Evaluative Report
week 1 (20.10-24.10) :
We were asked to choose an offline object and build a scenario of what would happen if it would be connected to the web. I wasn’t sure where to start and decided to look at the everyday objects that surround us most of our time, and that we constantly use. I thought of chairs. They surround us everywhere we go. We use them over 60% of our day time, without even paying attention to them.
Today we see chairs in the various styles, colors, sizes and materials. But the chairs of same designs usually come in the same size and with the same leg height. That could cause difficulty to some short people, as they might wish to be on the same height level as people around the table.
To solve this possible issue i thought of designing a chair that would be equipped with a pre-built height detector, which would adapt the chair to the eye-level of its users.
week 2 (27.10-31.10) :
So far height detecting chair seemed to me nothing more than just a new product design. I was looking for a possible way of how the chairs can evolve into something bigger that could change the world. I researched chair's history and their meaning within the society, and came to the conclusion that for many years chairs were used to represent someone's status. So if the chairs would be given more power they could repeat the history, but in the opposite and a much efficient way; and become a reason of social conflicts and a hierarchy domination
I lost faith in this idea, as I thought that it’s not answering the brief. However, during the feedback session I looked at the issue from the different angle. Scenario does not always have to have a good ending. The task is to uncover one of the possible variations of the situation development and see where it flows.
week 3 (3.11 - 7.11) :
For many centuries chair used to be a symbol of dignity and status. People from the higher hierarchy circles had more precious and luxurious chairs/thrones what was making obvious without saying which positions their owners were taking within the society.
Today we don’t pay so much attention to the chairs and don’t judge people by the way their chairs look. But this situation might change if the chairs would be connected to the web. Imagine if chairs would get access to our personal data, to everything that we post and do in web, to everything that requires web to be performed?
That might be fun and entertaining in the beginning, but then it would cause a significant damage to the society and a potential system destruction caused by people themselves. There will be nothing that could be kept in secret, as all interactions would be visible to other users through the height of your chair. In order to keep privacy the person would only have two options:
1. Accept a low rated chair;
2. Fake social identity in case if the height of chair does matter a lot to you.
The % of people who would just not care and go for the first option would be tremendously low, what means that the half of the rest would be in the hunt for the higher number of interactions in order to fulfill their ego and rise their chairs higher; and the second half would be feeling challenged by the first half and try to fight them back by faking their profiles and trying to reach their higher levels, which would form a constant fight for never reachable 100%. Number for % constantly grow, as the demand and challenge grows.
People are already blinded; that scenario will completely fry their brains. That will be the most stupid and easy to manipulate nation that in the end will erase itself as a self destructing mechanism.
week 4 (10.11 -14.11) :
As I came up with the concept and a storyline that I want to follow, I thought of coming up with the possible structure and design solutions for these smart devil chairs. Today there is nothing on the market that could work as a building material for this concept.
However, through the research i’ve realized that the best option would be a living biofilm that grows and feeds on the data collected from the web, which is transmitted through neuroelectric signals to the cell. The cells would be programmed to the self-growth and self-reconstruction.
week 5 (17.11 - 21.11) :
My initial thought was making an animation to bring my idea to the audience. A series of images seemed to me like a not strong enough solution.
During the second week I’ve made a presentation on chairs which covered their history and how and which information they will be accessing. I want to use these slides as the first half of my animation because it feels like that’s an appropriate introduction to the concept reveal.
week 6 (24.11 - 28.11) :
This week i spent coming up with the graphics style for my animation. I decided that the best would be to use simple 2D illustrated imagery. So I began drawing a storyboard in Illustrator.
week 7 (1.12 - 19.01) :
I finished term having a clear vision of what and how I am going to do. I set myself a completely unnecessary task of creating an animation for this project. I could easily do a simple presentation, but i felt that it wouldn’t be enough to represent my idea.
Now I got a storyboard which I am going to put in the motion and hopefully prevent The Chair Apocalypse :)