At Home

Near future concept

I led a course in the Interaction Design BFA program at CCA where we explored what a near future smart home might be like for GenZ (people born from 1995-the early 2000s). Students participated in a three month design research engagement looking at market behavior, socio-economic trends and attitudes of their age cohort and in partnership with our sponsored created new and/or evolved existing product and service concepts.

The Interaction Design BFA program at CCA explored what a near future smart home might be like for Gen Z (people born between 1995-the early 2000s).

Related Projects

Glow

glow hub

About Glow
Glow is a home assistant.  Unlike Alexa or Google Home, the Glow system uses machine learning to prioritize inbound communications and infer their importance to the user. Glow features an interactive and portable light fixture that uses ambient sound and light to push and convey important information to the user while they are in the home and uses opportunistic, location-based services to push these same notifications to whatever device the user has available at any given time.

A simple way to record data or action items received in daily interactions - both conversations and digital communications

A mechanism that will deliver frequent alerts/reminders

A way to relieve anxiety by helping people remain in control of their agency

Design Principles

Low Maintenance
A user should not have to import the data that comes into the system - the data should seamlessly be imported from email, calendar invitations and text messages

Friendly
It should perform in a way that is innocuous and not obtrusive

Smart
The system should learn preferences and infer information without explicit input based on situational awareness (Location, context)


TEAM:

Aynne Valencia
Karina Bingham
Scott Drapeau
Hulin Wang

Glow Band form

Package

Now, it's getting interesting

Wired published an article today about r&d efforts at MIT on Self Assembling materials .  The carbon filler material folds and bends when exposed to moisture and can assemble itself to predetermined shapes. 

In his 2005 book Shaping Things, Bruce Sterling writes extensibly about "Spimes" which he characterizes them as: 

Sterling argues the Spime started when RFID's were added to military supplies thus elevating the thing to a data carrying, enabling and affecting mechanism with characteristics beyond their materiality. 

And, as I've said to my students numerous times, the really interesting stuff, the stuff beyond the mundane universe of mobile apps and even the burgeoning IoT (Internet of Things) is this other realm where raw material itself is harnessed by technology to give us entirely different sets of possible scenarios of interactivity. 

An applicable quote from the Wired article: 
 

“I think the biggest barrier is a super outdated mentality of what robots are,” he says. That said, the designer has been able to convince some forward-looking companies, including Carbitex, Autodesk, Airbus, and Briggs Automotive Company, to experiment with his materials and help fund their development.

“We can listen to materials and use them as a programmable material. We can program biology,” he says. “Computing isn’t in computers anymore; computing is everything.”

Without a doubt, this is the beginning of very exciting things, but the question remains as it does with every evolution of technology:  If you can make the future, what do you want that future to be?