Category: Unexpected Objects

Unexpected Object – Private Diary

Typical Associations: Privacy, emotional release, teenage troubles, one-person reader-writer universe, confidante.

This idea was inspired from a Sting song ‘ Fortress Around Your Heart’ where in the chorus he mentions that in order to protect his lover he builds a fortified security where he almost keeps her prisoner, only to later find that he has to watch his step to reach her. The idea extended naturally to diaries where we can get irrationally overprotective of what we write and vent out. However, in the day and age of Facebook, did our venting of our emotions through paper stop? Did we stop musing to ourselves and search for an audience instead? This shift in behavior intrigued me in the context of the diary where something extremely private is holding information that unbeknownst to most of us is visible to a lot of watching agents. The visual cues from the diary gave my test audience the impression that it was adolescent, even feminine; the button loop emphasizing the protection. While most of us would still keep our crushes confined in the scrim of pages in a diary, I thought it would be interesting to not repurpose my chosen object but to highlight a behavior that we have already moved on from a while ago.

Another idea that I was toying around with was to stick all the pages of the diary together, as a direct extension of Sting’s song. However, I thought the idea of Facebook was more multi-layered and made a stronger statement.

New associations: vulnerable, violation of privacy, lack of trust

Anne

Typical associations: Nasty, smelly, disgusting, profusion

Manipulation: I wanted to change the associations you normally have with trash bags by giving them a different form and creating a dress out of it. My unexpected object is hence a dress out of trash bags. However, if we think about the materials most clothes nowadays are made of, it comes back to chemical fibers comparable to plastic instead of natural fibers like cotton. Those clothes made out of chemical fibers are often cheaper in price, but also entail disadvantages. Plastic is not air-permeable which has the consequence that people wearing it sweat and the humidity cannot leak. The process of creating the dress was not easy as the plastic bags were really thing and difficult to arrange in the way I wanted it to be.
New associations: Nice, valuable, fancy, unique

Unexpected Object: The Frisbee – An Unexpected Tool for Survival in the Wilderness

The Frisbee

Typical Associations: fun, entertainment, running, playfulness, wide open spaces, flight, novelty, single purpose, throwaway

Manipulation: The way I chose to manipulate the frisbee was to take it from it’s normal suburban environment, where the presence of many other objects reduces its usefulness to simply being a toy, then bring it into the wilderness, where the absence of objects transforms it from a tool for entertainment into a tool for survival. Among the many uses of the frisbee include – a plate, a vessel for collecting water, fanning the flames of a fire, a hunting tool to distract prey, a food cover, a paddle, shade from the sun, etc.

New Associations: utility, survival, adaptability, flexibility, multi-purpose, essential, ingenuity, creativity

Siqi Wang

The initial idea came from my curiosity of transforming the properties between “hard“ and “soft“. So I have seat cushion as my original object. Working with wood board, I’m trying to add another layer of information to the object which will make the soft cushion visually hard, but potentially responsive and deformed. I designed some possible patterns as a way to divide the wood board. Eventually, the wood pieces were attached to the cushion.

When my audiences first saw the new object, they thought it’s hard and wood made product. Then, I ask them to press on the surface of it. They realized it’s actually responsive and not “rigid“. I asked if they would still want to use it as a seat cushion. They said definitely “NO“ (it will poke them). Their suggestion is about how to make it playful and interactive, which also could be used for pets (they may want to stay on it).

I borrowed my friend’s cat to test out if she likes the new object for her. She shows great curiosity on it, but hesitant to stand on it at first. When she found out it’s safe, she became more active and plays with it.

Wenqin Chen

Trash bags usually evoke negative emotions from people, as it is associated with garbage, decay, unpleasant smell, and bad hygiene. I wanted to make a fashionable skirt out of trash bags. I hoped that the skirt would make people re-associate trash bags with fashion and beauty, and transform trash bags into something beautify and desirable.
When I presented my skirt to the class, I was able to accomplish the intended outcome. I first asked the audience about their association for trash bags, the words thrown out were along the line of decay and disgust. Then a volunteer put on the trash bag skirt, many audience member uttered “wow”; one student commented that the dress reminded him of fashion icon Lady Gaga and he liked the dress. Two students commented that dress “looked like leather”. These comments indicated the audience saw the trash bag skirt as a fashion item instead of an object associated with garbage.
This project made me realize that trash bags are great materials for practicing fashion design, as they provide large canvases that can be easily cut and joined together. Their texture is sturdy enough to hold shapes, and as a bonus, they are dirt cheap and available everywhere! Kids should use trash bags to build their own dream clothes.

Jason Wen

Inspired by my walk to the Berkeley BART station past both a bar and a bakery, I combined the visual and olfactory experiences of smoking and freshly baked pastries to create a cigarette-pierced bun. The original blueberry and cream cheese bun brings up associations of pleasure, a pick-me-up, a smile, warmth, and family. However, the soot covered bun brings up associations of confusion, questions, and a suggestion of darker themes. The combination brings up associations of waste, deliberate or accidental harm or loss of value, carelessness.

My initial thoughts was to leverage this association as an anti-smoking strategy: replacing ash trays with ones that reminded the smoker of objects that smoking would be damaging e.g. taste (ask tray would look like a pastry or pasta), health (tray would resemble a clock or lungs), earth (plant, animal). But probing deeper, the smoker is often aware of those costs. However, the benefits of smoking still outweighs those costs. So the design must eliminate the value of the routine of lighting a cigarette and smoking.

1) The cigarette is designed for a slow burn, allowing the user to enjoy the ritual for several minutes. An instantaneous flammable cigarette that burns into ash in 2 seconds would fundamentally change the experience of smoking and provide no time for enjoying the smoke. 2) We would replace the value of a cigarette by replacing the tobacco leaves with a firecracker or with a marshmallow. This provides the user the same routine of lighting an object but either ends with a light show or tasty treat. 3) Exploring a haptic analysis of the cigarette paper, the current texture is clean, familiar (paper), almost natural. We can bring on associations of combustion, ignition, smoke fumes, industry, and cold steel by replacing the paper with a metal tubing. Even the consequent heating of the metal and burning of the lips can be a useful haptic association. 4) What value do cigarettes provide for the user? Relieving an addiction to nicotine, an opportunity to break from their problems and routine. We take away that value by reminding users that smoking generates more problems. We design a cigarette that melts and drips paint as it is smoked. However, paint stains has a metaphor of childhood accidents and minimizes the severity of smoking to that of an inconvenience. More extreme would use corrosive acid. 4) In order to strengthen the association of cigarette smoke to toxicity and use the metaphor of the color green, we design cigarette smoke to be green rather than the more benign gray color.

The cigarette has been really well designed. From the visual (small, efficient) to haptic to cultural associations, the smoking industry created a product that delivers value with very few obstacles. How can we decrease that value or create a worse user experience?

Owen Hsiao-Unexpected Objects Part 2

My original object was an orange that I got from I-House. When I think about oranges, I always associated with its edible properties. As a result, some of my original associations with the object include orange juice, Sunkist, orange Fanta, etc. Wheat I intended to do was to change this object from its original purpose to other purposed like decoration purpose. And, I though about how Jack O’ Lantern turns pumpkin into a decoration, so I begin to draw a face on the orange and was going to carve it. But then, orange tend to be a pretty popular item in the I-House dinning hall and sold out quick. I kinda wanted to eat it afterwards so I didn’t really crave it. However, the smiley face on the orange is still serves its decoration purpose well without questions. Now when I see this orange I associate it with smile, fun, energetic, and other positive personality characters. The change gives the orange the kind of association that I didn’t perceive before.
Finally, in our last lecture, Emily Paul suggested that it will be really interesting to see this orange to be put back into the dinning hall next to other normal fruits. I took the suggestion and put it back in to the fruit tray in my dinning hall and took a picture. I think the result was interesting. What do y’all think?!

Andrew Lambert

I described my Unexpected Object, the “ketchup-in-a-body-lotion-dispenser abomination” in last week’s blog post: https://blogs.ischool.berkeley.edu/i265s16/2016/02/19/andrew-lambert-3/ Pictures of the original are below, and you can also see the modified object in-context.

Next, I decided to place my abomination in-context to see how people interpreted it. I bought some French fries and took them to unsuspecting participants in the student lounge. I sought to compare people’s associations between ketchup packets and my abomination. I offered people the following scenario: you’re going to eat these French fries. Here are some ketchup packets. What are your associations with ketchup packets? Next, I revealed my abomination. What are your associations with this?

I was successful because people thought what I was created was “gross”. However, it was gross for a reason different from what I thought. People didn’t seem bothered by the spa brand, because they didn’t have strong associations with it. (Perhaps a Dove body lotion container would’ve had a stronger association?) Instead, they were “freaked out” that the ketchup had been removed from its “sterile” and “hermetically sealed” container (the ketchup packets) and transferred into a new one. One participant explained that he he finds it “gross” when his wife moves food and sauces into new containers.

After the study, I threw the ketchup-covered abomination in the trash so I wouldn’t risk contaminating my backpack with it. Let us never speak of this unholy creature again.

Joshua Appleman

I started this project by rummaging through my Halloween costumes for an object that had strong symbolic representations. I ended up choosing a wig because they have a rich history of being used to show one’s social status. For hundreds of years they were worn by kings, judges and the aristocracy as a sort of fashion statement separating the haves from the have nots. Since wealthier people wore them, they were typically well maintained and clean.

I wanted to repurpose the object for a function that had the opposite associations, so I transformed it into a feather duster. Whereas wigs are extraordinary, cherished and associated with power, feather dusters are mundane, filthy and associated with subservience. My aim was to flip around associations so spectators could better recognize the material properties of the object rather than what it represented as a symbol. The audience seemed to appreciate the simplicity and clarity of the transformation.

Alexander Jones

Unexpected Object Part 2

For my unexpected object, I chose a brown ceramic bowl. The bowl is from IKEA and is regular-sized, about 5.5 inches in diameter and 2.5 inches deep. Typical associations with bowls are that they’re used to hold cereal, soup, and other foods, both hot and cold. They are also often associated with a feeling of comfort in the home, including cooking, happiness, and family. One might also think of bowls as associated with relaxation and healing when they’re filled with hot chicken noodle soup. These associations were echoed by the class when I presented the bowl to them and asked people to call out associations that came to mind.

In a more abstract sense, bowls are typically used to hold or contain physical items. For my manipulated object, I wanted to contrast this typical sense and demonstrate how an object can be used in a different context for a different purpose without having to manipulate it in any material way. Just like most people, I love music and love making playlists on Spotify. But perhaps not like everyone, I have been a copyeditor for a music publication, I have run my own music blog, I have created music, and I have experience being a DJ. I often find myself ‘DJing’ parties or gatherings by playing music on my phone. However, not all places have a proper stereo through which to play music, and the volume of my phone is often not enough to overcome the volume of conversation. This situation is where a bowl has served me well many times before. My trick is to place my phone inside the bowl, shifting the bowl’s utility from a container of physical things to a projector of non-physical things – that is, sound waves. In this way, I have thus transformed an ordinary bowl into an unexpected acoustic amplifier. It is like having a miniature amphitheater in your kitchen. Who needs an expensive sound system, anyway? In a real bind, even a plastic Solo© cup can be used in place of the hardier ceramic bowl, though with lesser effect.

When I demonstrated this new use for the common bowl in class, I could tell that many students were surprised. The raised eyebrows and open mouths of some students indicated to me they had never seen such a thing. I could tell by the upturned mouth corners and smiling eyes on the faces of others that they had clearly seen, or even used, this exact trick before, but were still surprised to be seeing it again in a classroom setting. I would guess that both kinds of surprise were possible because I had, not 15 seconds before, just asked everyone to put into their minds the things they normally associated with bowls. To this point, I think that this kind of explicit mental or physical priming followed by immediate juxtaposition is an effective measure for inducing maximum surprise. I would also imagine that many students in the class would now associate bowls with music, phones, Spotify, parties, dancing, talking, laughter, smiling, and friends. Several students told me after class that they were, indeed, surprised by my ‘stereo bowl,’ so I would confidently say that my intended effect was achieved.