The Room

Automation has long become a big part of our everyday lives. It helps us out from small tasks, such as brewing coffee in the morning, to enabling us to tackle problems, which would have been impossible to solve only a few years ago. Automated devices undoubtedly bring us big advantages, nevertheless the questions arise: Does giving machines so much control over human lives, bear dangers? And where is the fine line between technological advancement and losing control over it? To find an answer to these questions, we created a research room installation: Containing four hypothetical automated devices, the viewers can find out for themselves, where their personal boundary lies, between being helped by technology and being controlled by it. For a full immersion experience, the installation itself is automated: The visitor can only view one part at a time and is guided through the exhibition by light beams and audio signals.

This was created in the "Interaction Design Process" module. During April – May 2017

By Carlo Natter, Daniel Holler, Ismael Möri, Tobias Dupuch

Fridge

Control versus convenience

The interactive fridge is based off research interviews, where we tried to find out about, up to which point it is comfortable for users to give up control over a device, for convenience. The fridge’s task is to monitor its content, scanning the expiration dates and buying new food over the internet. Besides ordering the food, it compiles meals to assure a healthy nutrition for the user. To counteract the fact that the user can still buy and store other, potentially unhealthy, food, it can lock its compartments and only authorize the user to take out healthy ingredients.

Phases

Pill

Control and data

The pill was conceived for people who want to have full control over their bodies and do not care if the most intimate information about one’s body is passed on and used for commercial purposes. By taking this pill all the body’s medical data is processed and presented digitally on an app. This allows the user to constantly monitor every aspect about the body’s health. Furthermore the user pays less for the health insurance by granting the insurance, doctors and emergency services full access to the collected data.

Phases

Decisions

Natural development

With the this prototype we wanted to show how technology can denaturalize basic human behaviors. The user asks the device what decision should be taken in a certain situation. By showing the statistic of other users’ choices, the device answers. The questions can vary from simple everyday choices („Should I take an umbrella with me?“) to important private issues („Should I have children?“). The user is not bound to any choice, but still the device retains a decisive influence over the user.

Phases

Reliability

Door

The main subject concerning our door prototype are reliability issues regarding technology. The way the door works is that it opens and closes by face scanning the users. Authorized users do not need any keys to enter the home. This ensures that the user does not have to worry about losing the key, or lock-breaking thieves. To ensure even greater security the user can predefine certain hours during the day where no one can enter the home, for example during work hours or while being on vacation. Finally the question arises, what happens if the technology fails, for example in the case of a blackout or if the face recognition does not work anymore?