 159 199
VIII. Thesis As— Experience Service Product and App Persona Creation Product App Case Study
251 255 287 327 331 351 421 434
IX. Looking Forward
457
X. Acknowledgments
461
XI. Bibliography
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For
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Invisible Tethers: How Time and Memory Shapes Products and Places
Introduction
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Invisible Tethers: How Time and Memory Shapes Products and Places
I. Introduction
Introduction
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The photo on the previous page was taken last weekend, November 26, 2016 at the City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center in Duarte, California. My cousin, Sagarika, was a patient there for several years before passing away on November 26, 2004, my senior year of high school. Much like last weekend, I have visited that plaque many times over the last 12 years.
If we could access those memories and experiences, what would we see? How would it change us? Would we form an even deeper connection to our cousin, that plaque and each other?
In the intervening time, I have gone through college, graduate school, work and now design school.
I believe this to be the case, and the following thesis book, “Invisible Tethers� explores this notion.
I have traveled through 23 US states, 17 countries and completed a triathlon. Each time I revisit that plaque, I am different person.
This work is based primarily on two claims.
When I return to this plaque, in addition to thinking about my cousin, I think about the previous versions of myself that have stood in that exact same spot. I think about my other family members, who visit on their own time, standing at that exact same spot.
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Despite how I change, how my family members have changed, that plaque remains in that same spot, bearing witness to who we are, observing and recording our thoughts, feelings and emotions.
To begin, the objects and places we inhabit are filled with the memories and experiences of those who have interacted with them. Second, by connecting with those past experiences, we can form more meaningful connections to products, places, and people while re-igniting our latent human curiosity.
Invisible Tethers: How Time and Memory Shapes Products and Places
Invisible Tethers challenges these claims through multiple design interventions split into two sections of work.
I will leave that to you, the reader, to decide.
In the early design sprint work, the thesis claims were challenged via three lenses—the social, the medical and the sustainable—and several design typologies—product design, digital design, service design and experience design.
Arjun Kalyanpur November 30, 2016 3:55 PM 136 West 21st Street 7th Floor New York, NY
After creating interventions in each of these three diverse realms, the work shifted to more in-depth, deeper explorations in one field— the social. Across typologies similar to the sprint work—service, experience, screens and product design—more robust, detailed design interventions were created. Ultimately, via each lens and design typology, the work seeks to prove the power of looking to the past to connect more deeply with our present.
Introduction
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Invisible Tethers: How Time and Memory Shapes Products and Places
II. Lexicon
Lexicon
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Invisible Tethers: How Time and Memory Shapes Products and Places
A Glossary of Terms Unique to this Thesis The following is a list of terms and definitions that will help you, the reader, understand the concepts and notions within this book. Some words are common, others are less so, and as such, I felt it was important to include their defintions within the context of this thesis work. For example, “shared history� can mean many things to many people, but in within the frame of this work, I am talking about the experiences we make with the same objects or places as other people. The list is not alphabetized, but rather listed in order of importance, relevance, and relative frequency within this text.
Lexicon
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Invisible Tethers (n.)
My claim that we are all connected to one another, through a shared history, more than we realize
Time (n.)
The construct through which we live and measure our lives; past, present, future
Memory (n.)
Our subjective recall of events and interactions with objects, places, and people
Shared history (n.)
A record of the intersections that surround us everyday, both known and unknown (e.g. heirlooms passed down; sitting in the same subway car or seat; visiting the same restaurant)
Encapsulation (n.)
Objects and places are storage containers of the memories we’ve created, as we imprint and associate them with past events and experiences
Experience (n.)/ Experiencing (v.)
A multi-sensory event that is stored in memory; activating or becoming aware of those memories. Can be either your own or someone else’s memories
Senses (n.)/ Sensory (adj.)
Biological ways we interact with objects and places (sight, sound, smell, taste, touch); perception of events
Products (n.)
Any physical object that people interact with; synonym of artifact and object
Artifacts (n.)
Any physical object that people interact with; synonym of artifact and object
Objects (n.)
Any physical object that people interact with; synonym of artifact and object Invisible Tethers: How Time and Memory Shapes Products and Places
Space (n.)
A free, empty, expansive area that is currently unoccupied
Place (n.)
An area with objects, with a particular purpose, where people can interact, have experiences, and create memories
Nostalgia (n.)
A fond recall for the past and past events
Intersections (n.)
Points where people’s memories and experiences overlap in time. (e.g. an heirloom that is passed down; visiting the same spot as someone else, at a later date
Present (n., v.)
The “now”
Social (n.)
Connecting with people (friends or strangers) through a shared medium (social network), experience, or object
Connection/ Disconnection (n.)
Creating relationships and empathy between one another through shared objects, places and memories; lack of awareness of these connections or the history that surrounds us
Awareness/ Unawareness (n.)
Being cognizant, curious about the history of objects and places and the intersections; Not knowing about or curious of the “shared history” (too much in the “present”)
Meaningful (adj.)
Creating and having an emotional connection created by the awareness of the “shared history”
Shallow Connections (n.)
No connections with people or mere acquaintance connections with no real substance
Lexicon
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Deep Connections (n.)
Connections created and fostered by discovering the “shared history”
Metaphysical (n., adj.)
The study of the “invisible” reality—space, time, cause, effect and possibility
Belonging (v.)
A basic human desire or need; the “shared history” answers and fosters this desire in a new way
Invisible Tethers: How Time and Memory Shapes Products and Places
Lexicon
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Invisible Tethers: How Time and Memory Shapes Products and Places
III. Goals and Objectives
Goals and Objectives
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Invisible Tethers: How Time and Memory Shapes Products and Places
THIS THESIS MAKES TWO CLAIMS:
(1) The objects and places we inhabit are filled with the memories and experiences of those who have interacted with them. (2) By connecting with those past experiences, we can form more meaningful connections to products, places, and people while re-igniting our latent human curiosity. This is best displayed in a diagram created specifically for this thesis, seen on the next page.
Goals and Objectives
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Invisible Tethers: How Time and Memory Shapes Products and Places
An author-generated diagram explaining his views on how objects and places move through time and space.
Goals and Objectives
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Places (often) remain stationary in space as they move through time.. For example, in June 2015, my family and I traveled around Iceland for 10 days. Early on in our trip, we stopped at a beautiful church in Reykjavik. I remember walking up to the bell tower vividly, as well as the photos my family and I took of the Icelandic landscape from the tower. A year after that trip, I saw on social media that several of my friends took a trip to Iceland to celebrate their graduation from law school. They went to that same church, and took photos in that same bell tower. We intersected in place, though not in time, and remain connected by our shared visitation to that space. As different people visit the same places at different times, they share the connection of being in the same spot as those predecessors. Conversely, objects move through both space and time. We see this from the most simple of objects— cash—to family heirlooms passed
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down through generations. People become part of the story and memories of that object, forming connections with one another with the object as a medium. For example, a friend of mine from university recounted a story of how he had given away one of his college sweaters to a thrift shop in Los Angeles after graduating. Years later, while walking through the streets of New York City, he serendipitously ran into someone wearing that exact sweater. In that moment, he became connected to that complete stranger through the history, memory and travels of that sweater. I believe that in order to solve the problems both now and in the future, the past will provide a critical lens and source of inspiration for designers to look to. The goal of this thesis is to test, and prove, these assumptions against a variety of lenses and scales. Overarching Goals
Invisible Tethers: How Time and Memory Shapes Products and Places
The encompassing goals of this work are to present designs that incorporate critical thinking, self-reflection, awareness and appreciation for the objects and places we interact with everyday, yet seem to ignore or become desensitized to. Within the broad scope of work presented, the goals and objectives differed specifically within two phases of the design process—the early design sprints and the later developed, robust interventions. Early Exploration Objectives In the early exploration work, the goal was to test assumptions against various fields. The objectives of this broad exploration were twofold: (1) to test the validity of the two assumptions in a range of fields and see whether they “held weight”. In doing so, I could also provide readers of this thesis with a comprehensive defense that the thesis claims are sound and can be applied to a range of interventional areas to provide positive impact. The second objective of the early work was (2) should the assump-
tions prove valid, to find where my own personal interests lie in developing more refined and robust design work. The results of design work through lenses including the social, medical and sustainable, and scales ranging from the individual to the global found that the “thesis” statement of looking to the past to forge stronger present connections proved true. The work was shown to provide novel solutions in the fields of supply chain management, Alzheimer’s care, sustainable living and a new form of social network. Of the various solutions, I found myself most intrigued by the social aspect. The notion of more tangibly experiencing history as a way to connect with new people was an intriguing tension to explore, and would encompass the primary thrust of my more developed design work. Developed Work The objectives of the developed
Goals and Objectives
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work were to provide a robust design intervention for the social space, and to engage my users and reviewers of this work in a critical way. I want to bring to light not only the influence the past has, but also the way we are all viscerally connected through objects we interact with and places we visit. Our transient interactions with objects and visits to places leave a mark behind—one can never deny that we were there or used that object. Through this design work, I seek to bring to light these Invisible Tethers in the hopes that we may connect more deeply, emotionally and meaningfully with one another.
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Invisible Tethers: How Time and Memory Shapes Products and Places
Goals and Objectives
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Invisible Tethers: How Time and Memory Shapes Products and Places
IV. Audience
Audience
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THE INTENDED AUDIENCE VARIES BY LENS—AND I AM MY OWN AUDIENCE
This area of inquiry—“objects and places remember us, and by experiencing that history, we form deeper connections to those objects, places and, ultimately, one another”—is as much a personal exploration as it is a design exploration. In trying to make people more attentive, aware and appreciative of their surroundings—via the social history of those surroundings—I am attempting to bring to light or change a behavior that I feel does not currently exist in most people. In other words, I am “telling” people how they should behave, with my thesis and its designs serving as the motivation and proof for my reasoning. As such, my early design explorations pertained to various audiences, each with their own problems and needs. This tested my thesis against multiple lenses and design typologies (digital, physical, experiential) to exhibit its positive impact for society. These audience segments included
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Invisible Tethers: How Time and Memory Shapes Products and Places
people suffering from Alzheimer’s and their families, consumers and companies looking to get a more transparent view of the supply web, and millennials seeking new ways to document and share their lives.
and services coming out of my thesis work. What do those people look like? To answer this question, I turned the lens inward and describe myself— in other words, if this thesis is for me, what persona do I inhabit? How can I be described within the lens of my thesis?
However, in a second semester focused on building out robust thesis offerings, it became time to narrow down this focus from various lenses to a deep pool of people I want to serve.
One of the most apt descriptions described me as a “nerd” about time and memory. Thus, the question transformed from “who am I” to “who are these other time nerds”? What are their actions and interests?
I narrowed down my audience through the application of several tools that describe not only my audience, but their personas as well. First, I reframed the way I was approaching finding a user group. Rather than look at people with problems or unmet needs, I should think of them as the Early Adopters on the Product Adoption Curve.
In researching myself and interviewees from my SME research, I began to discover several behaviors I engage in that could help me narrow down my audience. I am an avid photographer who enjoys documenting not necessarily new sights, but fond memories with family and friends. Similarly, I love traveling to new places and engaging in new experiences that immerse me in the culture of the area.
These are the people that would have some of the characteristics— such as historical curiosity or awareness—that would positively respond to and adopt the products
Audience
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I enjoy reading about and telling unique stories of what happened at those places or with those objects I interact with. Using these prominent behaviors and characteristics, I was able to create several persona subgroups, which will be reflected and reiterated throughout this thesis work in products like “prolog” and “Pilgrimage”.
My second persona group would be those curious about the world around them. They are adventurous and risk-taking, within reason. They are motivated by their inquisitive nature about the world around them. They love to explore and try new experiences, whether in their home city or halfway across the world. Their interests lie in places both ancient and modern, as long as people lived lives there.
Connectors
Storytellers
The first are people who are seeking connection, potentially in novel or unique ways. They are confident in themselves, and appreciate the coincidences and serendipitous “small world” moments that occur throughout anyone’s life. These people would be urban dwellers and avid social media users looking to share unique anecdotes and feel like part of a community. By experiencing the past, they can form a new type of social, emotional, ephemeral connection.
A third persona group would be interactive storytellers, seeking a new medium or method of storytelling. Inspired by the way Sleep No More has pushed the envelope of experiential stories further, these people would want to explore how elements of the past (or future) could be woven into storytelling to produce novel experiences.
The Curious
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Summary In conclusion, this thesis is for everyone, but also for my fellow time nerds. Indeed, my hope is that any-
Invisible Tethers: How Time and Memory Shapes Products and Places
one who reads this work has their eyes opened to the possibilities of the past through medical, sustainable and social design. I hope that they develop a new appreciation for the history of the objects and places they interact with, and become aware of the rich tapestry of shared history that connects us all. However, I do know that the offerings presented within will have particular resonance and meaning for those people that, like me, have always been fascinated by time and taken comfort in the idea that we can be connected through this transient, invisible dimension.  
Audience
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Invisible Tethers: How Time and Memory Shapes Products and Places
V. Research and Methodology
Research and Methodology
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Invisible Tethers: How Time and Memory Shapes Products and Places
THERE ARE MULTIPLE VIEWS OF TIME
An overarching theme of this book is our notion and perception of time, and how time can be perceived and viewed in relation to the connections we share with one another. Any discussion of the role time plays in our lives, especially as it pertains to memory, objects, places and human connection, would be remiss not to include definitions of how different cultures perceive and understand time. Chronemics Chronemics is the study of the use of time, specifically as it relates to non-verbal communication in specific individuals and cultures. These sensitivities to time are reflected in the day-to-day behavior of the individual in behaviors like punctuality, procrastination (or the lack thereof), emotional response to time pressures, and face-to-face interactions. It follows, then, that these behaviors toward time can be interpolated to describe our relationships to objects, places, sentimentality and nostalgia. There are two primary schools of thought towards time— monochronic and polychronic. Cultural Understandings of Time
Research and Methodology
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These perceptions of times greatly influence cultures in many facets, from business to familial relationships to relationships with the land to entire worldviews and ways of living. Much of what is discussed below comes from the Business Insider article, “How Different Cultures Understand Time” by Richard Lewis.
Fig.1 Representation of linear Western time
Monochronic In monochronic time, time is subdivided into precise units, placed sequentially, and arranged and managed with the utmost care. “B” cannot happen without “A” having been completed first. Another typical saying in monochronic cultures is that “time is money”, where time itself is a valuable commodity to be used with great care. This view of time is most commonly seen in
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Fig.2 Western time is linear
Western cultures like the United States. Western Time The most telling example of monochronic time lies in Western culture, where we perceive time as linear. That is, the past is gone and therefore irrelevant, the present is now, and the future is what we are aiming towards. Time flows in one direction, and to be successful, you must keep up with it. As the article states, “It flows fast, like a mountain river in the spring, and if you want to benefit from its passing, you have to move fast with it. Americans are people of action; they cannot bear to be idle. The past is over, but the present you can seize, parcel and package and make it work for you in the immediate future.” Polychronic/Multi-active time
Invisible Tethers: How Time and Memory Shapes Products and Places
In polychronic, or multi-active, time, several actions can be taken at once. There is less reliance on the clock; rather, the focus is on relationships and events. The segmentation of time is much less rigid. This can be seen in many Eastern and Southern European cultures.
much more driven by the human element of living in the moment and experiencing all that life has to offer, regardless of appointments or punctuality.
Fig.3 Representation of multi-active time
According to Lewis, in polychronic time, people live in the present, attempting to accomplish many things at once. Further, by living in the present, they give importance and priority to those events or conversations that will most thrill them. As such, multi-active time is
Cyclic Time Another example of polychronic time, in many Eastern cultures, time is viewed as cyclical, ever-present, and infinite supply. The onus is on the human being to adapt to this infinite time. As Lewis describes,
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“The past formulates the contextual back- ground to the present decision... Asians do not see time as racing away underutilized in a linear future, but coming around again in a circle, where the same opportunities, risks and dangers will re- present themselves when people are so many days, weeks or months wiser.” Put another way, the cyclic view of time posits that time is not a straightforward road, but a curve through which we will pass through similar “scenery” year after year.
Fig.4 Representation of cyclic time
Malagasy Time Lastly, we have the Malagasy view of time from Madagascar. In the Malagasy interpretation of time, the human being is used as the conduit through which the future, present and past are viewed. Thus, the unknowable future is behind our heads, beyond the reach of our eyes. The past is in front of us, knowable and remembered. And the present exists where we are. Time In This Thesis
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Fig.5 Representation of Malagasy time
Invisible Tethers: How Time and Memory Shapes Products and Places
This thesis work calls upon many of these views of time to shape its arguments. Though it treats the passage of time itself as linear, where one may visit a place (the present) and leave that place (the past), it pulls elements from the cyclical and Malagasy views of time to posit that a part of us is still left behind there in the forms of our memories and experiences at that location. The same viewpoint is taken with objects that we interact with, yet may not hold onto forever—money, for example. By leaving parts of ourselves behind through our experiences with these places and objects, we leave behind remnants for others to access and gain a small window into our lives. In doing so, we form deeper connections with those objects, places and one another.
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Invisible Tethers: How Time and Memory Shapes Products and Places
RESEARCH WAS CONDUCTED THROUGH TWO AVENUES— PRIMARY AND SECONDARY
The ultimate goal was to learn, iterate, and advance my thesis topic by using the gathered data and input to build a system map and identify key users as well as pertinent stakeholders. Utilizing knowledge gained from “How To Make Sense of Any Mess”, I was able to make a key distinction between users and stakeholders that did not exist before—users were those people who stood to benefit or be served by my thesis work and the products that would be developed from it, while stakeholders were people invested in the success and outcomes of my thesis work Primary research data was gathered through a series of 24 subject matter expert (SME) interviews. These experts ranged in their expertise, with professions in design, advertising, marketing, astrophysics, education and writing. Their positions also varied, as I was able to speak with people ranging from CEOs and Founders to Senior Partners to storytellers and science fiction authors.
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Each offered a unique take on my topic, however, for the sake of brevity and focus, I have selected the interviews, and associated excerpts, that most challenged my assumptions and pushed my thesis forward. I gathered secondary research data through fiction and non-fiction novels and books, TED talks, news articles, podcasts, movies, television shows and immersive theater experiences. Time travel and nostalgia-filled fiction stories have seen a great increase this past year, which I believe speaks to an underlying fascination or fondness for stories involving history and time. I plan to do research on why there has been a sudden increase in the prevalence of shows like 12 Monkeys, Timeless, Westworld, Stranger Things, and Frequency. Similar to the SME interviews, I have selected highlighted a few of the books that inspired me throughout this thesis process. In terms of methodology, the in-
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sights and data gathered from the wide swatch of research sources continually fed into prototypes ranging from products to apps to digital platforms. These prototypes were tested for both their practicality and emotionality with people described as time “nerds” (see prior: Audiences Chapter) to get their feedback and see what emotional responses were elicited. The overall goal is to elicit feelings of nostalgia and awe (nostalg-awe) in the sense that people feel more connected to the past and are in wonder at the idea of the history they share with those around them. Each of the design interventions described in this book targeted a different audience and required its own specific research in order to understand the landscape and build out unique solutions. As such, every project presented in this book comes with its own “Research” section that describes the pertinent background and inspirations that served as springboards into my design solutions.
Invisible Tethers: How Time and Memory Shapes Products and Places
Research and Methodology
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Invisible Tethers: How Time and Memory Shapes Products and Places
V—i Subject Matter Expert Interviews
Research and Methodology
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John Roelofs Senior Brand Strategist Venables Bell and Partners
Johanna Koljonen Founding Director ODYSSE
Nan O’ Sullivan Deputy Head, School of Design Victoria University of Wellington
Terence Mickey Principal, Narrative Strategist; Creator, Host Thought Warrior, Inc.; Memory Motel Podcast
Berk Ilhan Innovation and Strategy 10xBeta
John Thackara Founder Doors of Perception
Mat Patterson Teaching Fellow Victoria University of Wellington
E.C. Myers Author “Fair Coin”, “Quantum Coin”
Susan Bonds CEO 42 Entertainment
Sinclair Scott Smith Director SVA Incubator
Zach Lupei Product Manager Google
Rafael Smith Senior Designer IDEO.ORG
Invisible Tethers: How Time and Memory Shapes Products and Places
Marcel Botha CEO, Founder 10xBeta
Danielle Burkhart Author, Writing Tutor SMARTHINKING, Inc.
Samantha Weisman Webmaster The Memory Project
Lou J. Berger Author
Van Aaron Hughes Author “Random Fire�
David Hu Storyteller
Adam Fujita Creator, Host My Life in Letters Podcast
Shelby Thompson Business & Marketing Manager TomorrowLab Research and Methodology
Andrew Schloss Director of Brand Reinstein/Ross
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“I don’t remember what I had for dinner, but if you play me a song, I’ll know all the words. Creativity in any medium is a great way to remember things.”
John Roelofs Senior Brand Strategist Venables Bell and Partners
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Invisible Tethers: How Time and Memory Shapes Products and Places
“Stories used to be set in stone, but now technology lets us dynamically change them and the medium...I’m disappointed people have not tried more radical forms of storytelling.”
Van Aaron Hughes Author “Random Fire”
Research and Methodology
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“People existed [in the past] just as much as we do now. You can superimpose what came before in your own mind. There’s no way to get it back, but [that] is so powerful.”
Samantha Weisman Webmaster The Memory Project
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Invisible Tethers: How Time and Memory Shapes Products and Places
“All the buildings we’ve been in, people had huge ideas and thought they were changing world, but the world changed and they had to move out. When we do that, we erase that history. There are no landmarks that suggest or tell you what company was there before.”
Zach Lupei Product Manager Google
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“I personally connect more with the people that will inhabit an area than the people that have been there. I connect with holograms, not ghosts.�
Danielle Burkhart Author, Writing Tutor SMARTHINKING, Inc.
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Invisible Tethers: How Time and Memory Shapes Products and Places
“The modern version of the Maori concept of “ta-va”, or space-time, is of two infinite, concentric spirals (time and human interaction). [They] are constantly moving, just stopped at different places.”
Nan O’ Sullivan Deputy Head, School of Design Victoria University of Wellington
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“I painted a freight train in Oakland in the 90s. [Years later], the same train with my tag on it rolled by me in Baltimore. It was awesome...that train was like a time capsule/travel mechanism, taking me back to 1996.�
Adam Fujita Creator, Host My Life in Letters Podcast
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Invisible Tethers: How Time and Memory Shapes Products and Places
“We look for ways to superimpose the past on the present.�
Sinclair Scott Smith Director SVA Incubator
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“The watch I am wearing now tells me the time and the story of it. It’s not just about functionality. Objects have significance and emotion have form, function and feeling.”
David Hu Storyteller
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Invisible Tethers: How Time and Memory Shapes Products and Places
“People...like to feel like they’re included. Knowing someone else has experienced something similar to you makes you feel like you belong somewhere as part of something bigger. It’s not tied to any religious belief of God or the universe. It’s an innate human sense of needing to belong.”
Shelby Thompson Business & Marketing Manager TomorrowLab
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“If you understand how a rivet is fused to a beam, then every rivet is a small time capsule of human effort and ingenuity. The detail, the patina, the fixtures—do these tell stories themselves?”
Marcel Botha CEO, Founder 10xBeta
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Invisible Tethers: How Time and Memory Shapes Products and Places
Products and spaces are externalizations of memory. The stuff around us is about facilitating social interactions to create memories, not just to remind us. History is quote, story, event that’s happened there. How would you design something that connected history, time and space?
Mat Patterson Teaching Fellow Victoria University of Wellington
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“People like when elements of the past intrude on the present. That connection to the past...it offers reassurance, it’s emotional. It informs what you do in the future. Through current technology, we can overlay the past on the present and create windows into other worlds.”
E.C. Myers Author “Fair Coin”, “Quantum Coin”
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Invisible Tethers: How Time and Memory Shapes Products and Places
“Places have layers of information that reek of history, that are loaded with intention. [Past usage] injects emotion into products.�
Andrew Schloss Director of Brand Reinstein/Ross
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“By asking people to look back, what you are really doing is re-igniting human curiosity in objects they’ve gotten used to ignoring.”
John Thackara Founder Doors of Perception
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Invisible Tethers: How Time and Memory Shapes Products and Places
“We really spend our lives sharing memories to create and give us a sense of who we are. We come together, our lives overlap. It’s social connective tissue.”
Terence Mickey Principal, Narrative Strategist; Creator, Host Thought Warrior, Inc.; Memory Motel Podcast
Research and Methodology
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V—ii Media
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“Einstein’s Dreams” by Alan Lightman is a must-read. Short but effective, Lightman takes the reader through a plethora of worlds where space and time, cause and effect, and memory behave differently than they do in ours. Despite these different worlds, however, human nature—that is, love, hate, friendship, marriage, divorce, and so on—remains the same in each and every one.
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How It Inspired Me This book, though not necessarily practical in terms of its knowledge sharing, was of great inspiration to me. Beyond the ideas sparked by the different worlds Lightman presents, the fact that human emotions and motivations remained the same, drove home and resonated with my thesis topic of connecting with one another through space and time via the objects and spaces we interact with and inhabit.
Invisible Tethers: How Time and Memory Shapes Products and Places
“The Inevitable” by Kevin Kelly, former editor of WIRED, looks at 12 technological advancements and forces that he believes will shape our society for the next century. “The Inevitable” was informative and inspiring because it highlights how technology such as Augmented and Virtual Reality can and will be used to enhance human connection rather than destroy it.
How It Inspired Me This book provided inspiration when it came time to envision products, apps and services that would flesh out and be a part of my thesis exploration. For example, the phone app prolog was conceived by Kelly’s discussion on the power of Augmented Reality to overlay detailed information over objects in space. Similarly, Kelly’s discussion on the future of physical products as being more personal inspired the creation of “Wormhole” as a physical product that people could put personal memories into.
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“Present Shock” by Douglas Rushkoff became a checkpoint on which this thesis is built. Rushkoff makes several points on how technology has driven our dependence on the now, to the ironic effect of making us not appreciate the present we inhabit.
How It Inspired Me Combating “presentism” is a core element of the argument Rushkoff provides, and while not particularly inspiring in terms of the design output of my thesis work, the sentiment drives all of the solutions created. Each design artifact hinges on or contains an element of the past in an effort to get people to more fully appreciate their present. For example, in the Pilgrimage travel service,
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I argue that knowing that you are following in the footsteps of famous explorers from the past serves to connect you more deeply with your present day experience. In a similar vein yet different industry, the “Supply Chain VR” experience seeks to help consumers make more informed purchasing decisions in the “now” by showing them the process a product took in the past to get to the storefront. In essence, Rushkoff’s argument
on our lack of appreciation for the present struck a deep chord with me, which is why much of the design work presented in this book has the intentionally designed consequence of making people more aware and appreciative of their surroundings. As I created artifacts for appreciating the present using the rools of the now, this book was a handy guide to check myself and make sure I wasn’t just adding to the problem.
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V—iii Immersive Theater
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The Object Lesson was a one-man, immersive theater experience conceived and performed by Geoff Sobelle at the New York Theater Workshop (NYTW). As described by Sobelle and the NYTW, The Object Lesson is a “tactile installation turns the theatre into a storage facility of gargantuan proportion where audiences are free to roam and sift through the clutter. Sobelle transforms this makeshift attic into a space of re-
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flection and wonder as he unpacks our relationship to everyday objects: breaking, buying, finding, fixing, giving, losing, winning, trading, selling, stealing, storing, collecting, cluttering, clearing, packing up, passing on, buried under… a world of things. The Object Lesson is a meditation on the stuff we cling to and the crap we leave behind.” Sobelle played multiple roles throughout the production—insecure ex-boyfriend, nostalgic traveler, a man desperately trying
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to impress a woman during a date, and a 20s-something banker that gets married, has kids, grows into old age and eventually passes away, with each character defined by the objects of those parallel lives. Sobelle employs sleight of hand and magic tricks to engage the audience, and even calls upon the audience to participate in the experience (my colleague Josh played a key role in the nostalgic traveler “act”). What was most inspirational was the underlying message of how each person and each object define one another. Sobelle ingeniously displays this in his final act, that of the life of the single businessman to father to grandfather to his eventual death. Sobelle rapid-fires through this portion of the experience, featuring an apparently bottomless box that contains items defining that decade of his character’s life. As a single businessman, the character is defined by his cell phone, coffee cup, and razor. As a man about to go on a date with his eventual wife, he is defined by the toothbrush and cologne he uses to freshen up and the flowers he is
bringing on the date. As a father and grandfather, the objects include bibs, cribs, rattles, and diplomas. And lastly, as a man facing death, he is metaphorically defined by slowly decaying tree roots. Throughout this entire act of the performance, Sobelle never tells the audience what is going on, instead having them figure it out on their own. The mere fact that most can, in fact, determine that what they are viewing as the life of one individual, speaks to the power the objects in our life hold, and how their meaning defines eras of our life. The entire event was of great inspiration to me, as I pulled several elements of Sobelle’s object work into my Prologue app design, which focuses on giving objects memory, and my experience design, which is a travel agency where tourists are given their souvenir at the start of the experience to take with them as a companion.
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VI. Exploratory Work
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100 sketches by Arjun Kalyanpur
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THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT
A favored design exercise in the program is entitled “100 sketches”. It forces participants to employ lateral thinking, stretching their design muscles far and wide to come up with ideas and see the underlying theme and connections between them. My one hundred sketches around “The Butterfly Effect” led to three tangible prototypes—two products and a service— each focused on improving the lives of separate user groups through one small change. They were titled “anchor”, “Lever”, and “nameless recruiting. “anchor” was designed for people with PTSD. It is a personalized card deck that allows PTSD sufferers to ground themselves during flashback episodes through a variety of memory triggers. These prompts include positive memory triggers such as personal photos, written memories, and scent cards (scent has been shown to be the most powerful sense associated with memory , as well as standard breathing exercises aimed at lower-
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Fig. 1 anchor cards contain positive memory triggers meant to break PTSD sufferers out of flashback episodes Exploratory Work
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Fig. 2 “Lever” RA Water Bottle Opener
Fig. 3 “Nameless Recruiting”
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ing heart rate and inducing a sense of calm. “Lever” is a re-imagining of the bottle cap designing for people with rheumatoid arthritis. People with rheumatoid arthritis had intense joint pain in their hands, to the extent with they cannot grip bottle caps or door knobs to turn them . To solve for this, “Lever” extended the standard bottle cap by just a few inches. In doing so, we provide leverage for people with weaker hand grips. “Lever” could also be a series of tools of varied diameter cutouts, which could then be placed over caps, knobs, tools, and other turn-based artifacts that would otherwise cause RA sufferers great pain.
as an intermediary between candidates and companies, whereby we would remove candidates names from their resumes before forward them to corporations of their choosing, ensuring a fair and merit-based hiring process.
Lastly, “nameless recruiting” was created as a response to studies showing that HR departments implicitly bias against candidates depending on their name—with the more “ethnic” names receiving less consideration than those more Caucasian sounding names. “nameless recruiting” was created to serve
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PIVOTING TO MEMORY
Feedback for my early design explorations, though positive, focused on two primary critiques—the designs were too practical, and the exploration had to go deeper. Given another week of speculative product prototyping, I chose to become the embodiment of my thesis. Rather than spend hours in the shop or on the computer creating an artifact, I would make one small change that cascaded into larger results—I would ask my classmates build my prototype for me through the asking of two simple questions: “how did you get to here, and what is the object that memorializes that experience?” This led to my next product prototype, “Here”. “Here” is a book that compiles and presents the answers of my queries to my classmates. I found it deeply interesting on multiple levels. Personally, I found it interesting to learn about my classmates’ lives before the program, as well as what
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they considered to be their “tipping point” moment that resulted in their attendance of the Products of Design program. Also, it was engaging to see the different ways in which my classmates envisioned both space-time and the flow of time itself. Despite their varied aesthetic representations of time—some chose circles, others arrows, and others a flow like a river—each person still envisioned time as flowing linearly, an interesting concept given my interviews with and research of SMEs with experience in Pacific Islander and Maori culture, where time and space are envisioned as concentric circles. Seeing their work made tangible the notion that Western culture has this very “straight line”, disconnected relationship to spacetime. Lastly, it was intriguing and informative to see what artifacts the participants chose to encompass this pivotal moment in their lives, as well as to read and listen as to why they chose their specific
object. In asking them to choose one physical item, I was essentially asking my classmates to take their memories, experiences, hopes, fears, realizations a host of other feelings and compress them down into one meaningful representation. The motive here was to learn how people associate their lives through the objects and/or spaces around them. Given more time, I would created a reverse side to the book entitled “There”. Again, the prompt would be a simple question: “where would you be if you were not here?” This exploration of the “what could have been” would have featured an introspective, almost self-musing map of events that would have ended in the present day. The intention here was to get people to think about how one moment, or more accurately one choice, in their lives ended up leading them down a completely different path than it could have otherwise. Taking the aforementioned last
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piece of advice given to me by my classmates—to explore what I really found fascinating about the butterfly effect—I took time to reflect on what truly excited me about both creating “Here” as well as learning about my classmates. Findings First, I found it fascinating to see what objects they chose to distill years of emotion and memory into. It led me to a thesis-pivoting opinion that both objects and spaces have senses, passively watching and listening and recording the memories and experiences of the various people— both familiar and unfamiliar—that interact with them. Second, I learned that, despite the parallel lives my classmates have led, there were places intersected both emotionally and actually in space and time. For example, during this research I found that my classmate Josh and I actually intersected at my old boarding school—a tiny, remote school in the middle-of-nowhere (aka Mercersburg) Pennsylvania. This
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realization led to an instinctual, positive emotional spike between the two of us that immediately forged a connection and deepened our friendship. Not only that, but all of us here at Products of Design, despite our varied histories, have intersected again—in this time, and in this space. Additionally, 5 years of students have made memories and experiences in the PoD space.
than ever before. Ultimately, it can be said that, ironically, “Here” and “There” were my own butterfly effect, my own tipping point where my underlying passion for and fascination with product, place and memory became apparent and my thesis changed entirely.
Given these realizations, my thesis changed. If we could tap into the memories of these shared objects and spaces and experience them, in turn experiencing the parallel lives of the people we cross paths with, we would then form deeper connections to those objects, those places, and ultimately, to the people we have shared them with. We could make those positive emotional spikes, born from the past, a more common occurrence, which I posit is necessary in a culture more focused on the now and more disconnected from each other
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VI—i Co-Creation Workshop
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RITUALS
A topic that came up frequently throughout my SME interviews and casual conversation was the notion that many cultures employ rituals to capture, memorialize, honor and recite/retell vital stories to that society. These stories could range from heroic deeds done by previous members of that culture to physical manifestations of older religious tales. Seeing this tangential connection to my area of inquiry, I decided to explore this concept of ritual and ceremony further. It was here that I was recommended to study the work of anthropologist Clifford Geertz . Traveling throughout Asia, Geertz studied the role rituals played in cultures ranging from tribes in Indonesia to the Emperor and his subjects in Japan. A particularly resonant quote that came from his work, and ultimately inspired my workshop, was: In other words, rituals were microcosms of my thesis—encapsulations of time, space, memory and emo-
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“Arguments, melodies, formulas, maps and pictures are not idealities to be stared at but texts to be read; so are rituals…” 112
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tion. For example, in New Zealand, the National Rugby team performs the “Haka”, a traditional war cry of the Maori people that was used to display pride, strength and unity . In performing the “Haka” dance and chant, the rugby team taps into this emotional well to declare their strength against the opposing team. In that same vein, on every anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, New Zealand firefighters perform the “Haka” to memorialize those victims lost on that day. In Balinese culture, a popular ritual and ceremony held is known as “Barong and Rangda”. It recounts the eternal, vicious battle between Rangda, a child-eating witch that represents evil, and Barong, the king of spirits representing good . Throughout the ritual, which depicts the eternal struggle of good versus evil, Geertz remarks that the audience is encourage to and does in fact get involved, screaming and yelling and
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stomping themselves into a fever pitch. Using these examples as inspiration, I held the “Masters of Ceremony� co-creation workshop. A co-creation workshop is an event in which the host or designer (me) invites participants to, given prompts, use their imaginations to dream up designs both speculative and real that the host/designer believes will help them better understanding their area of inquiry. These workshops are often structured using the Framing, Seeding, Creation and Capture (FSCC) framework.
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FRAMING
Observe how participants create rituals to ceremonialize emotional, shared, experiences
SEEDING
Split into teams of strangers, get to know one another and discover a common emotional experience
CREATION
Develop and perform a ritual encompassing that shared experience; must use one physical artifact
CAPTURE
Photography, video, group discussion
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In my case, given that I believe rituals are microcosms of my thesis exploration, it seemed natural that I would have my participants create rituals of their own. Teams of relative strangers (3 women, 5 men, 20s to 30s) acquaintances with no real knowledge of each other) had to find a shared emotional experience and create both an object and ritual around that experience.
movement and interaction with the artifact in a more abstract manner. Utilizing the aforementioned FSCC framework, the proverbial bell was rung to signal the start of the workshop. From there, the event resulted in three distinct ceremonies:
In order to give as much creative independence to my participants as possible, I did not specify what type of emotional experience the participants had to agree upon. In other words, the experience could range from the more mundane, such as rushing to catch the subway, to the deeply emotional, such as the loss of a loved one. The only rules given were that: (1) a physical artifact had to be constructed and used within the ritual, and (2) talking was limited to one sentence in order to prevent storytelling/recitation. This latter rule was intended to encourage
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Eden and Andrew Eden and Andrew were able to immediately come to a shared experience— calling home, and more specifically, calling their mothers in the present day. In developing their artifact, they sought to build a place that felt not only safe and secure, but free of outward distractions. Their final product embodied these notions, standing as a cocoon in which the user could encase themselves in order to call their mothers. Andrew then performed their ritual, entitled “A Safe Space to Call Mom,” in order to show the intended use of the artifact. The “boxed” nature of the artifact ensured that the user was enclosed, and the ritual made certain to show that the phone had to be placed in a slot far from the “chat interface” in order to function correctly. Furthermore, the user was forced to lie down, providing a more relaxed, less easily distracted position in which to communicate with home.
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This artifact and ritual combination was unique in two senses: (1) it was actually quite practical, and (2) it was the only ritual that had its actors physically inhabiting a space.
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Calvin, Kevin, Louis Calvin, Kevin and Louis took their time in discovering a shared experience, but once they did, they actually created a series of artifacts for their ritual, which focused on the act of eating breakfast. Envisioning a not-so-distant future (or present, depending on your opinion) where people move quickly throughout their days, never stopping for anything in an effort just to keep up, Calvin, Kevin and Louis sought to slow things down. They sought to inject time for enjoyment and reflection, choosing breakfast—an enjoyed experience for the three of them—as the means of doing so. The series of artifacts created were twists on current “breakfast tools”—a spoon, a fork, chopsticks, a drinking straw and a coffee maker—that required the consumer to slow down through various means to either serve themselves or others. In the case of the spoon, the cup had to be balanced precisely with tongs in order for the user to drink from it.
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The fork was hinged, requiring the user to eat very slowly lest the hinge fly away from them and cause the food to spill. Similarly, the chopsticks were doublethe standard length, requiring intense focus to use properly either for oneself or when feeding another person. The drinking straw was attached to a pump, and could be used to either self-serve liquid or allow another person to drink. Lastly, the world’s slowest coffee maker created coffee one drip at a time. All of these tools were used throughout the team’s ritual, which they named “Stop. It’s Breakfast.” This ritual was unique in that it made tangible not only the notion of slowing down, but of partnership, teamwork and human connection as well.
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Julia, Manako, Will Rather than spend time mind mapping or jotting down shared experiences the way the other groups did, Julia, Manako and Will spent some time conversing before deciding on their shared experience—the pain and nostalgia a child deals with when they move to a new place. Though they wanted to remember their past homes, they primarily sought to open the child’s eyes to the adventure and opportunity that comes with adapting to a new culture as well as exploring and building relationships in new spaces. They accomplished this through the construction of a single, navigational artifact that contained multiple parts which they used in a ritual they titled “Perspective”. The base was a compass with an embedded needle in its center, attached to a balloon filled with roses—the director of where the compass would point. Lastly, a pair of binoculars with the lenses reversed completed the
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artifact. Each aspect of the artifact had symbolic meaning. The compass is not driven by a standard magnet, but instead by the forces of chance and nature (such as wind), that cause the balloon to travel in different directions. The binoculars are used by the child to follow the balloon wherever it floats, allowing them to explore the new space they find themselves it. Uniquely, the lenses of the binoculars are reversed from the typical way binoculars are structured. Rather than have lenses that allow you to zoom in from afar, these lenses zoom out, opening one’s perspective to the wider picture and all it has to offer. As the child explores his new home, time passes and the balloon loses air, slowly lowering itself onto the needle. Eventually, the balloon pops, ejecting the rose petals within, removing the need for the binoculars and symbolizing the rosier perspective the child now has towards their new environment.
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By far the most symbolic ritual, I found it extremely fascinating in its exploration (both during its creation and through the performance itself) of the tension between nostalgia for the past and looking towards the future.
that took place in the “present” and “imagined future” focused more on human connection, the ritual that took its inspiration from the “past” focused more on remembering former and building new bonds with space and place.
Given this diversity of experiences, artifacts and rituals, I was able to takeaway several interesting insights and observations after the workshop.
Second, the rituals used their artifacts for different purposes—one physically carved out a space, kitchen utensils represented an actual suite of products for a speculative future, and the compass and binocular set acted as both as product and symbolic guide.
First, the three rituals took place in different “space-times”. Eden and Andrew’s took place in the present. Calvin, Kevin and Louis’ took place in a potential future. And Julia, Manako and Will’s was inspired by the feeling of nostalgia the past gives us. Beyond the obvious takeaway that each group interpreted what ritual meant to them and their experience, it was interesting that the most abstract ritual contained that tie back to past events, places and experiences. This created an interesting separation between the three rituals in the sense that, whereas the rituals
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Lastly, and perhaps most interesting, each ritual focused on slowing down. Whether it was calling mom, enjoying breakfast, or exploring a new area, each ceremony took time to appreciate the small details of the experience it was representing. This insight was beautifully captured by one of the workshop participants who felt the same way, Calvin, who said, “Rituals are themselves patches of time, and what we did was take those patches and stretch them out to appreciate the details that typically get lost.”
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“Rituals are themselves patches of time, and what we did was take those patches and stretch them out to appreciate the details that typically get lost.�
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VII. Design Sprints
Introduction
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VII—i Medical
Design Sprint: Medical
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Memory Makers
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ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE: AN OVERVIEW
Alzheimer’s disease is not a new condition to many of us. Affecting approximately 48 million people worldwide (as of 2015 statistics) , Alzheimer’s is one of the most debilitating and painful (to patient, family and friends) neurodegenerative diseases currently known. Furthermore, Alzheimer’s research, treatment and care makes it one of the most financially costly diseases in first-world countries. Alzheimer’s is estimated to cause 60%-70% of cases of dementia , and is characterized by several symptoms. These include disorientation and confusions, mood swings, misplacing objects, difficulty completing tasks, impaired language capabilities (aphasia), inability to self-care and, most well-known, short term memory loss. In certain cases, these symptoms of Alzheimer’s—specifically dementia, disorientation and memory loss— can lead to the accidental death of the patient. In 2010, estimates placed this number of Alzheimer’s-related
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deaths at approximately 486,000 people. This memory loss can manifest in forgetting where you are and what you are doing to completely forgetting family members you have known for decades. Storyteller and memory researcher Terence Mickey, who you may recall from the Subject Matter Expert interviews shared earlier in this book, described Alzheimer’s as the “death of your self”, leaving behind a person who is “around but missing”. Currently, treatment for Alzheimer’s patients include medications such as antipsychotics to treat dementia, exercise to improve daily living conditions, and mentally stimulating, brain-training tasks that activate the memory and recall portions of our brain. However, due to the devitalizing symptoms of Alzheimer’s such as disorientation and memory loss, oftentimes a full-time caregiver is needed to attend to the patient .
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This caregiver can either be a family member or a full-time hire, with each treatment option having its own consequences in terms of the social, economic, mental and physical burdens put on the patient, caregiver, and the patient’s family. For those patients which at-home care is untenable due to social or economic conditions, they are often moved into assisted living or hospice care homes where they can receive the care they need. Despite the healing mission of these homes and the wonderful people that work within them, many care facilities are designed like hospitals. That is, they are sterile, cold, uncomfortable environments that do nothing to improve or treat the emotional and physical wellbeing of the patient. Given that many studies have shown the improved health outcomes of patients with a happier, more positive environment that improves their emotions, there seems to be a disconnect between the goal of these homes and their presented environment.
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However, simply improving the color or changing the lights in a care facility is not enough. These homes need to be completely revamped and revitalized, and instead of looking forward through the addition of modern technologies and aesthetics, looking to the past may be the best way to improve the care of Alzheimer’s patients. Science and a recent art exhibit in Denmark may show the way. Scientific research into memory has long proven the existence of the “reminiscence bump” —a phenomenon in memory encoding that shows our older selves remember and recall events that occur between the ages of 18-30 more vividly than any other time period in our lives. It stands to reason, then, that by utilizing this bump, we can not only allow Alzheimer’s patients to recall past events fondly—improving their emotional state as a result— but also engage the recall portions of their brain, which, as previously discussed, is a suggested treatment
tactic employed by caregivers. The Den Gamle By Museum(The Old Town Museum) in Aarhus, Denmark did just that, with an interactive exhibit entitled the “House of Memories” . Known as a living history museum, the Den Gamle By Museum typically features exhibits and installations such as old butter churners, coffee makers, radios, television sets and the like from decades past. However, the “House of Memories” is a different kind of exhibit. In fact, it is not even open to the public. It’s intended use is to present Alzheimer’s patients and patients with dementia an immersive look at their own history. The “House of Memories” seeks to engage the reminiscence bump by exactly recreating an apartment from the 1950s—the time period in which the visitors were 18-30 years old, or the optimal reminiscence bump age. The apartment is outfitted down to
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the detail, with everything from the smallest button to the largest record player exactly recreated as it would be in that time. In addition, the “House of Memories” employs the use of actors dressed in appropriate garb that prompt visitors to describe everything from the taste of the food they make to the way the radio functions. In every way, “House of Memories” completely immerses its visitors and engages all five of their senses, subsequently activating their latent memories of that time period.
states are altered by the experience. Emotionally, patients become happier, more talkative, lightened, and recount stories their children have never heard before. Physically, some patients become so immersed that they forget they need to use canes. The “House of Memories” shows the power of engaging the reminiscence bump to treat Alzheimer’s, and was the inspiration behind the service known as Memory Makers.
The results speak for themselves. As reported by NPR, Henning Lindberg, who works at the museum and came up with the idea, recounts how visitors emotional and physical
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MEMORY MAKERS: A NEW WAY TO TREAT MEMORY LOSS
Memory Makers is a product and event service that faithfully recreates products and settings from the past to interact with Alzheimer’s patients in a novel, engaging manner. The end goal of the service is not to necessarily “treat” Alzheimer’s patients, but engage with them in a way that has shown to improve their emotional and physical wellbeing. Here’s how it works: Family members or caregivers of a patient visit the Memory Makers website. There, they are presented with three options: Buy a Product, Plan an Event, or Repair an Item.
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Under the Buy a Product option, Memory Makers will create an existing product from a past time period down to the stitch. This artifact can then be given as a gift to the patient to jump start conversation or remind them of happy memories from their childhood.
The user then chooses Household goods.
Upon choosing this option, users are given a choice of different time periods that people with Alzheimer’s may have lived through during their reminiscence bump period.
In a similar vein, but not pictured, is the Repair an Item option. Choosing this allows users to send in old products of their parents/grandparents and have them fully restored and refurbished for a fee. This is accomplished through partnerships with craftspeople and artisans both locally and globally.
For example, on the older end of the scale, someone who experienced their reminiscence bump period between 1940-1950 would be close to or over 90 years old today.
Authentic products from that decade—ranging from a Blenko lamp to a Dominion Waffle Iron to an old TV set—are then available for purchase.
In this instance, the user chooses the time period of 1950-1960. Next, they can choose their product “Department”, in much the same way an online retailer or e-commerce platform like Amazon categorizes their products.
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Under the Plan an Event option, Memory Makers will recreate rooms or apartments, much in the same way “House of Memories” did, for the patient/family member to visit and engage with. Here, the consumer chose the decade between 1960-1970 and is offered a range of apartment recreations as well as event packages that they can select for their patients or family members. For example, a basic package would last a half-day, include one actor and feature one fully outfitted room. Under the advanced package, the event lasts a full day, includes the use of 3 actors, and allows users to send in their patient or family member’s own artifacts (perhaps collecting dust in the basement) for use in the recreated setting. Memory Makers believes that its expertise in understanding the science behind and power of human memory, and how it can positively impact our emotional and physiological wellbeing, will help us launch this service.
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We plan to capture our first users by reaching out to friends and/or family members who know people suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, as well as to progressive treatment homes that would be willing to try this new means of emotional therapy and engagement. Though we are starting off as very much a product and service business, offering products, experiences and refurbishments, our long-term vision goes well beyond that. Ultimately, we want to redefine the current Alzheimer’s care methodology, re-envisioning the way treatment homes and assistive care centers are planned and constructed. If we could implement the Memory Makers service offering into treatment homes, through the scientific lens of the reminiscence bump, we can transform care centers from sterile, hospital-esque spaces into era-specific, interactive experiences that will have not only beneficial
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emotional, but physical benefits for Alzheimer’s patients.
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Memory Makers
Therapy lies in the past.
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VII—ii Social
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CAPSULE
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CAPSULE: A DIGITAL SCRAPBOOK
Scrapbooking is a common pastime that allows people to creatively and beautifully preserve their personal and family history. However, in a time where we create more media than ever, there are few means, none inherently intuitive, of compiling it all for future recall. Capsule is a digital scrapbooking platform that allows users to upload the media they create in a given day (photo, video, audio, notes) to a secure, cloud-based server. Users can then select any date and relive the memories they created and recorded on that day. If desired, they can share their memories with other Capsule members. The following wireframes present four variations of the home and media selection screen that users will be presented with upon opening the app.
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STORYBOARD
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A storyboard depicting Rosa, a new user of Capsule, who captures her father’s 60th birthday part.
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WIREFRAMES Version 1 Version 1 of Capsule presents the user with an overview of the current month, highlighting days where Capsule entries have been logged. By clicking on a tagged day, users can choose either all or a specific media type to view. In addition, users can scroll back through previous months as well as choose prior years to view what media they recorded.
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Version 2 Version 2 offers a more modern, visual view of the media offerings that Capsule records. Users shown are the month and day in one location, surrounded by icons that they can click in to in order to access their captured media. Similarly to Version 1, users can change the year at the top of the screen.
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Version 3 The third variation of Capsule features a similar date and year pairing similar to Version 2. Conversely, consumers would be immediately immersed into the content with a slideshow displaying images—taken on that day in previous years—cascading in the background.
0:00 PM
Home Page
Select Year
Month Date
Slideshow of images from that day in prior years.
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Version 4 The final variation of Capsule’s home screen, and my personal favorite, builds off of Version 3’s goal to immerse users in the content. Inspired by Instagram’s layout, upon opening the app, users are immediately shown all the content they took on that day “One Year Ago”. From there, menu options allow them to go to a calendar to scroll through different day and previous years. The goal here was to simplify the introductory UI as much as possible while highlighting the value proposition of Capsule—showing users the content they have created throughout their lives and connecting them through time.
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FEEDBACK AND FUTURE STEPS
Capsule received feedback in terms of both the variations presented as well as the overall idea itself. Regarding home screen variations, almost everyone responded well to Version 4 for several reasons. First, showing multiple media types is engaging while underscoring the value proposition of the platform. Second, opening up to a snapshot of the user’s life one year prior is a nice way to be immediately taken into the content and see the platform acting as a “capsule” of that day. Pushing Capsule forward, a common piece of feedback was that, though the scrapbook idea was novel and intimate, it needed to do something more interesting. In other words, I should brainstorm ways to make the app “smarter” and have it do something for the user, utilizing Capsule as springboard to develop a more interesting design service.
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Ideas in this vein ranged from smaller, feature-based changes such as finding ways to include people who don’t create media everyday and a speech-to-text option to broader value proposition changes such as using it as a tool for dealing with long-distance relationships and for children to learn about their parents. A final suggestion was to find a means to implement a brick-andmortar artifact to bridge that gap between the digital and the “real�.
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CAPSULE
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PRESENT SHOCK
Douglas Rushkoff describes our society having transformed, “[becoming] an entropic, static hum of everybody trying to capture the static moment.” Survey research done in 2014 by global information services group Experian indicates that, of the 77% of millennials that own a smartphone, almost 40% of them interact with it more than they do significant others, parents, friends, or co-workers. This survey also found that millennials spend almost two hours a day on their smartphone alone, excluding other devices such as television and computers . Social media in the form of Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, and Twitter has only exacerbated both these issues—the obsession with the now and the sheer time we spend staring into screens. These platforms are filled with images of people displaying engagements, travel, weddings, babies, and, as some see it, other forms of bragging about the life they lead.
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“...our culture [has become] an entropic, static hum of everybody trying to capture the static moment.”
Douglas Rushkoff “Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now”
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Entire words have sprung up around this culture of now in the form of words like “Tweet”, “insta”, and “like”. Perhaps most telling is the notion of “FOMO”, or the Fear Of Missing Out. FOMO describes an emotion many people in the millennial generation feel when they either digitally witness an event their friends are at that they cannot attend, or an event that they find better than the one they are already at. They remove themselves from the events around them by a need to see what other people are doing and a desire to determine if it’s more fun. In this new world, in this search for new, digital connection, then, it is no surprise that people are completely disconnected from their surroundings. There is little appreciation for or curiosity about the products and spaces around them, instead choosing to experience the world through a black mirror. While the typical argument denounces this type of behavior in favor of looking forward to the
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next big wave, the next big technology, and the consequences of our actions, we take the reverse point of view. While prologue accept the culture of the now, we believe it is equally important to look to the past. The objects and spaces that we interact with everyday, yet typically ignore, are time capsules and treasure chests filled with the memories and experiences of those who have come and used them before. This ranges from the smallest plate at a restaurant to the table you’re sitting at to the restaurant itself. All of these artifacts are infused with experiences, and if we had some way of connecting to those experiences, we could gain a deeper appreciation for those objects, spaces, and people. Furthermore, by inspiring and instilling this behavior in people, we can potentially re-ignite that latent human curiosity about products and spaces that leads to beneficial innovation and social change. However, it is important to note
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that we are not advocating ditching smart phones. Rather, smart phones are a powerful tool that we can use to interact with our environments and learn more about them. In order to accomplish this, we must first embrace and utilize an upand-coming technology known as blockchain. What is blockchain? Most commonly associated with bitcoin, blockchain refers to a decentralized, or distributed, database populated by an always increasing list of “transactions� called blocks. These blocks are public record, meaning they can be seen by anyone. This open, peer-to-peer based system means that the blockchain, or record book, is managed autonomously by the eyes of the people watching it. In addition, blockchain records are timestamped and contains a link to the previous block.
undergoes from its inception. Expanding on this, we can make the assumption that timestamps need not be the only metadata a blockchain record can be tagged with. We can expand this to tag other data including location, audio, video, photos, and digital notes. In other words, we can utilize blockchain technology to record the historical data (read: history) an object accumulates during its lifecycle. In doing so, people can not only tag their experiences with an object or space, but more importantly, other people who intersect with those products and environments can access and add to that history. This has been done before in terms of visualizing the supply chain (see company: Provenance), but never on a social scale. This white space is where prologue was born.
In essence, then, blockchains are public records of the transactions an object or currency, such as bitcoin,
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How Blockchain Works
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PROLOGUE: MAKING THE PAST PRESENT
Prologue is a service that allows you to track the history of the objects and places you interact with everyday, yet ignore. Based on blockchain technology, a user can simply scan a Prologue tag code with their phone to either view the object history or add to it for the next person in the chain. Users engage with Prologue in primarily two ways—as a “scanner” and as a “tagger”. In this example, we show the interaction of a “scanner”, but make a quick diversion to discuss the “tagging” system. Here’s how it works: Primarily a phone application, users must first buy the prologue app on their phone for a small fee (this may eventually become free).
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Users of Prologue wishing to access and experience the history of the object or space they are interacting with, whom we call “scanners”, will be on the lookout for these aforementioned Prologue tags. Prologue tags are like barcodes— each one is unique. Unlike barcodes, however, they can be tagged with data such as time, date, location, and a variety of media including photo, video, audio, and written notes. Conversely, for those users of Prologue wishing to infuse their objects and environments with history, or “taggers”, the first step in their user journey is buying one or many Prologue tags. Ideally, we would like our users to be both “taggers” and “scanners”.
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Now, let’s say a user is at The Strand bookstore in Union Square, New York City. They have heard a lot about this book “Ready Player One” by Ernest Cline, especially since Steven Spielberg has agreed to direct the movie and has started hiring very famous actors to play the lead roles. They see a used copy sitting on the shelf for a discount, so they grab it off the shelf and begin inspecting it. Flipping it over to read the synopsis and praise the book has gotten from big name authors, the user notices a Prologue tag next to the barcode.
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Pulling out their phones, the user opens up the previously purchased Prologue app and scans the code. In much the same way QR codes, bank checks, and credit cards are now scanned by phones, Prologue automatically opens up the phone’s built-in camera to scan the Prologue tag. After scanning the tag, users are immediately taken to the map screen, which shows where and when the object was tagged using Prologue in the past.
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After scanning the tag, users are immediately taken to the map screen, which shows where and when the object was tagged using Prologue in the past.
Tapping 2011 brings up the profile of the “tagger”, Arjun Kalyanpur. We see that he first tagged the book in June 2011 in Culver City, California.
Here, we see that this small copy of “Ready Player One” was first tagged in LA in 2011, before making it’s way to North Dakota in 2013 before landing at The Strand in New York sometime in 2016.
Even more exciting, he’s attached four notes, a photo, and two videos to the tag.
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Clicking on the photo tag, we see that Arjun tagged his photo on June 3, 2011 at 11:13 AM, two days after first tagging the book.
Looking at the photo, we see that Arjun took a photo of the last page of the book as he finished it. In his comments, he says, “My first Prologue tag! Just finished Ready Player One at the Starbucks on Sepulveda! It was incredible! They should make a movie out of this book, and Steven Spielberg should direct IMO.�
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This example shows the power of Prologue. Our expertise in leveraging the potential of blockchain and understanding the power of human connection helps us launch Prologue. Initial users will come via two channels — social media influencers and giveaways at epicenters of human foot traffic to build brand awareness. Prologue’s vision is three-fold: First, we want to connect users to the objects and places, and thus the people, that we interact with yet ignore on a deeper, more emotional level. Second, we aim to have this design interaction reignite curiosity around the history of the products and places that surround us. Lastly, you can utilize the built-in chat feature of the device. Since Arjun chose to make his Prologue identity public, the user sends him a message informing him that he just picked up his former copy of the book.
Lastly, we hope to expand this blockchain technology to the supply web, ensuring fair sourcing, labor practices and transparency between companies and end users.
Arjun responds enthusiastically, bragging about how he totally predicted Spielberg being hired as director.
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Eventually, we would like to see Prologue removed from the phone, becoming an Augmented Reality experience that superimposes these windows to the past onto the present.  
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The past is present.
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VII—iii Sustainability
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Supply Chain VR
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SEEING THROUGH THE OPAQUE SUPPLY WEB
When looking at the history of objects through a sustainability lens, I was naturally drawn to the supply web. The supply web refers to the sourcing, transportation, production, manufacturing, retail sale, consumption/use and after-life use that a product goes through during its lifecycle—in other words, the history that went into making and using a product. However, this web remains opaque to end users. By making it more transparent, we can better understand what goes into making the products we consume, make more informed purchasing decisions, and better drive social change for underprivileged or abused supply web workers. In order to develop interventions that could make the supply web more transparent, ideas were generated inspired by Aaron Hurst of Taproot’s Five Levers for Social Change : disruptive technology, policy shifts, bright spots, data and insights, and growing public awareness.
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DISRUPTIVE TECHNOLOGY
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Spurring social change through cutting-edge technological advancements.
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BRIGHT SPOTS
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Small, easily scalable programs that build social awareness and convince people to create change.
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PUBLIC PERCEPTION
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Ad campaigns that change beliefs and/or inspire people to take positive social action.
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POLICY SHIFTS
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Changes in company and/or governmental policy that drive national and global scale social change
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DATA VISUALIZATION
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Collecting and visualizing data to find patterns, discover actionable insights, and distill information that inspires social action.
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SUPPLY CHAIN VR
Ultimately, I chose to utilize the disruptive technology lever, using a VR experience to illuminate the supply chain. When deciding on a segment of the Product Adoption Curve to target to push this intervention through, I decided on the Early Adopter and a sliver of the Early Majority market for both consumers and companies. The reasons for this stemmed from Les Robinson’s “A Summary of Diffusion of Innovations”, where he describes each segment of the product adoptive curve . Regarding Early Adopters and the Early Majority, he states “they are on the lookout for anything that could give them a social or economic edge...social prestige is one of their biggest drivers.” Given that ecodesign, equal rights for workers and product sustainability are becoming more prevalent, it makes senses that both companies and consumers would benefit from this technology.
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On the consumer side, users will want to not only be informed, but get the social prestige that comes with being more knowledgeable about hot button issues.
The Demo
For businesses, they know that a good way to grow business is to be able to advertise about their fair business and socially conscious practices and their transparency as a company through using this service.
In it, he takes the point of view of a pencil, and recounts the autobiographical tale of how that pencil was created—from the metal mined abroad to the trees in the forest to the janitor who sweeps the floor of the manufacturing facility where the pencil is created.
In 1958, Leonard Read published “I, Pencil� as a defense of free market capitalism .
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Inspired by Read’s work, I discovered a fan-created genealogical map of the pencil (opposite). With this as inspiration, the VR experience demo visualizes the supply chain journey of a simple Number Two pencil. Refining the Demo Using the five questions of “what qualities makes innovations spread”—relative advantage, compatibility, simplicity, trialibility, and observable results—the demo underwent several refinements. These changes helped transform the demo from a simple app and VR experience with photos and video showing how objects get made into a much more robust look at an object’s lifecycle. These additions include the locations and conditions of the raw materials sourced, the companies involved and their reputation, the people those companies employ and how they are treated, the proce-
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dures/processes it takes to actually create the item, and finally, the option for users to rate a company’s “Supply Chain Score”. I envision the experience to be for both at-home and in-store use cases, with users interacting with it via the app or at Point-of-Sale kiosks. Here, we see the Google Cardboard VR headset paired with the supply chain app. We can see that several products have already been added to the app in addition to our #2 Pencil, including a Nike T-shirt and an Apple iPhone 7. Each has their own “Supply Chain Score”, rated on by the users after viewing the content, which aggregates with other users’ ratings to form an average. When the user selects the #2 Pencil option, they are taken into the VR experience, which plays out on the following pages.
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The VR experience shows the lifecycle and supply web touchpoints that goes into manufacturing a pencil. Distance traveled, reputation measures and other data are superimposed on the experience as the user goes through it. They can also give an overall supply chain score at the end for other users to see.
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COMBINING MEDICAL AND SUSTAINABLE
Having shown that looking to the past provokes novel designs in social, medical and sustainable frameworks, I combined two of the lenses to see what designs could come from this cross-fertilization. Furthermore, we were challenged to make our resultant product environmentally “net positive”. That is to say, the product couldn’t just “do less bad” (i.e. be made from recyclable materials), it had to actively improve the environment through its creation and/or use. On the medical side, I kept my user group from my previous work— people with Alzheimer’s—as well as my research which suggested that mementos or photographs could be used to trigger an Alzheimer’s patients memories of family members and past events. The sustainability end is much trickier. When considering the environmental impact of any product design, everything must be considered—
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from where the raw materials are sourced to how the end user will eventually dispose of the product to what happens to the product after that disposal. Digital products are not exempt from this scrutiny, as the materials and power draw of servers and server farms must be considered when assessing their ecological impact. Supply chain transparency, previously discussed in this book, is only one small part of a much larger eco-design shift, and is indeed limited by the fact that it is inherently looking at the “past” of a product. Four sustainable design strategies (SOURCE?) that are being used to reduce the environmental footprint of product design, while actually presenting business advantages to those companies willing to adopt them, are described below: Low Impact
options when considering how to reduce a product’s negative lifecycle impacts, whether at the beginning of end of the product’s life. These include more ecologically friendly manufacturing materials and production methods, via recycled and renewable materials and processes driven by renewable energy. In doing so, companies can increase the quality of their designs while longterm material and energy costs. Efficiency The next ecodesign method that can be implemented focuses on increasing resource and process efficiency. The business advantage here is obvious, as more efficient materials and processes reduce expenditures. Methods include reducing the total volume of material used and waste created; improving product process, water and energy efficiency; and decreasing part variability (the number of parts in the product) and complexity (e.g. single material parts).
Low impact design presents several
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Supply Chain Transparency & Ethical Supply Networks As previously mentioned, by increasing supply chain transparency, companies can improve their product quality, build consumer goodwill and brand equity, and reduce the risks associated with ignorance (e.g. Mattel lead paint recall). Means of doing so include increased visibility (as Supply Chain VR did), getting certifications such as LEED or Energy Star, simplifying the value chain to reduce environmental impact, and forging relationships with people at all stops along the supply chain. Creating Circular Economies Circular economies look at the entire product system, rather than a section of it as previous strategies have done. The end goal is to keep a product’s impacts and benefits contained within a closed-loop. This can be accomplished through improving and incentivizing product durability, repairability, reusability, remanufacturability and recyclabil-
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ity. Similarly, companies can create closed-loop systems whereby old products serve as feedstock for new products (i.e. cradle-to-cradle). The business advantages are increased product quality and value as well as cost savings. Tools With these strategies in mind, it is easy to see how developing a truly sustainable product can quickly become a complex endeavor. Fortunately, there are several tools one can use to focus their ecodesigns.These include system mapping, theory of change maps, and process flow maps, as well as their associated analysis. I used all three of these techniques in developing my sustainable medical product, Family Trees. Starting with a system map, I quickly came to the realization that the system I was exploring was in fact two systems—a memory system (how we record, remember, and associate past events) and an Alzhei-
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mer’s system (how a patient forgets, how their families help them and the healthcare system they become part of). In mapping this system (or any system for that matter), I was able to look for leverage points where small design interventions could lead to immense, systemic changes (echoing my initial thesis topic of the Butterfly Effect). Ultimately, I found two leverage points where I believed change could be successful affected, one per system. On the Memory side of my system map, I observed a leverage point in how we capture and record memory. I called this the “Capture Lever”. Currently, our means of memory capture are very two-dimensional. That is, they exist as photos, videos or heirlooms that only engage one or two senses at a time. If there were a means of capturing memories in a more multi-dimensional manner, those interventions could
be used in the “Treatment Lever” to better engage with and encourage Alzheimer’s patients to recall past events (Memory Makers apartment recreations are a first attempt to do this). The other lever, the “Treatment Lever”, is found in the Alzheimer’s System. Here we see that the primary treatment for Alzheimer’s remains medical therapy and the hope of a breakthrough medication. While I am not claiming that “memory therapy” is a cure, it does significantly improve the mental and physical state of patients when they are placed in positions that encourage them to remember the past. Now knowing that I had these two levers that I could “pull”, I began sketching out ideas. In order to make sure that I was considering the environment and not just my user group, I designed from three perspectives—for my intended user group, for the environment as a client, and for the environment as a customer.
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The resulting designs varied from meteors hitting the Earth to eliminate humans to a petrified wood cane that elderly Alzheimer’s patients could use to get around. The cane would be marked with a timeline of important events from the patient’s life, serving as reminders of prior events. Eventually, when the patient passed, the cane would become a sentimental heirloom for the family. What became abundantly clear through doing these sketches from three POVs is that it is extremely difficult to not only design sustainably, but to design a product with a “net positive” impact.
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FAMILY TREES
I decided to refocus my designs on providing this “net positive” effect. Consulting with our instructor, Rebecca Silver, she encouraged me to look at the environment that my user group spends most of their time in. In the case of Alzheimer’s patients, that environment was primarily indoors, via care homes or rooms in the home. A major environmental concern for enclosed spaces is Indoor Air Quality (IAQ). An unintended consequence of creating more energy efficient buildings by recycling air and improving seals separating the inside and outside environments is that microbial contaminants, particulates, and gases like carbon monoxide and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) cannot easily exit indoor spaces. As such, they build up over time, degrading the air quality of the room, floor and building. This has
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led to conditions like Sick Building Syndrome, whereby people get acute health conditions with the only commonality being the building they inhabit or work in. However, a 1986 study by NASA and a 2016 experiment presented by scientist Vadoud Niri, Ph.D. at the 252nd National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society provide an environmental solution. Both experiments report that
certain plants, like Boston fern, dracaena, bromeliad, English ivy, and peace lily, among others, are extremely effective at cleaning the air of VOCs, particulates and other harmful gases. This occurs through multiple processes—photosynthesis, the “breathing” of the leaves of the plants, and absorption via the dirt itself. In fact, as Niri stated at the ACS conference, “...the bromeliad plant was very good at removing 6 out of 8 VOCs—it was able to take up
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more than 80 percent of each of those compounds—over the twelvehour sampling period.” Having discovered the vein through which I could enact a “net positive” impact, I began brainstorming various ideas around indoor plants with classmates. Relatively quickly, a play on the “family tree” presented itself. The dovetailing of a genealogical tree with indoor plants and plant care led to another round of sketches, seen below. The two sketches on the right depict the first ideas for Family Trees. The idea is that our customers, typically Alzheimer’s patients’ caregivers, would buy a plant architecture kit. Inside, they would get a scaffolding, hardware to mount the scaffold, pots and plant seeds, where the seeds are for IAQ-improving plants. Caregivers could then adorn the pots with pictures of family mem-
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bers, such that, when attached to the scaffolding, the patient’s family tree is visually represented. Before I got into building prototypes, however, I wanted to illustrate both how Family Trees would fit into my existing systems map, seen on the pgs. 130-131. Family Trees pulls on the “Treatment Lever” of my systems map, utilizing inputs from the “Capture” part of the Memory System to advocate a new way for engaging Alzheimer’s patient’s memories and reminding them who their family relations are. Another tool I used was a “Theory of Change” map (see pgs. 132-133), which maps out both the current state of Alzheimer’s treatment and hypothesizes how Family Trees would change that system, both emotionally and environmentally. Under “Current State”, we see that plants and memory are currently separated. However, with the injection of Family Trees into both care homes and personal homes, we
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see that not only would Alzheimer’s patients be more engaged, but the actual, physical environment of the room/home is cleaned by the associated IAQ-cleaning plants. We make several assumptions when considering how Family Trees would change this system. Foremost among these is that the environmental “cost” of creating Family Trees is less than the good it will provide, that people will use the air cleaning plants included in the kit rather than their own, and that enough modules will be installed to effect air quality changes in rooms and homes.
carbon dioxide, chemicals, bioaerosols, temperature and humidity as inputs. These values would also be compared to the amount of airborne toxins and VOCs generated by the manufacturing process to determine whether Family Trees is truly “net positive”.
Key metrics, or key performance indicators (KPIs), that could be studied to determine the efficacy of Family Trees can be split into environmental and emotional components. Environmental KPIs would be a calculated measure of Indoor Air Quality, which involves a complex equations that takes measurements of the levels of carbon monoxide,
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THEORY OF CHANGE
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Emotional KPIs would be much more subjective, as it would primarily consist of the level of recall and emotional state of the patient as determined by the caregiver. Having utilized these tools to conceptually prove both the medical and sustainable impacts of Family Trees, I created a first prototype seen below. Here we can see the pots, arranged in the genealogical tree format,
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mounted to a wall. However, when assessing this design against the four previously mentioned ecodesign strategies, it was clear that Version 1 needed several revisions. In order to make Family Trees have lower impact, I wanted to use recycled materials that could themselves be recycled. To increase material efficiency, I strove to lower the variability and complexity of the parts. Lastly, in order to increase
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supply chain transparency and ethical supply networks, we would seek certification from the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). These considerations went into the re-design of Family Trees, seen here. The new design is a system of modular plant holders that can connect via rods to represent the family tree. Each holder has four slots, meaning the tree can extend in any direction. Family Trees now sits horizontally on a table, and rather than decorating pots with family members photos, the kit comes with plant stakes that can be labeled with pictures of family members as well as more detailed information on their relation to the patient. The reason for transitioning from a vertically oriented plant architecture to a horizontal one was to reduce the impact of having (most likely) metallic hardware anchoring the scaffold to the wall and the pots to the scaffold.
Further, though the prototype rods were made of wood, I envision them as being made from injection molded plastic similar to the holders themselves. This increases material efficiency through the reduction of parts and part complexity while making uniform the material the components are made from. Lastly, the stakes are made from recycled paper with FSC approval, meaning that the trees were harvested sustainably. Despite these improvements, a process flow map shows that there are still areas where this design can be improved. Starting with a bill of materials (BOM) that breaks down the design into constituents, we can diagram the steps Family Trees goes through to get created. In doing so, there are still several ecological “hot spots� that need attending to. These include transportation as well as the harvesting and manufacturing of the plastic via injection molding. Another iteration of Family Trees could be made from renewable, natural materials like bamboo to become even more environmentally friendly.
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Family Trees Bill of Materials
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VIII. Thesis as —
Thesis as —
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Introduction Design work was created via several lenses titled “thesis as”. This include the thesis as service, thesis as experience, thesis as screen, and thesis as product.
Thesis as —
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VIII—i Thesis as Experience
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EXPERIENCE DESIGN: AN OVERVIEW
Within the context of this work, experience design is defined as an orchestrated event meant to engage all of a participant’s five senses. Additionally, it is meant to convey a message and leave “users” with a specific feeling. Simultaneously, it serves as one of the most effective way of discovering and testing hypotheses learned throughout the thesis process. For an experience to be truly immersive and memorable for participants, every aspect of it must be orchestrated and considered. These include the four “Ps”—people, product, processes and places. The Four P’s Consider, for example, a pre-fixe meal at a luxury establishment like Eleven Madison Park. Widely considered one of the best restaurants in the world, one of the reasons for its praise is the fact that every aspect of the meal is considered. With the people, besides the participants, you have a highly coor-
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dinated staff of managers, chefs, sommeliers, and waiters, each the best in their craft to make sure your needs are catered to. For example, a famous anecdote from Eleven Madison Park tells the story of how a waiter, overhearing that his table had never had an authentic slice of New York pizza, went out and bought them four slices as a new course addition to their dinner. In terms of products, you have the tableware, dish-specific plating, tables, chairs, uniforms and decorative elements that make up the décor and interactive elements of the restaurant. For example, one of the dishes at Eleven Madison Park is best enjoyed while listening to music, so the restaurant provides iPods for their diners during that course.
viding a dining experience that is rarely matched anywhere else. Lastly, you have the place. The restaurant itself is near Madison Square Park in a beautiful part of New York, while the inside is elegantly and modernly furnished to evoke the luxury of the experience. This works in conjunction with the lighting, and the aforementioned products and people to develop an immersive dining environment. These four “Ps” must be choreographed together to provide participants with a one-of-a-time experience that stays with them long after they’ve left the event. The choreographer of these disparate categories is the experience designer.
Processes include the aforementioned coordination of the wait staff and the way courses are timed relative to one another. Additionally, you have some of the best chefs in the world preparing some of the most unique dishes around, pro-
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AN EXPERIENCE AROUND OBJECTS, PLACES, TIME AND MEMORY
Given the brief to design a one-day experience, the immediate question as it relates to my thesis work surrounded how to compress or evoke the feelings of a shared history over the time span of only a few hours. Many of the topics and designs discussed in this book describe revealing and becoming aware of a shared history, which happens over the course of days to decades, not only a few hours. Further, coordinating an experience that hits on that feeling over a half-day posed an extreme challenge. Thus, rather than focus on the place aspect of my thesis, I decided to focus on the objects. Every person has objects that they are hesitant to throw away because the experiences and narratives associated with them give them value beyond their price tag. Over generations, we call these objects heirlooms and mementos that get passed down through time, ranging from old photo albums to more expensive items like pocket watches and engagement rings.
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There are several examples of experiences that explore this relationship between humans, objects, places and memory. Research and Inspiration Significant Objects Project The Significant Objects project was an anthropological experiment conducted by Rob Walker and Joshua Glenn that displayed how narrative can increase the subjective value of any object. Enlisting the help of over 200 authors, Walker, Glenn and the team purchased thrift store objects for an average of $1.25 per product. Next, the authors wrote fictional short stories about each of the objects and put them up for sale on eBay, with a starting bid of the $1.25 purchase price. The results were immediate. Almost every object sold for more than its initial price, for a total of $8000. For example, a rubber band gun, auctioned starting at $1.50, sold for
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$63.50 because of the story author Benjamin Percy constructed around it. In fact, as Walker himself said in an interview on the Memory Motel podcast, some of the authors actually began bidding on their own objects, as the act of writing the narrative for them connected them deeply with their product. Walker and Glenn had to institute rules that forbid the authors from bidding on their own objects. Museum of Broken Relationships Discussed on the same episode of the Memory Motel Podcast as Rob Walker’s Significant Objects project, the Museum of Broken Relationships in Los Angeles once again displays the way we imbue objects with narratives, and thus increase their power and value in our lives. Originating in Croatia, the Museum of Broken Relationships explores love and relationships through the lens of objects—the stories associated with them, how we relate to
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them, the emotions they evoke in us, and so on.
ed itself to have the object survive in a new setting.
Some objects tell the desolate story of people getting left at the altar, while others tell the amusing narrative of a first-date gone wrong. What is most fascinating about the Museum, though, is that before sending these objects to Los Angeles, people held onto these products. The power given to them by their narratives made it so that many people could not throw them out, until another opportunity present-
Flat Stanley Project Based on the cartoon character Flat Stanley, the Flat Stanley project started as a way to improve the reading and writing skills of children. Told the story of Flat Stanley—where the titular character gets flattened by a bulletin board and is then put into an envelope and mailed to his friend in California—students are given their
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own Flat Stanley to create a story around. They narrate Stanley’s routine, where he lives, and what he likes and dislikes, creating a comprehensive narrative around what his life is like where the child lives.
once again proves the power that unique and diverse narratives have in giving seemingly meaningless objects—in this case, a cutout piece of paper—emotional significance and resonance.
Stanley is then put into an envelope and mailed to friends or family in other states and countries, who then spend a week with Stanley. They write about Stanley’s routine in his new location, taking photos of Stanley at various landmarks and locations to give context to his adventures.
A similar viral sensation to Flat Stanley is found in the form of the Travelling Gnome.
The project went viral, with hundreds of Flat Stanley dolls appearing around the world in London, Paris, Egypt at landmarks like Big Ben, the Eiffel Tower and the Sphinx. Celebrities like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Clint Eastwood, Jay Leno and even President Barack Obama got involved, posting photos of Stanley at progressively more unique locations. Though it started as a school assignment, the Flat Stanley project
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Souvenirs One cannot explore the concepts of products and sentimental attachment without thinking of souvenirs. Also known as keepsakes or mementos, souvenirs are typically purchased during or at the end of a trip as an object of remembrance or gift for either the travelers or close friend/family member, respectively. There are few better tangible, ubiquitous representations of the power of memory and emotion in a singular object than in the practice of souvenir purchasing. In fact, countries attribute significant parts of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to the souvenir portion of the tourism industry. In the US alone,
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estimates place the revenue generated by the souvenir and novelty gift industry at $19 billion. However, I posit that these souvenirs are actually one dimensional representations of the value of a trip. By purchasing mementos at the end of a trip, you are attaching emotional value based on events that have already occurred. I believe it would be much more powerful to have these products as companions on your journey, that travel with you and absorb the memories and
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activities you experience. Rather than being a passive reminder of a beloved trip, these souvenirs would become active members of your travels, imbuing them with much more sentimental and emotional value. In order to accomplish this, I created the Keepsake Travel Agency.
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KEEPSAKE TRAVEL AGENCY
The Keepsake Travel Agency combines the typologies of a travel agency with a scavenger hunt. The premise was simple—teams were given the same thrift store object, but different itineraries. In keeping with the travel agency formula, guests paid the travel agent (me) for their object and itinerary. Interviewed beforehand on their feelings towards the object, the teams would then set off to explore different parts of the city with their object in tow. In this version of the experience, the object was a small toy truck and the two locations the different teams explored were from the Flatiron District to Harlem and the Flatiron District to the Financial District. The directives in their travel brochure instructed them to visit landmarks as well as unique locations, like the Battery Park Sphere or Rao’s famous restaurant in Harlem. At each stop, the team would have to take a photo of the object at the location, with encouragement to be creative.
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In addition to the main photo locations outlined in their brochure, optional photos were suggested as well with more unique, “day in the life” prompts. These included taking a photo “of your object enjoying a beverage” or “in New York City transportation.” As their journey progressed, these photos would be posted to social media with the hashtag #keepsaketravel.
ject, there is rich ground for discussion and exploration around how different narratives were created.
After a half-day of traveling and documenting around New York, the teams returned to the start of their adventure. The travelers were given the option to either get their money back or keep the object, in essence determining whether their emotional attachment to the object outweighed the clearly more expensive monetary cost. No matter what option was selected, each group was then interviewed about how their relationship to the object changed over the course of their journeys and experiences. Similarly, by having the same ob-
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Eric and Jhoanna Eric and Jhoanna are a married couple in their early 30s. They purchased their toy truck and an itinerary that took them from the Flatiron Building to Battery Park for $5 on a cold, rainy Saturday afternoon. Despite the inclement weather, the couple was immediately engrossed in the experience. They immediately named their truck Lightning McKing (as a play off Lightning McQueen from the popular Pixar movies Cars). Further, they developed a theme to their photos of Lightning McKing, often creating Boomerangs (short video clips that play back-and-forth) of the truck driving up and around the sides of buildings and statues. Additionally, they completed all the optional photos, taking pictures of Lightning McKing drinking from a bottle of water, and riding the map on an actual subway car. It is interesting to note that, as both Eric and Jhoanna live near New York City, they had already visited a few of the sights they were tasked with taking photos at. This presented a unique learning opportunity, as the memories made at that place would have to be entirely driven by the object since the place itself was familiar to them. At the conclusion of the experience, we all reconvened at Jhoanna’s office building in downtown Manhattan, where they were presented the five dollar bill they had handed over at the start of their travels. When given the option to “get a refund” or keep the object, the couple kept the object. In their feedback cards, they noted that “the memories made with the object make it an excellent souvenir”, even though, as stated earlier, the places they visited were very familiar to them. In having the object, though they were well acquainted with locations like the World Trade Center, it made them see it in a new light and have a unique experience there. Additionally, Jhoanna noted, “having time to walk between each location… [gave] the participants time to reflect”. The latter comment was particularly interesting, as the time traveling to each destination actually allowed for conversation or downtime in which to create smaller, more intimate moments that the souvenir becomes a part of. It is worth noting that, for the purposes of documentation, I accompanied Eric and Jhoanna on their trip. This had one benefit and one drawback in the sense that, though my presence added to their memories, it may have also had the unintended consequence of altering their timetable and types of photographs since they were being observed.
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Alex
Alex is an avid biker and computer programmer in his early 30s. For this iteration of the experience, I wanted to remove myself from the equation, so that Alex would not feel self-conscious or rushed in composing his photographs. Alex paid $20 for his truck and travel plan, which would take him from the Flatiron District all the way up to Harlem, with stops along the way at Central Park and the Met Museum. Alex strapped a GoPro camera to his bike helmet and set off. Three-and-a-half hours and 26 miles later, Alex returned with a host of photos, video and stories. Though I had planned the trip so that Alex would simply have to travel up 5th Avenue from the Flatiron Building to the Met, Alex instead got lost. He rode up 7th Avenue, made a wrong turn, and ended up biking through Central Park for an extra seven miles. As he biked through Harlem, he got lost several times, which allowed him to meet new people as he asked for directions. At the Columbia University fountain, Alex and his truck got to meet a dog and take photos together. Throughout his trip, Alex made both planned memories in the form of the photo prompts, but unique, transient ones as well. At the end of the journey, Alex was similarly asked whether he wanted a refund or to keep his object. Surprisingly, he chose a third option—not wanting a refund, but not keeping the object either. He noted that he thoroughly enjoyed his experience, more than he initially thought he would. In addition, he reflected that having the planned itinerary and the object as a focal point helped him create more lasting memories, as he took his time to absorb his surroundings and create a uniquely composed photograph of the truck at each location or activity. He also noted that having the truck allowed him to “channel his inner child”, which made the experience that much more fun and memorable. However, as part of a personal decision to remove the “stuff” from his life, he did not want to keep the truck. Rather, by having the memories of the experience, and more importantly, the extensive photo documentation, he felt more than satisfied that he had enough to fondly recall the experience. Instead, Alex noted that he wanted me to keep the money for the overall experience, and not just the object itself. This sentiment seemed to be reflected on social media as well, since when Alex posted about his journey on Facebook, many people commented on how fun a trip like that would be.
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LEARNINGS
Ultimately, I believe the experience was quite successful, both in expected and unexpected ways. Both sets of participants had a memorable, meaningful tourist experience with their object. However, what was interesting was that it was not necessarily the memories associated with the object that added to their tourism enjoyment. Though the truck was a nice memento to remind them of their travels, the rules of taking a photo at each landmark and with each optional prompt added a lot of intention and awareness to the trip. In other words, carrying the truck and having it be a focal point of the photographs made the participants more observant of their surroundings, and made each photograph and experience more memorable. Thus, the overall experience of having the object on the tour, and not just keeping the object itself, made for a journey that people wanted to repeat with different products and itineraries. Given the mixed results, I would have liked to run the experience more than two times, however, this was an issue given timing and scheduling conflicts.
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VIII—ii Thesis as Service
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SERVICE DESIGN: PRINCIPLES
Service Design and Reframing What does it mean to distill the topics of nostalgia, the past, human connection and a shared history in the context of service design? In offerings like “Memory Makers” and “Prologue”, I began answering these questions, however, the design sprint nature of the explorations did not leave a lot of room for reflection, exposition, or evolution. How do we begin to take these abstract, transient, invisible notions and tangibilize them into an offering that provides novel value and quality to our end users? The answer, as it turns out, is not to go to a solution. Instead, it is to reframe the problem in order to ask the right question. This is a founding principle of service design.
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The Slow Elevator Problem Paraphrased below is the quintessential example of this service design tenet, the “Slow Elevator Problem”, as Thomas Weddell-Wedellsborg explains in his “Harvard Business Review” article, “Are You Solving the Right Problems?”: There is only a single elevator in an apartment building serving 10 floors. The elevator itself is rather old—it moves slowly, and doesn’t have modern amenities like a digital display to tell you what floor you are on and how fast you are moving. The problem with this elevator presents itself in stark relief when tenants begin returning home, all around the same time, after work. Those that are unfortunate enough to get stuck in the lobby have to wait 5, sometimes 10 minutes for the elevator to get back down to them so that they can return to their apartments.
They are beginning to complain, threatening to break their leases, and so the building manager comes to you to find an answer to the problem: “The elevator is too slow.” Now, there are several obvious answers to this issue: (1) Get a newer elevator; (2) Get a better, stronger elevator motor, or (3) improve the algorithm controlling how and where the elevator moves and stops. However, these solutions are premature. What reframing espouses is to look deeper at what is really going on, and see if the problem statement proposed is the best problem to solve. So, while on the surface, “the elevator is too slow” may seem like the obvious problem, when we look deeper through techniques like the Five Why’s (a problem stating technique where you keep asking “why” until you get to the root of a problem), we can reframe the problem to “People think the wait is annoying”. Now, when we start proposing solutions to “The wait is annoying”, we get solutions like: (1) Play music, (2) Offer free snacks, (3)
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Put hand sanitizer stations in, and, a solution that was actually used by apartment building managers, (4) Put up mirrors. It turns out, people love looking at themselves so much both in the lobby and in the actual elevators, the time flies by. Now, installing a new elevator would have worked just fine, however, it can be universally agreed that putting up mirrors is a much simpler, more cost-effective solution. Reframing My Thesis The first step in developing my thesis as a service came in turning the reframing lens inward. I was tasked with questioning, deep down, what the problem statement of my thesis topic was. What was I trying to solve? What motivated me to dedicate a year of my life to this topic? After going through my prior work, motivations, and using elements of Information Architecture—namely
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the lexicon I developed detailing the most common words of my thesis—I began searching for common patterns and sentiments throughout the work. Through my self-reflective research, I was able to distill my insights and solutions into three distinct themes. Theme One First, as in the motivation behind the “prologue” mobile app, I posit that one of the reasons we are unaware of this history we all share is because as our world has gotten more and more connected, the pace of living in that world has increased. With information and communication accessible at the tap of a finger, the world has become a much “faster” place to live in. This is apparent in the fact that the once-typical 9-5 job is becoming more and more rare. People have different phones separating their work lives and personal lives. In certain sectors, not being available 24 hours a day is seen as a
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weakness. We can hardly sit at the dinner table, or carry a conversation, without looking down to scroll through news feeds, check e-mail or send text messages. In a world moving at the speed of mobile information, it is not surprising that our attention to, and appreciation of, detail and history has slowly disappeared. Captured in a reframed problem statement, I wrote this out as: (1) Our fast-paced world makes it difficult to appreciate the details of things. Theme Two My second thesis theme and problem statement was derived from my observation that, living in New York, we are surrounded by a history we ignore. The Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, Wall Street, or really any street the average New York citizen walks on is steeped in history. The Revolutionary War was fought on this island, horse-and-carriages used to litter the very streets cabs and cars
fly through. The facades of buildings we walk by could be decades, if not centuries, old. Yet, we hardly think or notice this. Part of that is the aforementioned fast-paced world syndrome I described earlier, yet another reason is simple human nature—we do not often notice that which we always interact with or that becomes familiar. Put another way: (2) People tend to ignore what they become used to. Theme Three The last theme originated from group discussions and feedback on the various design interventions I presented. In a similar vein to my prior discussion on the fast-paced world we live in, another facet of culture in this millennium is around consumption, the “next new thing�, and being in the know. Almost every coveted product, ranging from cars to smart phones have yearly models that entice consumers to abandon their old products in favor of the refined, revised
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version. On a social scale, being in the know, or on the opposite end, the aforementioned FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) has made it so that people are either always focused on documenting the moment they are in or looking for the next experience they can go to for enjoyment or social capital. In both the consumerist and social frameworks, then, there is hardly time to think of, appreciate, or study the past (outside of those professionals that have dedicated their lives to those studies). I distilled this new social construct into my third and final reframing: (3) Our culture prioritizes the present and future instead of the past. I presented these three teams to classmates and my instructor, who stress-tested and challenged each of the problem statements for their validity as a true problem statement that a service could help solve.
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In doing so, I was able to really strip away the fat and flowery language of the various problem statements until I arrived at one clear, concise, simple statement similar to “The wait is annoying�. Via another round of self-reflection, coupled with instructor and colleague feedback, I was able to discard statement (1). Though I firmly believe the world we live in is too fast-paced, almost to the extent of being unhealthy, as it pertains to my thesis, it was not the crux of my argument. Statement (2) offered more thought and revision around the notions of novelty and the attention economy, where I began exploring how novelty has surpassed history in importance while also pondering how attention, and the ability to capture attention, will be one of the defining characteristics of successful companies in the future. Again, this is something I believe in deeply, however, in the context of my thesis work, it was slightly too practical. In other words, it was proposing
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Sidebar: Josh and I’s Shared History
how products or services could be successful, rather than stating a problem that needed to be solved. Statement (3) provided the richest ground for exploration and discussion, and ultimately was the basis for my final, reframed problem statement. In attempting to explain this problem statement, and my thesis in general, I relied on an anecdote to illustrate what I find so compelling about these intersections we have in space and time. In attempting to explain this problem statement, and my thesis in general, I relied on an anecdote to illustrate what I find so compelling about these intersections we have in space and time (see sidebar). In telling this anecdote, it became clear to me that I was not necessarily advocating a problem that needed to be solved. Rather, I was bringing to light a missed opportunity for connection. Had Josh and I never shared our histories,
My path through life has taken many turns. I left home at 13, going to a boarding school of only 400 students in the middle-of-nowhere (a.k.a. Mercersburg Academy in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania). I spent four years of my life on that campus, eating meals in the same dining hall, served by the same dining staff that I became quite familiar with. My road after Mercersburg took me to California for college, where I majored in Engineering, and then Durham, North Carolina, where I got a Masters in Biomedical Engineering at Duke University. Pivoting towards applied science, I moved back to New Jersey to work for my father in package design and project management before deciding that my logical next step would be to return to school one last time to get a Masters degree in Product Design here at SVA. In my first month, I befriended another student named Josh. Josh had taken his own path to New York, having grown up in Florida before going to UPenn. After college, he worked in Chicago as an architect for a few years before moving west to Colorado to start his own business for a time before landing at SVA. While sharing stories about our lives, the topic of high school came up. I casually mentioned that I went to “this tiny school in the middle-of-nowhere, Pennsylvania”. Oddly (to me), Josh asked me for the name of the school, and I told him it was Mercersburg. Shocked, he said that he had dated a girl whose father was the head of the dining staff at Mercersburg, and that he had visited the campus at the same time I was there. Despite our completely different paths in life, Josh and I had intersected in space on that campus (though not in time, as I was not on campus during his visit). Needless to say, I was stunned and filled with a sense of awe—that serendipitous “small world” feeling. Josh and I are close friends, and though I do think we would have been close regardless, I posit that discovering that connection established a common thread between us that would not have existed otherwise.
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we would not have discovered our shared history at that tiny dot in Pennsylvania called Mercersburg. In fact, it was from this entire problem statement reframing exercise that one of the most important terms in my thesis lexicon—shared history—originates from.
levels of technological engagement. These ranged from the small and simple, such as a “ledger of hotel room occupants” or “time capsule subscription service” to the large and technological, like an “Ancestry.com of apartments” and “VR travels to other people’s pasts”.
With this anecdote driving my final reframing exercise, I finally settled on a “problem” statement of: We are unaware of the history we all share through places in time. The solution I posit for this problem/missed opportunity, then, is: By creating and experiencing a shared history, we create opportunities to more deeply connect with one another. Several solutions were brainstormed for solving this problem, each at different scales and different
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Ultimately, I broke down my problem statement into its constituent parts to determine what service I wanted to develop. I wanted to provide a framework for people to “create” AND “experience” a “shared history”. While searching for inspiration, I was drawn to Christian Carollo’s Past Present Project. A photographer who sought to connect with his recently deceased grandfather, Carollo randomly selected a box of his grandfather’s photographic slides. The photos detailed his grandfather’s journeys across America, from locations like Big Sur in California to the famous Café Du Monde in New Orleans, Louisiana. Working together with his grandmother, he was able to roughly date and locate several more albums of photographs. He traveled to each location and took a photo of the older picture from the same spot where his grandfather once stood. Beyond being a fascinating portrayal of how life in America has changed cultur-
ally, architecturally and technologically, the project served as Carollo’s memorial to his grandfather. Though unable to speak with Carollo directly, I would argue that the project itself more deeply connected Carollo with his grandfather than he originally anticipated. As Carollo himself states on his Past Present Project website, “A project that began by chance, now often determines where my next journey will take me.” In a similar yet perhaps more morbid vein, I found inspiration in photographer Paul Seawright’s project, “Sectarian Murder”. Seawright grew up in Belfast during the 1970s, during a time of great political upheaval and violence. Many murders were carried out at different roads, parks, and farms around where he grew up. Seawright found the police reports describing the scenes of these murders and revisited them three decades later. Taking a present-day photo, he juxtaposed it with the
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Christian Carollo, “Past Present Project”
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Paul Seawright, “Sectarian Murder”
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crime report, presenting a compelling story of how places can store memories, yet we may remain oblivious to them. Inspired by this story, I began dreaming of a travel service that would allow users to recreate the exact journeys of loved ones who had passed away. As the idea percolated, I began having notions of how to expand the service to families that were still alive as well as explorers with a deep passion of history. From these ruminations, Pilgrimage was born.
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PILGRIMAGE: AN ADVENTURE TRAVEL SERVICE Pilgrimage is an experiential travel service that allows people to recreate and reserve historical trips.
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Utilizing expertise in trip planning, chronological dating and location finding, Pilgrimage offers three travel packages entitled Showcase, Nostalgia and Catharsis.
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SHOWCASE PACKAGE
The Showcase package is by far the most practical and straightforward of the options—it allows users to choose a famous explorer whose path they want to follow. Such explorers and trips include Marco Polo’s journey through Asia, Columbus’ discovery of the New World, Amelia Earhart’s flight across the globe (without disappearing at the end), or Lewis and Clark’s Expedition across the western United States, to name a few. In addition to providing an itinerary and schedule for the journey, Pilgrimage also book accommodations such as vehicle rentals, lodging and food, and gives users the ability to choose where to start and end their journey. In building out a use case, we look at the story of Taylor and Jasmine, a mid-20s couple with enough disposable income that they can take time off work to engage in one of their passions—unique travel experiences.
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Visiting the Pilgrimage website, they decide to take on the “Showcase” package, and while looking at the various offerings available, choose to remain in the United States. They decide to visit the sights that the legendary explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark experienced on the first-ever journey to explorer the western United States. In addition to those sights and sounds, Taylor and Jasmine are excited by the prospect of walking through the same forests, sailing on the same rivers, and witnessing the same flora and fauna that the Corps of Discovery did over 200 years ago. Visiting the page dedicated to Lewis and Clark’s journey, they see both a map as well as a timeline of the expedition, which allows them to choose when and where to start and end their trip. They decide to go for the whole ride, from Camp DuBois, Illinois to Fort Clapstop, Oregon.
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Taylor and Jasmine’s journey begins where the expeditions did—on the shores of the Missouri River in Camp DuBois, Illinois. They depart at 4:00PM-—the exact time Lewis and Clark are reported to have set out themselves. The couple travels on their boat to the city of St. Charles, Missouri, which Lewis and Clark called their last “civilized” stop before venturing into the unknown Louisiana Territory on their expedition. At Kaw Point, KS, the couple is able to park their boat where the Kansas River drains into the Missouri River basin. From their vantage point, they can see the skyline of what is now Kansas City—which didn’t exist 200 years ago. Taylor and Jasmine disembark the boat to explore Council Bluffs, Iowa. It was at this historic sight that Lewis and Clark held the first council meeting between the United States and the Oto and Missouri Tribes. The couple stops and explores Fort Mandan. It was at this (now replica) fort spot that Lewis and Clark and the rest of the expedition constructed a fort across the river from some native tribes to wait out the winter of 1804. Traveling cautiously by boat, Taylor and Jasmine are taken to the five Great Falls of the Missouri River in Montana—which Lewis called the “grandest sight of the expedition”. They exit their boats to camp and travel on land for a time. After camping on land for a time, the couple returns to their boat and travels through the Three Forks, where three rivers meet to form the Missouri River. As they journey, they eventually catch sight of Beaverhead Rock formation. Back on land, the couple camps at Traveler’s Rest aka Lolo, Montana. This is the only spot that has shown archaeologically that Lewis and Clark camped here. This spot remains largely unchanged since the pair passed through. Entering the final leg of their journey, Taylor and Jasmine fly down the Columbia River, racing towards the Pacific Ocean. Along the way, they see Oregon’s Mount Hood in the distance signaling the near end of their journey as it did for Lewis and Clark. At the end of their trip, the couple rests at Fort Clapstop—a replica lodging of the one built by the Corps of Discovery to rest during the winter of 1805, having completed their courageous and historic journey. Feeling more connected to history than ever, the couple rest a few nights before heading back east to New York. Fortunately, they can fly—a luxury that Lewis and Clark lacked when they began their trip home in March 1805.
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NOSTALGIA PACKAGE
When I was around 13 years old, I went on a large family trip through the Southwest United States. Being younger and less interested in some of the sights we saw back then, I remain hazy on many of the details of the trip. I have flashes of memories riding around in a minivan, hot air ballooning and stopping at places like the Grand Canyon, the Four Corners and a monument called the Mexican Hat, but I know there was so much more to the trip than that. Luckily, my mother is a meticulous record keeper, so I know she has the receipts of many of the places we stayed, and even some of the restaurants we dined at. Further, I know that my aunts, uncles, and cousins on the trip have albums full of photos taken at various locations throughout the journey along with their own recollections of our trip. Lastly, I know there are videos to go along with those photos of the family at various rest stops and restaurants. To this day, when the entire family gets together for holidays, we still
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talk about that trip and recall how it was one of the best trips we had ever taken as a family. We all grew closer on the trip, and those shared memories never fail to make us feel close. Since then, now almost 17 years later, much has changed. Family members have gotten married, have kids, and some have sadly passed away. However, I often ask the question of what it would be like to create that Southwest trip, or any other family trip we all took when we were younger. In Pilgrimage’s Nostalgia Plan, users can enter details about an old family trip they would like to retake and Pilgrimage will book the whole experience. If they can’t remember all the details themselves, they can invite those family and friends via Pilgrimage to co-recreate the details of the trip. In doing so, Pilgrimage offers users a new way to reconnect with their past and with their families through the power of history.
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CATHARSIS PACKAGE
Lastly, we have the Catharsis plan. As previously mentioned when discussing the inspiration for Pilgrimage, I was struck by Christian Carollo’s story of traveling to places where his grandfather had journeyed and taken photos and taking a picture of that photo in the same location in the present day. I have my own family members who have passed away, for example, my cousin Sagarika whose memorial plaque photograph opens this book. I know that, while she was in college, she lived abroad in Italy. From the stories I hear from my sister and my aunt (Sagarika’s mother), she fell in love with the country. More so, she fell in love with the city of Sienna to the extent that, after she passed away, my family spread some of her ashes there. In addition, my father told me a story of how he found a church on a cliffside in Sienna, with a front door surrounded by a garden of stones. He told me how, after spreading her ashes, he wrote Sagarika’s name on one of those rocks and placed in back amongst the collection.
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I have often wondered what it would be like to take that same trip through Italy that Sagarika did, culminating in a trip to Sienna, where I would try to find that church and those rocks that my father described to me.
time, experiencing their own unique, emotional and memorable journey.
I posit that this is a familiar sentiment for many people, and with the Catharsis Plan of Pilgrimage, I am offering a product that can serve those people. Through Catharsis, users can more deeply connect with a loved one who has passed, be it friend or family. By sending in journals, photographs and other mementos, Pilgrimage will research and recreate the journey a loved one took. Similar to the way Christian Carollo did with his grandmother, this can be done through location-finding algorithms, interviews and other techniques that will allow Pilgrimage to recreate the place and time of a loved one’s travels. In allowing users to retrace their loved one’s footsteps, they will more deeply connect with that person through
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THE BUSINESS CASE
There is a strong business case for “Pilgrimage”. According to “The Rise of Experiential Travel”, a 2014 travel report by Skift and PEAK, millennials in particular “want to travel on a deeper emotional and more personal level”. Similarly, they are seeking “inspiration, personalization and a path towards self-discovery”. Financially, there are over 200 million millennial tourists accounting for $180 billion in annual revenue. Of these, 54% want to experience the aforementioned deeper, adventure experiences, with the adventure travel market itself growing by 65% annually. Pilgrimage fits right into this growing market. Further, because of it’s unique offerings, Pilgrimage fills a white space within the adventure travel market in terms of scale across countries and personalization of itinerary.
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Conclusion Through partnerships with companies and organizations like Patagonia, North Face and the Explorers Club—all entities that agree with Pilgrimage’s mission via both their business offerings, cultures, and value—I believe Pilgrimage is a viable service. Journeys are important. They can shape who we are, what we value, and our relationships to one another. However, I believe the power of journey lies beyond the in-the-moment individual or even group experience. We leave behind memories and footsteps for others to follow. These journeys remain in time—I will have always visited the Sistine Chapel in Rome, attended a bullfight in Barcelona, and the Demilitarized Zone that straddles North and South Korea. Though I am not there any longer, my journey there remains. Though those memories may fade, that journey and the emotions it elicits are still very real. The same can be said of any person,
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from legends like Magellan and Sacagawea to my cousin who passed away far too soon. In connecting with and experiencing these journeys for ourselves; whether of famous explorers, family members or a passed loved one, we gain deeper appreciation and meaning from our travels. We can experience a new type of journey that, until Pilgrimage, had very
large barriers-to-entry in terms of logistics, time and expertise. In planning a trip with Pilgrimage, and in knowing that you are following in the footsteps of those who have come before, users will be afforded a trip beyond the present day. They will experience a holistic, emotional journey that crosses time and space.
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Following Footsteps
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A Note As part of the digital design lens of the thesis process, we are encouraged to develop an interaction—not necessarily an app—that requires the use of screens (the course itself is called “Designing for Multiple Screens”). Despite the temptation to create an entirely new digital interaction inspired by my thesis work, I felt drawn back towards “Prologue”, as I feel it is one of the truest forms of my thesis argument both tangibly and emotionally. However, knowing that I wanted to make “Prologue” a more grounded offering that did not rely on leaps in blockchain technology, I saw an opportunity to develop a paired product and app service that would take “Prologue” from the speculative to the immediately implementable. The following sections are split into three sections: (1) Persona Creation; (2) Thesis as Product Design; and (3) Thesis as Screen Design. The final section includes a case study tying together the paired product and app service, “prolog”.
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VIII—iii—a Persona Creation
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MOVING BACKWARDS, THEN FORWARDS
Given an entire semester to dedicate to digital interaction design, I did not want to immediately jump back to Prologue without doing the methodology of the course justice. As such, I erased Prologue from my mind in an effort to start fresh in developing a digital product that related to my thesis. The hope was that I would be able to look at my thesis with new eyes and see where unique intervention points for a screen-based artifact could be located. Digital design is simultaneously similar and different to the many research processes we conduct in creating designs. Protopersonas We began by creating personas, or as they are known in this case, protopersonas that built out the personalities of our potential users. As discussed in my “Audiences” chapter, I looked inwards to define these people. They are time “nerds”, also known as people who are aware
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and curious of their surroundings and who enjoy exploring history both personally and socially. Furthermore, they are social and outgoing, seeking connection in novel and unique ways. They most likely use social media, travel frequently, and are adventurous in trying new experiences. They are intrigued by the stories of peoples’ lives and enjoy hearing them. Lastly, they are intrigued by any place, historical or present, where people have “lived lives”, whether it’s a small village or sprawling metropolis. Tangentially, another group of people that serve as protopersonas are life-loggers and “quantified self” participants who track every aspect of their life. These behaviors are analogous to the social behaviors I described above in that life-loggers love tracking and recording every aspect of their lives, with the differential focus on personal health and monitoring. After describing these character-
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istics of my protopersonas, it was time to get even more specific and describe unique people that would be served by an “Invisible Tethers” digital product. Each individual protopersona “dossier” has four distinct categories—“WHO”, “BIO”, “NEEDS” and “SERVED BY”. In conjunction with detailing these categories, we also created simple journeys that our personas would undergo in their lives. For each journey, we had a specific interventional goal such as “make new connections”. In keeping the journey as simple as possible, and coupling it with an overarching mission statement, the idea was that it would be easier to identify repeatable intervention points that a screen-based artifact could intervene in. After creating these journeys, we began asking questions at every step of the journey to flesh out our protopersona’s personalities, motivations, pain points and needs. After developing a dearth of these questions, and looking at them side-by-side with the “NEEDS” and
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“SERVED BY� categories of the protopersona dossier, we could begin answering how a digital product or service could solve problems or provide new opportunities during their journeys. I created two distinct protopersonas, Taylor and Jasmine, and their journeys, described in the following pages:
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Taylor Taylor is a “millennial documentarian”, a 28-year old living in New York City. He is single and works in marketing, and his personal and professional interests intersect in that he is a social butterfly and consumer of “culture” via the latest music, television, movies, and so on. He is an avid user of his smartphone, which allows him to record and share the unique experiences and memories he makes in his everyday life.
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Examples of his needs and desires include new ways of social engagement, to be an early adopter of new, trendy products and services, to document everything and to have interesting stories to share as a social currency. As such, he could be served by new forms of technology that offer unique social features, a means by which to make new and interesting connections, a way to know about trendy events or gatherings,
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external signifiers and badges, or to share his memories with people in a more engaging manner than Facebook, Snapchat or Instagram currently provide. In choosing a mission statement for Taylor’s journey, I chose “building new connections and tech with unique social features”. Taylor’s everyday journey is quite basic—it details a regular nightout for him. In pink, we see the story of Taylor’s trip. He leaves his apartment and takes the subway to where his friends are. They meet at the bar, where they catch up and chat over drinks before moving on to their next pub via Uber. Taylor has a couple more drinks with his friends before returning home.
room for intervention ideas. Lastly, in blue, we have potential solutions for these questions—a service that shows where your companions on the subway are spending their night out, an app that identifies everyone in the photos you take via your contact list and sends them the pictures, and a photo archive that any friend can upload photos too, but that cannot be accessed for years.
In orange, we see questions that were posed at each journey point along the way. For example, “Why does Taylor take the subway in the first place?”, “What happens to the photos he takes?”, and “Is only Taylor taking the photos? Or are others as well?” are a few of the more robust questions that offered a lot of
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Jasmine Jasmine is a 35-year old woman from Boston, dubbed the “World Traveler�. Her job affords her with disposable income that she uses to soothe her travel bug. She goes on international trips to new locations at least twice a year, sometimes with her significant other, sometimes alone. Jasmine’s needs and wants include new adventures and new experiences, fond memories, souvenirs and
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mementos of the experience, being active, immersion into new cultures, and forms of documentation of her adventures. Given these desires, Jasmine is currently and could be served by travel blogs and agencies, her camera, ancient and modern sites to visit, gift shops, new types of documentation and social media, and itinerary skeletons that provide a structure but leave room for freedom and exploration.
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Jasmine’s journey describes one of those international trips she takes, and the interventional mission statement is around “immersion into new cultures”. In pink, as before, we have the journey itself. Jasmine boards her plane at the airport, takes her seat and converses with other passengers, lands in a new country and tours the sights, tries local bars and restaurants for an authentic experience, and documents the trip before returning home.
to sharing based on geo-location, and photo or object “dropping” to leave part of yourself behind wherever you go.
Several of the question that arose, as seen in yellow, attempted to flesh out the touring sights, “authentic” experiences, and documentation of Jasmine’s trip. These included questions like “How do they choose what sights to go to, and for what purpose are they visiting them?”, “How does she find “authentic” experiences?”, and, similar to Taylor, “What happens to the photos?”. Some potential answers for these questions included ways to know the context and ancestry of the sights being visited, finding local guides to take Jasmine around, pho-
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Overlap Despite their different personalities and journeys, some overlap can be found in Jasmine and Taylor’s needs, and well as in the interventions proposed by classmates. Many of these revolve around creating new forms of sharing and connecting with both people and places. In Taylor’s case, it’s “a photo archive that people can upload photos to but can’t be accessed for years”, and in Jasmine’s, “a means of leaving yourself behind in the places you visit”.
I felt comfortable with this choice as, this time around, I chose to move forward with “Prologue” because the methodologies of screen design had led me there, not simply because I liked the idea.
Given that “Prologue” attempts to solve the issues faced by my protopersonas—new ways of documentation, connection and immersion—and that several of the solutions posed by my classmates have elements of “Prologue” within them—a shared archive with limited access and a means of leaving one’s self behind—I made the decision to return to “Prologue” and start from scratch in building the app.
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BACK TO PROLOGUE, NOW PROLOG
We live in a paradoxically small and gigantic world, where our paths often intersect at places both home and abroad. We are often unaware of these crossings. Moreover, we also intersect via objects we interact and carry with us during our travels. For example, the dollar bills you used to pay for you coffee or tea this morning are now, most likely, in the hands of someone else going about their lives. Perhaps they’re an employee in the building next to you, but they might also be with a tourist heading to the airport to fly back to their home country of Denmark as you read this. Regardless, we all have stories that make up our lives, and the objects and places we interact with are parts of those stories. What if we could give these places and objects the capacity to remember? What if we could make these companion objects and interesting spaces living time capsules? In the lives of Taylor, Jasmine,
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and others like them, they want to experience these stories. More than that, they want to add to these living, evolving narratives. They get emotional lifts off those serendipitous “small world moments”, and this new form of connection and historical documentation presented to them. This is the value proposition of “Prologue”, now rebranded as “prolog”. However, before getting into the digital design of prolog, it is important to talk about the physical driver of the entire product/app offering— the beacon.
version of could look like today. Luckily, we have a class dedicated to product design as it relates to our thesis. However, I did not always plan on linking my product design work to my screen design work, and as such, before we get to the final product, however, I believe it is important to show the journey that this physical manifestation of my thesis took to during its development.
The Beacon In its first conceit, prolog functioned off a speculative, sticker “tag” system, whereby all a user had to do was scan a tag to get taken into the history of the place or object that it was pasted to. Given the opportunity to remake prolog, I wondered what a feasible
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INTRODUCTION
When looking for physical manifestations of space, time and history, one can find examples in various places and locations around the world. We are obsessed with leaving our mark in the world, whether its something as simple as carving our initials in a tree trunk to graffitti to more robust devices like photo albums, videos and scrapbooks. However, there is an innate quality lacking in these artifacts. They often lack context for the memories contained within. They are passive and representational—that is, they present a record of an object or place without ever speaking to the value that object or place has gained through time and human experiences/interactions. As mentioned previously in this book, one of the defining characteristics of our current culture is the endless desire to have the newest “thing”, whether that thing is a product, place or experience. Yearly computer, television, and smart-
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phone releases distance people not only from those products, but arguably all the objects in their lives. There is very little to be said for holding on to artifacts for longer than the latest fad or style keeps them relevant. I personally disagree with this cultural definition of value, and so, when asked to envision two speculative futures of the year 2075—one utopic, one dysotpic—I depicted worlds where value was determined by the narrative history and emotions associated with artifacts.
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THE H-M READER
While writing our utopias and dystopias, we were instructed to choose one future and prototype an object that would exist in that future. Trending towards the more optimistic vision of where our world could go, I decided to focus on what a product would be in the utopia of my specific thesis work. Though paraphrased below, the full story can be seen in the sidebar on the following pages. In my utopia, humanity lives in a world where currency is no longer money, but rather, the value of an object. With the fall of the Gold Standard making fabric money meaningless, humanity transitioned to the Val system, which was based on the real value of an object to a person, rather than the perceived, invisible value that modern currency attributes to artifacts. The result was a decentralized currency system based on authenticity and real meaning, free of a centralized money structure and immune to arbitrary market forces.
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The means by which this value is recognized is via a product known as the Heart/Mind (HM) Reader. As described in the story, “Based on technological advancements in biofeedback and neuroscience, the HM-reader could accurately read the sentimental, emotional, and historical value objects held to people. Attachments that coupled the heart and hippocampus (the area of the brain responsible for episodic memory and sentimentality) could read both heart rate and brain activity, transmitting them through an algorithm to produce a Val number.” The results of this new currency rippled through the world. Capitalist structures transformed, as the “newest” objects actually became the least valuable, those older, raggedy products with histories associated with them became the new wealth. Eventually, people adjusted to the new system, recognizing the ease and importance of creating their
own wealth by experiencing the world with these objects at their side, thereby adding historical and emotional value to them. Similarly, society transitioned from a consumption culture to a system based on open trade of valuable objects. This trickled up into manufacturing, where multinational corporations realized that pumping out the latest model would no longer result in large revenue. Lastly, in order to attribute “Val” to their objects, people began to explore and travel more, looking up from their technological devices to create their own wealth. I prototyped the Heart/Mind-Reader as my first tangible exploration into what physical products of my thesis could look like. The next step was creating a newspaper that further fleshed out our utopic (or dystopic) worlds that also featured a full-page advertisement that spoke to the product we created for our short stories.
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UTOPIA Anna briefly glanced at the cars flying overhead as she crossed the grassy median to her favorite fair trade coffee shop. She smiled to herself as she read the “2023” cornerstone inscription. Real cement was hard to find these days, and her engineering mind always appreciated the ingenuity it had taken for her predecessors to create such a simple yet effective material. Though it cost her more to buy coffee from this weathered establishment than the recently opened TeaBucks closer to her apartment, she had decided to treat herself after getting an end-of-year bonus for exceptional performance at Teslex Spaceworks. Entering the building, she basked in the red and orange glow coming off of the authentic brickwork inside. She always loved tracing her fingers over the decades of initials that had inscribed these walls. There was so much history to experience here, and though it meant her coffee would be more expensive, she thought it worth it. Going to the register, she ordered the most expensive item on the menu—authentic Brazilian coffee from before the Hemispheric mergers of 2055. Ringing her up, she saw the barista wince at the cost — 14Val. Anna couldn’t remember the last time she had a meal that cost that much, let alone a single cup of coffee. But, today was a celebration, so she pulled out the part of her bonus she had set-aside for today and started sliding it across the counter. The cubes came in an assortment of colors—black and white, red and white, yellow and black, and some even translucent. The dots on all the sides spoke to symbols of a previous era, when gambling was legal, ubiquitous, and much more destructive. Despite the activity they represented, however, the dice themselves conveyed many advantages. These specific dice had been used in a high-stakes craps game at one of the oldest casinos in Old Vegas (formerly Las Vegas), the Monte Carlo Resort. That alone provided them with enough Val to cover half the coffee order, but what really put them over the edge was the fact that thousands of people had gripped, shuffled, flung, and screamed in joy with these dice, each creating their own memories and stories with each roll. They were easily some of the most expensive Val items Anna had ever seen. The barista scanned the small Val tag on each dice, her eyes widening as the on-screen total reflected the immense history of the object As she was rung up, Anna saw that the dice actually came out to 15Val—slightly more than the coffee required. The barista handed Anna her change—a 1Val Metro stub dated earlier that day. Sliding the ticket into her purse, she grabbed her coffee and left. As she walked back towards her apartment building in the bustling megacity of New Cape Town, her scientific mind could not help but marvel at the ease of the transaction that just occurred. How humanity had ever not used Val as a currency was beyond her. From what she learned in school, the world used to run off of “money”, which not only was an entirely made up construct, but was different depending on what invisible border line was crossed. In addition, apparently when crossing these borders, the money was no longer viable, and had to be multiplied by some arbitrary factor to be considered valid in the new region. Furthermore, in its inception, money was backed by the Gold Standard. However, this standard was abandoned as money became further and further a tool of power and privilege. Eventually, money was no longer backed by the Gold Standard, and instead, its value was solely determined by the global population’s perception of its value. Things became so much simpler when the Val system was introduced. Ironically inspired by the fact that the meaningless paradigm of money only had value because
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society placed value on it, the Val system sought to create a currency based off of objects that had REAL value to people. Rather than use an imaginary construct like money, Val was based in reality. Each object had a small, barely visible tag tied to the Heart/Mind (HM) reader. Based on technological advancements in biofeedback and neuroscience, the HM-reader could accurately read the sentimental, emotional, and historical value objects held to people. Attachments that coupled the heart and hippocampus (the area of the brain responsible for episodic memory and sentimentality) could read both heart rate and brain activity, transmitting them through an algorithm to produce a Val number. This Val number would then be transmitted to the tag on the object, thereby adding a transactional value to it. In essence, whereas the value of money was centralized and set by a common authority, the HM-reader allowed for a decentralized currency based in authenticity. Furthermore, the Val system finally provided people with the means to produce their own wealth, free of arbitrary and discriminative market forces. It was not perfect, but the post-capitalist Val economy tremendously simplified the world, while ending many of the conflicts that had plagued it for centuries. With Val as a new, secure currency, the monetary-based capitalist structures that defined prior decades were flipped on their end. It turned out that those on the lowest end of the socioeconomic ladder, who had been homeless, shared clothes, cans, and other forms of resources now had the most valuable items, while those one-percenters—and their new cars and iPhones—suddenly found themselves in an unfamiliar location. Despite this culture shock, parity was eventually reached, as it was natural for everyone to create their own wealth via personal items of historical and emotional value. Further, by encouraging people to trade based on the Val system, society shifted from one of consumption and hoarding to one of open trading, free from the shackles of attachment to objects. People were finally free to pursue their dreams, unhindered by a lack of money. This paradigm shift greatly affected multinational corporations in fields ranging from apparel to technology. No longer faced with the need to create line extensions and pump out new models by the tens of millions, resource mining and production—and their associated environmental impacts—dipped to levels not seen for centuries. The Earth, though still harmed by the consumer-driven 20th and early-21st centuries, slowly began to heal. Similarly, people became safer, as illegal trade in guns and drugs decreased exponentially, as cash was no longer a motivating factor in the trade. Faced with a now universally recognized and accepted economic standard, as people began to barter and trade with one another openly. Similarly, the individual was encouraged to look up from their “smart” devices and experience in the world, motivated by the prospect of increasing the Val of their items. This led to the Hemispheric mergers of 2055, where the countries that comprised the Eastern and Western halves of the Earth respectively eliminated borders to encourage this Val-increasing exploration and experiences. Free from the notions of ownership, materialism and consumption, the Val-based economy ushered in a new era of peace and prosperity. It turned out that looking back and truly appreciating the experiences we all share as humans shifted the world out of the slow, downward spiral that had consumed it for 150 years.
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THE NEWSPAPER
The newspaper, “The New Cape Town Tribune”, explains several of the consequences of a Val-based currency system in the various sectors of society. The headline article details the discovery of the Las Vegas Riviera casino, once thought lost, and how the artifacts inside will create tremendous wealth for all countries of the world due to the history and narrative associated with the objects inside. Another article details the opening of the world’s largest library, with a waiting list dating back years due to the sheer volume of physical, historical books inside. In auto news, there is a piece dedicated to DeLorean’s recording-breaking sales figures after their limited edition release of the FL-1985, a flying DeLorean launched in honor of the 90th anniversary of Back to the Future. As the article states, for those people who do not have the Val to buy an FL-1985 outright, “…DeLorean is… considering a trade-in model for those cars with enough Val built up.
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These would have need to have had very few new part changes in the last 10 years…”. Lastly, ¬¬¬an article details the record number of Val pilgrimages being taken by younger generations. The Val pilgrimages speak to one of the consequences of the Val system described in the short story, whereby people began travel and experiencing the world more once they realized their wealth was tied to the memories and narratives they create with their objects. The Val pilgrimage is a rite of passage for young people, as they get their first HM-Reader and venture out into the world to create their own wealth.
“What would the first product look like that eventually results in your speculative future”, it was time to begin researching and creating a competitive and inspirational mood board for what a 2017 product around emotion, memory and value could look like.
This is embellished in the back-page ad, where Equivalent Exchange Airlines is offering free travel to the Western Hemisphere for people going on their first Val Pilgrimage. After creating these speculative products and exploring these futures, it was time to come back to the present day. Given the brief,
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RESEARCH
As shown, one of the central arguments of this thesis is that, in creating memories with these objects, we confer upon them a much deeper value beyond currency. What would a product, or product feature, that records this history look like? Further, could this artifact or characteristic go so far as to retain the history for future playback by others who come into contact with it? It turns out, there are several examples throughout culture, though with a significant bias towards Eastern culture, that has been practicing this type of object valuation. Kintsugi and Wabi-sabi In Japanese culture, there are two distinct, yet related, schools of thought that view imperfection, wear, and aging as part of the story of the life an object, rather than as a reason to throw away or repair the artifact. These are kintsugi and wabi-sabi. Kintsugi
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In kintsugi, cracked or broken Japanese pottery is repaired using a special lacquer mixed with gold, platinum or silver. As opposed to attempting to disguise cracks, kintsugi celebrates the “trials” of the object by beautifying them with the most precious metals available. Oftentimes, the resultant object, a mix of the original lacquerware with natural seams of precious metal, often produces a more beautiful product than prior to its repair. As Christopher Jobson says in his article “Kintsugi: The Art of Broken Pieces”, “The philosophy behind the technique is to recognize the history of the object and to visibly incorporate the repair into the new piece instead of disguising it.” There is both celebration and acceptance in the process of kintsugi, as the repaired object signifies one of the simple truths in life for both objects and people—we exist in the world, we have our flaws, and we have our stumbles, yet these setbacks can be, in fact, beautiful, and evolve us into something even
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greater. As Christy Bartlett says in “Flickwerk: The Aesthetics of Mended Japanese Ceramics”, “…The vicissitudes of existence over time, to which all humans are susceptible, could not be clearer than in the breaks, the knocks, and the shattering to which ceramic ware too is subject. This poignancy or aesthetic of existence has been known in Japan as mono no aware, a compassionate sensitivity, or perhaps identification with, [things] outside oneself.” Wabi-sabi In a broader vein, the concept of wabi-sabi follows a similar worldview. Rather than focusing specifically on cracks, breakage, and repair, wabi-sabi is an aesthetic principle that celebrates aging, impermanence and the passage of time. In an aged ceramic teacup, for example, the dents, dings, discoloration, warping, and other “flaws” are what actually make the cup beautiful. It has experienced life, and reflects the wears of doing so. Additionally, the
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fact that those markings were made through the natural flow of life and nature only add to the objects value and beauty. More specifically, many scholars agree that wabi can be translated to represent the beauty found in simplicity and elegance, such as those characteristics introduced by the production or construction unique to an individual object. Sabi is indicative of the beauty that comes with age, most personified in object wear and the patina that develops on a long-aged object. In both instances, the view taken towards the way an object’s history, represented by its “imperfections�, is actually its greatest source of beauty can be extrapolated to incorporate objects, places, people, and the interactions and memories created and shared between them. Rai Stones A similar appreciation for historical value as real value can be seen taken one step further in the Microne-
sian island of Yap. The story of the Rai stones is fascinating in its similarities to the utopia I envisioned. On Yap, though the US dollar is used for everyday transactions, for centuries the locals used stone money, or Rai stones, to conduct business. These Rai stones are large, circular stones with a hole in the middle. They can vary in size, ranging from mere inches to 12-feet in length. As such, many of the larger Rai stones weigh in the thousands of pounds, making them impossible to move. Centuries ago, the residents of limestone-deprived Yap found large limestone deposits on islands like Palau. With their value greatly increased as a result of the scarcity of limestone on Yap, the tribal leaders ordered the residents to begin mining the limestone deposits, creating the iconic donut shape in order to ease the burden of carrying the immense stones across land. However, it was not only the limestone itself that made the Rai stones
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“One time, according to the island's oral tradition, a work crew was bringing was bringing a giant stone coin back to yap on a boat. And just before they got back to the island, they hit a big storm. The stone wound up on the bottom of the ocean.The crew made it back to the island and told everybody what happened. And everybody decided that the piece of stone money was still good — even though it was on the bottom of the ocean. "….So somebody today owns this piece of stone money, even though nobody's seen it for over 100 years or more," [NC State anthropologist and Yap money expert Scott] Fitzpatrick says.”
NPR, “The Island of Stone Money” Jacob Goldstein; David Kestenbaum
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so valuable to the residents of Yap. Given that acquiring Rai stones involved treacherous travel across hundreds of miles of ocean, as well as dealing with potentially hostile locals at the limestone location, the Rai stones became equally as valuable for the stories associated with acquiring them. For example, if a stone crossed paths or was brought in by a famous resident of Yap, or if many people died (or no one died) in acquiring the stone, the value of it would increase as a result of its historical narrative. More specifically, this narrative is recorded in the oral history of the stone. In other words, there are no markings or glyphs written on the stone conveying its story—rather, the story is recorded into the history of the family and village, and accepted by all as adding to the stone’s value. Due to the immense value as a result of the limestone, their size, their artistry and their narrative, Rai stones were not used for everyday transactions, but rather for
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large exchanges such as a dowry or land purchase. Perhaps most interestingly, due to their immense weight, the Rai stones did not actually have to exchange hands in order to convert ownership from one family to the other. Rather, as previously mentioned, the entire village is made aware of the changing ownership, and thus evolving narrative, of the object as it changes hands from one family to another. In fact, an anecdote from NPR’s “The Island of Stone Money”, tells the story of a Rai stone that did not even have to be on the island to count as viable currency (see previous page). Modern Forms of Remembrance Photo albums, video compilations, scrapbooks, hard drives, and cloud storage—these aforementioned modern modes of preservation are effective, yet without personality or soul. They are two-dimensional experiences in the sense that, we as
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consumers passively sit there and engage with their content without context. There is no serendipity or true appreciation for the memories stored on those devices, perhaps because of their easy accessibility and ubiquity.
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A MODERN PRODUCT FOR REMEMBRANCE
So, what would a modern product, that speaks to the notions of story, narrative, and imperfection as value seen in kintsugi, wabi-sabi, and the Rai stones, look like? What would it contain? What would its purpose be, and how would it work? I had to make several decisions around the product’s function and form. My mood board varied in aesthetic, function and abstraction when exploring all the different ways this product could behave and look like. Ultimately, I began to consider where this product would fit into the suite of design offerings presented throughout this work. As I explored what a potential product could be, I kept getting drawn back into of the main design offerings in this book, the “Prologue” app. In its initial inception, “Prologue” worked off of a speculative form of blockchain technology, whereby the stories of an object would be recorded in a public ledger that include geotagging and, more importantly, the tagging of media like audio, video, photos and notes.
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As I began to further built out prolog both physically and digitally, I returned to the question, what would a product today look like.
phones talk to your phone, but with a lot less power usage—to mobile applications on phones that are listening for them.
In its current state, prolog is still speculative, though only by a few years, since it is utilizing a still somewhat unknown technology in a new way through the use of 2-D tags.
When the app “hears” the BLE signal, it triggers a behavior built into the app. Due to the range of the beacon (measuring anywhere from 5-50 feet, depending on what kind of beacon you purchase), the app is able to “understand its position on a micro-local scale, and deliver hyper-contextual content to users based on their location”.
However, in the world of what is possible right now, I needed to step slightly farther back. This is where I was recommended to look at iBeacons, and where I made the decision that the physical product I created would be based on this technology in an effort to build a first prototype of the prolog app. Beacons and iBeacons iBeacons and Beacons are substitutable terms describing the same physical object as well as the underling technology driving their function. In essence, beacons emit a Bluetooth Low Energy (signal)— think the way your wireless head-
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In other words, beacons allows for any supplier to understand where their customer is in a given brick-and-mortar environment. For example, let’s say Nike has several beacons tied to their Nike+ App set up in their Flatiron Nike Running store. I enter searching for a new pair of running shoes. As I approach the new Nike Zoom Running shoes on display, their specific beacon is recognized by the Nike+ app. Pulling out my phone, I see a message saying “Welcome to Nike Running Flatiron! Swipe to learn
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more about these Zooms!”. Entering the app, I see more information about the shoe than can be displayed in-store, as well as associated photos, videos and reviews. This type of interaction can be replicated for each item in the store due to the hyperlocalization capabilities of beacon technology. As iBeacon.com’s guide concludes, “This technology should bring about a paradigm shift in the way brands communicate with consumers.” What is important to note in beacon technology is not the power it has to alter brands, but the fact that iBeacon technology “provides a digital extension into the physical world” on such a local scale. Further, though not discussed in the “What is iBeacon?” guide explicitly, it stands to reason that, if companies can push data to consumers phones, then the opposite is true as well. In other words, users of a specifically designed app (like “Prologue”) could actually send data TO a beacon (such as photos, videos, audios or notes).
This is crucially important to prolog’s value proposition. Since this data would be stored on the cloud and not the beacon itself, the potential exists for beacons to become miniature, spontaneous time capsules. In creating hyperlocal beacons that serve no brand, but rather, are put around the world for people to store memories onto for other people to access and connect with, we create little cracks in time that connect people through time and space. Additionally, the interaction with these beacons would be serendipitous due to their short range, meaning they could only ever discover and access the media (and associated features, like sharing and forwarding) on the beacon when within range of it. Lastly, because of their relatively low power usage, beacons can last in the built and outdoor environment for years at a time—another crucial component to making prolog a unique service.
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Product Function My version of these beacons became the product that I was to spend the semester developing. One caveat of this design exploration, though, lies in the shift away from speculation blockchain technology to practical beacon technology. The benefit of the blockchain tag speculation is that I can easily say both places and objects can be tagged using the proprietary stickers I invented. With iBeacon technology, though it is based in reality, the three-dimensional nature of the electronics involved means that I cannot easily tag objects and give them memories as I did in the first prototype of prolog. However, as previously discussed, that remains a mission of prolog that I believe is attainable as blockchain technology becomes more explored and refined over the next 5-10 years.
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FORM EXPLORATIONS
In creating a moodboard, I sought to find items that accomplished similar functions to the proposed beacons, both literally and abstractly. As such, items like hard drives, records players, Rai stones, wabi-sabi mugs, stamps, chisels, human scars, wormholes and building façade cracks populate the moodboard. I took inspiration from several patterns I found within the moodboard. First was the nature of scars and cracks. Specifically, the way by which cracks can grow and expand in response to additional interactions and the overall passage of time. They are tangible representations of experiences and history, yet they remain beautifully organic and abstract. Furthermore, in objects like trees, as cracks peel back, they reveal the inner layers of the tree, acting as an almost living timeline of the tree’s different stages of life. Secondly, I was fascinated by the role circles have played throughout time as a shape of storage. Starting with the Rai stones centuries ago,
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we see this shape repeated in vinyl records (storage of songs) and now in the internal architecture of hard drives. There is a beautiful parallel there between this storage capability over time especially when considering that circles themselves, with no beginning or end, represent infinity and the cyclical nature of things. Similarly, wormholes themselves are often represented as two circles connected by a sloping funnel, making an hourglass shape. With these inspirations, I began sketching in chipboard and foam several models of a potential beacon product. These include a brand where could stamp your initials, a necklace with pieces that you could break off and insert into places of note, and a box where different layers of wood are exposed. These visible layers are meant as a brand element, hinting at the history and timeline of the object. Similarly, a “cracked� surface treatment speaks to the patina associated with the passage of time. Contained within the box are the guts of the beacon. Despite these explorations, there
was still much work to be done. For one, the boxes themselves were too large, speaking more to an Apple TV or Roku that one would keep at home, not a beacon anyone could place anywhere to start creating a living, evolving history of that area. The beacon itself drove some of this size, but the form of a rectangular box also contributed to this notion. As such, I returned to form exploration around circles that looked more organic and hearkened back to storage devices throughout time. A turning point came when I stepped even farther back and asked myself what this device was really doing. In essence, what I was trying to accomplish with the beacon was to make an ever-present time capsule that people could both add to and access from. In accessing memories stored on the beacon, then, users are traveling back in time at a specific point. Put more within the realm of science fiction, they were time traveling through a wormhole. Thus, I stepped away from the concept of cracks, kint-
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sugi, and wabi-sabi, and returned to research around time travel and wormholes. The Wormhole Wormholes, and explorations of space-time, are commonly represented in an hourglass shape with sunken top and bottom surfaces and a mesh outline. Thus, I began 2-D and 3-D sketching models of cylinders and hourglasses with surface depressions and cuts that represent the different aesthetic representations of wormholes. The unique decorative aspects of the product would make it clearly visible and recognizable to any passersby. I iterated several versions, both through foam modeling and digital 3-D computer sketching. Some characteristics remained consistent throughout the over 12 iterations of the wormhole beacon. I created a depression on the top surface, speaking to the way time gets “pulled into” the center of the
beacon. Similarly, the top surface has radiating arcs that get closer to one another as they approach the center depression, as if they are accelerating and getting pulled into the beacon. The radiating cuts are also shaped to mimic the 2-D hourglass form of a wormhole. In its final form side view, the wormhole beacon also has an hourglass shape, as one last nod to the phenomenon that inspires it. In the most recent model, the diameter of the beacon is 4”, with a height of 1.5”. As a result, the beacon inherently looks like and feels much more expensive than I had originally intended. This size and perceived value puts it at odds with the value proposition of being able to leave these objects anywhere the user desires, be it a park or restaurant. This was not an intentional design choice, but a practical one.
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In an effort to mimic the actual function of the device, I purchased iBeacons with dimensions of 2” x 2” x 0.75”. In order to house the technology within my own beacon form while retaining its own unique aesthetic qualities, I had to increase the size of my beacon. In its final form, I envision that the beacon would actually be much closer to the beacons I purchased. In making the beacon a shaped cylinder 2” in diameter with a smaller height affordance, the cost will not only be decreased, but people will be more likely to scatter them throughout the world.
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PAIRING PRODUCT TO APP
With its final form articulated, the beacon was ready to be placed out in the world. With the technology implanted in the housing, the wormhole was projecting out a signal that would be pushed to phones only when within its range, providing a serendipitous, transient moment of memory and connection. Due to its reliance on the app as a medium through which to experience the memories, the design of the digital portion of prolog became of paramount importance.
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VIII—iii—c Thesis as App
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PROTOTYPES & USER TESTING
To recap, at the end of the screens design sprint, I had prototype screens of how the prolog app would work. However, with 15 weeks to make the app more polished and intuitive, user testing and iteration became crucial. Wireframes Version 1 The primary deliverable from my previous work on “Prologue� was a set of five wireframes showcasing how the app would work, as shown earlier in this chapter. In showing these wireframes to students and friends who know very little about my thesis work, I was able to get several points of feedback, namely:
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Feedback to Version 1 1.
Since the app is about the history of people interacting with objects and places, a more engaging home screen that puts people first would be nice
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Make it easier for consumers to use main feature (i.e. tagging and scanning)
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Prompt users to put interesting content in each tag
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Use icons and symbols rather than lists
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Create more engaging aesthetic displays and content to immerse people in different media types
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Make content more social beyond static chat feature
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In response to these learnings, I recreated several low-fidelity wireframes of a new version of prologue, with screens addressing each piece of feedback individually. Specifically:
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Prolog, Version 2 1.
A new home screen shows all the people associated with that specific tag to date
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A new icon allows for easy access to the scanning and tagging feature
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Dynamic prompts suggest unique content (e.g. “take a panorama and tag this location�)
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Icons rather than words give a more modern aesthetic
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Content displays like photographs are not lists, but rather an immersive Instagram-like display
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Addition of like buttons on media gives more social options for engaging with users you intersect with at tags
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User Testing Given these new wireframes, the next step was to actually animate the app and put it in the hands of users for testing. By animate the app, I mean using a program like “Flinto” or “Adobe XD” or “Invision” to make the app responsive, where pressing on a button on your actual phone screen results in the behavior (page-switching, liking, etc.) that you would see in an app downloaded from the App Store.
These pieces of feedback were extremely helpful in that they showed me not only the importance of constant user testing, but how much bloat and confusion still remained in the “Prologue” app. This second round of feedback proved invaluable in creating the final version of prolog.
As such, I animated the revised wireframes in Flinto and put in the hand of users to gauge its ease-ofuse, clarity, and effectiveness at presenting its use case. The feedback did not go as I had anticipated. Though I thought the new wireframes would make the app clearer, it became apparent that there was still a lot of work to be done in clarifying the different vocabulary and levels to the app. Common critique is included in the sidebar.
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Feedback to Version 2 1.
Create a clearer vocabulary and presentation hierarchy given that the app had numerous “levels” and interaction points ranging from finding a tag to conversing with an individual person
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Make a decision between recorded history v. transient discovery—does the app stores the media of each tag you visit, or is the media on that tag only available when the user is within range of it
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On the map screen which displays the location of the tag, many people wanted to click the pin—is there a way to make that interactive or remove the pin altogether
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Should users actually find the physical tag in space, or do they just need to be close enough that an Augmented Reality display could pop-up and give them access to the media on the tag
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FINAL APP SCREENS AND INTERACTION
In response to this critique, I took a step back and asked myself what the main features of prolog were that the user needed to be able to easily access. There were three distinct features that comprised the value proposition of the app:
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Being alerted to and scanning a beacon
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Seeing the memories and content other people have left behind on the beacon
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Adding your own content to the beacon
In order to develop a more intuitive user interface, I began looking at analogous apps with similar features and user flow. Immediately, several mobile applications leapt to mind, one for each feature. Scanning a Beacon
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In terms of finding and scanning a beacon, I looked to Uber, who puts its location finding and map access first and foremost when opening the app. Since prolog users would be notified and then have to find beacons in their immediate area, it became clear that the map screen would be the first screen users would see upon opening the app. When a beacon is in range, then, users will either get a push notification to their lock screen. If they happen to be in the app (as in this example), a pop-up notification will appear. Due to the hyperlocal range of the beacon, users have to get within feet in order to successfully scan the beacon. Viewing Content Regarding point #2, there are plenty of examples to choose from regarding seeing different types of user-generated content. However, I
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believe Instagram has the cleanest, simplest interface, so I took inspiration from there. However, I made a couple of adjustments. I wanted the creator of the beacon to always be featured prominently at the top of the content feed as a means of historical record. As such, I took inspiration from LinkedIn’s mobile application in creating the way user profiles would look and be listed within the app. Also, given that Instagram is limited to photos and video, and prolog stores various types of media (photos, video, audio, notes), I modified their profile view to showcase different media icons. Similar to Instagram, users can sort posts by chronology or the mostliked media on that specific beacon. I removed a “Save� feature, so that users can only ever access or add memories to the beacon when they are within its range. This was intentional, and meant as a point of differentiation from other social
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networks, whose access to posts is ubiquitous no matter where people are in the world. Part of prolog’s value proposition, and the entire purpose of the physical beacon, is to provide a hyperlocal, transient, and serendipitous experience.
realize that adding irrelevant media would serve no real purpose.
Adding Content
Here’s how it works:
With this inspiration, the final app screens were created, featuring a much more intuitive user flow and interaction points.
Instagram was used again a model for adding content. By hitting the plus button, viewers are taken into their library or camera roll, with the ability to sort through their different recorded media. This presents the quandary that people could add media that is not local to the beacon, but still exists in their camera roll—like a photograph taken at another location. There are two potential routes for curbing this behavior: (1) to “lock” the available media to anything recorded within a specific time frame i.e. within 60 minutes of finding the beacon; or (2) doing nothing, thereby letting people use the beacon as they see fit, with the hope that they
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PROLOG: THE PAST IS PRESENT CASE STUDY
Prolog is a paired product and app service that combines the typologies of time capsules and social networks, allowing people to record, access and connect via shared memories in specific, hyperlocal space. Prologue functions via two linked design artifacts—a physical product, known as the “beacon”, which connects to the prolog app. Consumers purchase a set of beacons to place either in their homes or take with them on trips to locations of their choosing. After they place the beacon, they can then use the app to upload media of their choosing (again, photos, video, audio, notes) to the beacon, where it will stay as long as the beacon is active. On the “discoverers” side, all users have to do is download the app. Via push notifications or opening of the app, they will see a map that indicates if beacons are in their immediate vicinity. If so, they can choose to search out that beacon, and when within its very short range, access the media on it. They can see the media other prolog users have added to it, as well add their own memories to the beacon. They can also start text conversations with former “taggers”, creating a personal connection that otherwise would not have existed. Here’s how it works:
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THE BUSINESS CASE
prolog has a unique value proposition—it is social yet local. This is opposed to the ubiquitous accessibility of other social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat, where anything can be accessed from anywhere. It allows for the storage and pulling out of memories comprised of many media types from any location that a beacon planter deems worthy. Though other apps range in media variety and locality, none are as focused and robust as prolog, as seen in the competitive analysis opposite.
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prolog Competitive Analysis Thesis as Product and App: prolog
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Sasha is walking through Central Park during a visit to New York. As she walks through the famous Bethesda Fountain, her phone buzzes. It’s the prolog app, informing her that there is a beacon nearby. She opens the prolog app and follows the map to the location of the beacon. Searching around, she finds it tucked away on a pillar near the fountain. Scanning it with her app...
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...Sasha is immediately taken into the latest memories tagged to that beacon. The opportunity presents itself to add her own memories to the beacon, but she wants to find out more about the beacon first. Clicking on the beacon name, she gets taken to more detailed biographical data on the beacon itself. She sees that this beacon, named Jenna’s Central Park Beacon, was created by user jennawitzleben in December 2016. There are 17 total posts on the beacon, and clicking that link takes Sasha to an overview of all the memories attached to that beacon to date. These include photos, video, audio recordings and even typed notes.
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Returning to the main feed, Sasha can sort by the most recent or the most liked. She chooses to sort by “Top Rated”, and sees that it is a short video posted by the beacon creator, Jenna, entitled “Rain Storm Poncho”. Sasha watches and loves the video, and decides to both like the post and send Jenna a personal message.
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Having enjoyed Jenna’s video so much, Sasha decides to explore other posts on the feed. She is intrigued by an audio recording titled “The Breakup” by username WillCLentz. Before listening, she decides to check out Will’s profile to see what other media Will has tagged to the beacon. Other media includes some short stories Will wrote during multiple visits to the Bethesda Fountain.
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It turns out, Will wrote those notes about his first time to the Bethesda Fountain, and on a subsequent visit, meeting his girlfriend there. The pair eventually split up, leading to the audio recording called “The Breakup”, where he details what the spot meant to him and how he plans to move forward. Having explored the media on the beacon, Sasha stumbles across a human statue street performer sitting on the fountain. Wanting to add her own unique memories to the beacon, as she has no idea when she’ll be back in Central Park again, she goes back to the main feed and chooses “Add Memories”. Rather than select from the Camera Roll, Sasha goes to the Live View to take a photo of the street performer.
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Sasha takes the photo, and is required to create at least a title for her post. She calls her picture “Crazy Ass Street Performer� and uploads it to the beacon. On the main beacon feed, she sees that the beacon has been updated with her unique memory. The beacon will store this memory forever, ready for the next person who finds it to view and add their own experiences to it.
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stovb13
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CONCLUSION
Prolog creates miniature time capsules that record our history in the world. It allows people to connect with one another in serendipitous, transient and meaningful ways. Sasha is able to experience memories and events that she would have had no idea occurred had she not found the beacon in Central Park. She was able to view and experience the memories of many people, and even form a relationship that would never have existed through the app’s social feature. Experiencing past memories in the present fosters a new type of social connection, based on experiences in a shared location, and eventually, through shared objects. In short, prolog makes visible the invisible fabric that binds us all together, but we remain unaware of.
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IX. Looking Forward
Looking Forward
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WHERE DOES THIS GO NEXT?
This thesis started out as a personal exploration. Given 8 months to explore a topic of my choosing, I chose to move away from what I had always done—solved practical problems. As an engineer, my mind has always been geared towards finding problems to solve, and then finding solutions to those problems. Though I often thought about topics like space, time, connection and the “invisible tethers” that tie us all together, I never really explored these issues in a meaningful way— and certainly not through the lens design has to offer. These past eight months have been some of the most rewarding of my career on two levels because I got to flip this script. First, I found something that interested me. Second, I tried to see how design could fit with that point of view to solve unique problems. More specifically, I got to: (1) research a topic that has been foun-
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dational in my life from childhood to adulthood, and (2) Iexplore how abstract topics like memory, time and shared history could potentially make viable design solutions for the real world. There are many limitations to thesis work, given the logistics of homework, class schedules and other extracurriculars. The design work, especially in a transdiscplinary program like Products of Design, is balanced against other work in diverse fields—product design done simultaneously with screen design done simultaneously with service and experience design. In such a rigorous program with strict deadlines, then, there is always room for the work to evolve, grow and even be reframed after this book has been submitted and the final talk given in May. Here is how I see each of the major design interventions discussed int he second half of this book evolving in the coming weeks, months, and even years.
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Pilgrimage It has been argued that Pilgrimage is two, perhaps even three, disparate business under one umbrella. The “Showcase” explorer package feels distinct from the “Nostalgia” and “Catharsis” packages in its depth of emotion and uniqueness to the individual(s) booking the trip. While feedback indicates that the “Nostalgia” and “Catharsis” packages are the more compelling of the three, the fact remains that the business case for the “Showcase” remains the easiest to convey and sell. Moving forward, I would love to get more user research on people’s interest in a “Showcase” package travel experience. Though I have no personal motivation to become a tour operator running “Showcase” adventure experience, I firmly believe it would be an interesting, compelling and successful offering for other travel
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companies to acquire and operate.
Keepsake Travel Agency
Further, there exists the possibility to partner with groups like The Explorers Club, whose mission around promoting scientific exploration of the land, sea, air and space mesh very well with the purpose of the “Showcase” package.
Within a small scale test, the Keepsake Travel Agency succeeded in providing a unique experience around an object.
Regarding the “Nostalgia” and “Catharsis” packages, I believe they would greatly benefit from user testing. These users could be easily found through friends, family, and even myself. I think at first glance, the proposition of connecting with loved ones through time seems plausible and worth doing. However, something so customized, personal and emotional would require great care in planning and accuracy. Further, it would have to be determined how much the experience itself accomplishes what I claim it will—that is, deeper connection to family members past and present.
At the final presentation for the experience, I was approached by an event designer named Alison Flood. She suggested that I get in touch with the New York City-based experience design company, “Museum Hack”. Museum Hack recontextualizes the standard museum tour experience in much the same way Keepsake Travel Agency seeks to redefine a city tour. For example, one of Museum Hack’s most famous events is known as “Escape the Met”. In brief, the experience is an escape room held at the Met Museum. Teams must work together to solve clues related to specific exhibits and artifacts in order to “escape” the museum within a certain time limit.
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Seeing the similarities between my own experience and Museum Hack, Alison has set up a phone call between the company and I to discuss the purpose and logistics of the Keepsake Travel Agency. That phone call is scheduled for the coming weeks, and I am excited by the possibility of making the Keepsake Travel Agency real and expanding it to venues outside of the graduate school setting.
prolog As I stated earlier, I believe prolog to be one of the purest representations of my thesis statement around experiencing and connecting through a shared history. Though I am happy at where prolog ended up, I see both short- and long-term plans for pushing the service forwards. In the short term, I would like to get the beacon model I created working. As I discussed, I purchased working iBeacons. I can modify them to go to a specific website within a range of 1-3 feet. As a proof-of-concept test, I plan on tying the beacon to either an Instagram feed or a link on my own website, explaining the purpose behind the project. Given that we will be displaying our work at the Wanted Design show in Industry City May 15-20th, I will be curious to see how many people use and add to the beacon
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Conclusion
during its time on the show floor. In the long term, I would like to continue to explore how to move away from large 3-D technology like iBeacons towards “flatter� tech as posited in the original vision for prolog. If we can reduce the form factor of the beacon/blockchain technology, we can expand prolog beyond being a time capsule for local spaces and into the realm of objects that pass through hands. Returning to the example from the first half of this book, imagine if you could read the history of any object, from a used book to a found heirloom. This would make even more visible the tethers and unique experiences that tie us together. Lastly, there is the potential for prolog to team up with local and national governments to redefine the way landmarks are flagged and preserved.
The purpose of this book was to explore the invisible fabric that connects all of us together through time. Through the design typologies of product, experience, service and screen designs, and lenses like the sustainable, medical and social, I challenged my thesis statement that the objects and places we inhabit are filled with the memories and experiences of those who have interacted with them. Further, I sought to prove that by connecting with those past experiences, we can form more meaningful connections to products, places, and people. Whether successful or not to you, the reader, I can say that I firmly believe we all have places like the plaque that ties me to my family. I encourage you all, if you are ever feeling alone, to stop, look around, and think about those tethers through time that connect us to one another.
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X. Acknowledgments
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THANK YOU
First and foremost, my family. My father Anil, my mother Sudha, and my sister Ajanta. I will be graduating this program shortly before I turn 30, and I spent most of the last decade figuring out what I want to do. I finally did, and every step of the way you supported me. Much of this work is a direct result of how close we are to one another and to our extended family. To Sagarika; to say that you inspired this work is still not enough to capture how much you remain a part of my life, and all our lives. I love you. To the extended family; Anil Uncle, Shula Pachie, Anand Uncle, Sheila Pachie, Raunaq, Roshni, Rohan, Aditya, Priya, Leela, Trushant, Namruta, Neil, Lara, Sid, Kal, the boys, Shali Pachie. Thank you for your unending support. To Allan; Your program changed my life, as did you personally in the way you challenged my assumptions and pushed me to be better. Thank you.
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To Sinclair; thank you for being the counterpoint to Allan, for helping me resolve my thesis early on, for pushing my 3-D form skills and for being such a pillar of support both as instructor and friend. Try not to cry while reading this. To Gabrielle; thank you for remaining in our lives even after your travels took you beyond PoD’s glass doors. The VA is lucky to have you! To Alisha; thank you for always knowing when to do pancake breakfast, massages, and your keen awareness of when we need a pick me up. To Marko; this department would revert to the Dark Ages if not for your unwavering digital sherpa-ing. Know that, even if we don’t show it all the time, you are very, very appreciated. To Krithi; welcome! You’ve only been here a short time, but you’ve made your presence felt with your generosity and chocolate.
To two years worth of faculty; Lawrence Abrahamson, Rachel Abrams, Brent Arnold, Renat Aruh, Kate Bakewell, Emilie Baltz, Ayse Birsel, Benjamin Critton, Michael Chung, Abby Covert, Steven Dean, Kyla Fullenwider, Janna Gilbert, Claire Hartten, Johan Liden, Sigi Moeslinger, Jennifer Rittner, Jason Severs, Andrew Schloss, Rebecca Silver, Rafael Sergio Smith, Elizabeth Galbut, Becky Stern, John Thackara, Manuel Toscano, Richard Tyson, Masamichi Udagawa, Rob Walker, James Wynn, Amy Whittaker, Jennifer Dunnam, Pepin Gelardi, Ted Ullrich. I did not enter this school a designer, but I’m leaving as one largely thanks to your instruction, inspiration and guidance. To my interviewees; Terence Mickey, Nan O’Sullivan, Shelby Thompson, Adam Fujita, Marcel Botha, Samantha Weisman, Zach Lupei, David Hu, Matt Paterson, EC Myers, Lou Berger, Danielle Burkhart, John Roelofs, Berk Ilhan, Van Aaron Hughes, Rafa Smith, Ethan Siegel, Susan Bonds, Johanna
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Koljone. Thank you for your time and expertise. This thesis work is molded by your insights and opinions. To the VFL staff; John, Bronwen, Anne Marie, Tak, Boris; thank you for two years of tutelage, assistance and help in projects ranging from large installations to the smallest laser cutting. Your patience and guidance help me transform my sketches from 2-D to 3-D. To my editor Tina Lee; thank you for your critical feedback and helping me shape and sharpen the work, thoughts and opinions presented in this book. To the alums (student) who helped me figure out this crazy thing we call a thesis along the way; Souvik, Eden, Mythbuster Jon, Tahnee, Marianna, Adem, Berk, Lou. Thank you for your advice, guidance and reassurance. And beer. And 5 Year Reunion. And banana pudding. To my fellow Second Years (in no particular order, I swear); Jenna, Oscar, Karen, Josh, Julia,
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Will, Dayoung, Michael, Ailun, Andrea, Gahee, Doug, Xumeng, and Alexa. I could not have made it this far without you. Thank you for teaching me, inspiring me, and supporting me. I am a better designer now than I ever dreamed because of you all. We did it! To our former 4OURTHs; Saria and Cody. Miss you two! To the First Years; Bernice and Seb (my mentees, sorry we never got that drink), Louis, Smruti, Andrew, Kev, Chris, Alexia, Lassor, Sowmya, Manako, Kuan, Will, Jingting, Jiani, Antriksh, Juho, and Teng. Thank you for you loudness, snacks, back rubs, and moral support. This will be you in a year—have fun! To FBBL; Amar, Aparna, Satvik, Erin, Juicy, Neena. Thank you for your friendship, support, inspiration, for half of you getting married while I was in grad school, and for being my friends despite the fact that I’ve failed that boy band quiz four times in a row. To the Claremont family; Tony,
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Ang, Q, Jose, Carol, Kevin, Lauren, Lawrence, Lianne, Hector, Alicyn, Jon. I disappeared off the face of the Earth for months at a time over the last two years, but things always stayed the same whenever I got back in touch. Thank you.
And lastly, to anyone I forgot; forgive me. This is the end of a very long thesis process, and my mind is essentially apple sauce. To whoever you are, thank you!
To my fellow Barolo aficionados Sam, Zach, and the newest diehard Mets fan Stella. Thank you for being my interview subjects, but more importantly, being such wonderful and supportive friends who I could reach out to a moment’s notice for inspiration and advice. Congrats on the LA move! To the New Brunswick family; Potts, Eric and Jho. Thank you for dealing with my long gaps in text messaging, for your constant support, for those throwback trips to Connecticut and to Eric and Jho, for being the most amazing sports in my experience design. To WATH: I will one day win that fantasy championship, and the world will never be the same.
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XI. Bibliography
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