In-Formed
Much of the knowledge and statistics in the world exists in places like books, newspapers and web sites. You read things like "In Britain, 20 million tons of food is thrown out each year."
Statistics like these may be striking when you first read them, but without context or placement in the physical world, they are rarely remembered and rarely change people's behavior.
What if this kind of information crawled off the page and seeped into the products that surround us? In-Formed provides three case studies in embedding contextually relevant information into everyday objects.
To begin, I chronicled a day in my life, paying attention to my behavior and the surrounding objects, and later brainstorming how they could be enhanced with specific information.
Ideas were quickly sketched and taped on the wall for constant reference.
The kitchen is the nucleus of the home. It’s where we have the most control over the use of resources and provides a great opportunity for informing people of their consumption habits.
The data visualized in the plate and fork is caloric consumption per capita in various countries and regions. The information allows one to compare your culture’s eating habits to the rest of the world’s.
The surface area of each of these plates is scaled in proportion to the amount of food consumed by the people who live in the region depicted on the plate.
Before a meal, when a person takes out their dinnerware, they become aware of the discrepencies in food consumption around the world and can make an informed decision on how much they feel is appropriate for them to eat.
An alternate to the plates, each prong on this fork represents a different countries caloric intake per capita. Each fork contains the United States (or home country) and three other countries that are ordered alphabetically, providing a relatively varied sample to compare. The forks are water jet cut, sandblasted and then laser-etched with text.
When the person uses the fork, the prongs that are longer are more likely to pierce the food, mimicking the discrepancies of food consumption around the globe. The user may flip the fork over to see the data and then decide if they may want to change their eating habits.
The data visualized in this faucet is the amount of water consumed each time the faucet is used.
As water flows out of the faucet, a small portion of the water gets redirected through a valve into the faucet's glass chamber, showing the person how much water they are currently using.
Storyboard. The water in the chamber empties the next time the faucet is turned on.
Development sketches, exploring ways of mapping quantitative information onto the properties of an object (shape, volume, weight, color, etc.)
The data visualized in this waste bin is personal or household waste measured in terms of its weight.
The weight of the garbage changes the angle of the waste bin, making it less inviting and giving you a visual cue as to how much trash you are throwing away. The main body of the bin is constructed from plastic except for a central part that is constructed from a flexible TPE, allowing the top portion to move when weight is added weight.
