delightful moment:
break time experience
One of my favorite projects, as project director at Innovation by Design, I worked with an international consumer product company to research, map, and identify new opportunities to reimagine a ‘smoking experience’.
As a result of this one year-long research, we prototyped four experiential values of ‘smoking’ as everyday objects. The project is now in its third-year cycle (2020), where the team is further researching about the meaning of ‘delightful moment’.
This project was also exhibited at Ars Electronica in 2018.
#value-driven design #ethnography #value prototyping
Unpacking the experience of smoking
What draws people into the experience of smoking? Through user interviews, research on media representation and historical literature, we dissected the experience of smoking along the five components - time, space, motivation, reward, and object.
Bringing new meaning into everyday objects
The four break experiences
The cigarette is a small object after all, and its sensory, tactile, portable, and sharable qualities bring all of its experiential, social and cultural values to people’s daily lives in a very personal and powerful way.
We have translated these experiences through the lens of four everyday objects: the Cup, the Book, the Card, and the Window. The installation reflects some of the fundamental human values and interaction which are embedded into everyday objects. These objects are designed in order to provide, ultimately, a better human experience.
Imagine you’re taking a break with these ordinary yet smart objects. We hope this installation gets you to think what taking a break means and how we can create this experience in the future.We took four experiential values from smoking - meditation, self reflection, social currency, and memory marker - and embedded them into everyday objects into an interactive experience.
Book
The sensory break
The Book draws on the tactile sensory experience of smoking, like how touching the cigarette paper and holding it in your hand calms you down.
The Book offers a meditative experience through touch, language and thought. The Book senses the state of your mind through touch, and guides you to a page. Selected inspirational quotes are gradually revealed upon touch, providing a moment of pause and self-reflection.
Cup
The emotional break
During your most stressful moments, you need a reminder that you’re not alone. The Cup takes inspiration from cigarette butts, how each one carries a memory of a brief moment in someone’s day, like a memory vessel.
The Cup stores thoughts and conversations that people have left for others to discover With the Cup you can listen to past moments of someone’s day, and also leave your trace by using the cup to capture your story.
The Cup experience creates a localized emotional and memorable connections between people of past and present. It creates a sense of community with shared thoughts and experiences in places that are really just full of strangers.
Card + Table
The social break: Make unexpected connections with people around you.
The Card augments social smoking behaviors, applying the role of cigarette as a social lubricant. The Card provides an experience of meeting new people at a dedicated space (the Table), similar to a smoking spot, and discover common interests through facilitated conversations.
We often have to break social norms or put ourselves in uncomfortable situations if we want to interact with strangers. There isn’t always a shared experience or chance event that breaks the barrier and invites us to talk.
The Card connects people, who may otherwise not talk to each other, based on personal interests and provides an entry point for comfortable conversation between people who are very likely to enjoy each other.
Window
The self-reflective break
The Window is inspired from the smoking break where it gives you space and protection in the public for people-gazing or self-reflection.
We are familiar with seeing our reflected self on the mirror - however, it is rare to have an opportunity to see yourself looking back at you from the past. This creates a slightly removed perspective for self reflection, where you can meet your ‘other-self’.
The Window provides you an experience to reflect on yourself by showing a mirrored image of you from moments ago.
