ToI – Technology of Interactions

ToI is part of a final-year industrial design project, to design robots for use in everyday life. The design outcome can also be presented at the annual Monash Art, Design and Architecture graduate show, MADA NOW. The design process involved around four months of research and ideation, execution and refinement, and finally, preparation for the graduate show.

Radio is a motorised speaker connecting us to our surroundings. Radio reacts to our immediate surroundings: it turns to door knockings, ducks on thunderstorms, and shivers during temperature drops. Bubbles is a bubble machine connecting us to our social circles. Bubbles pop out when we receive notifications: work emails and family texts bubble up and fizzle away around you. Lamp is a table lamp connecting us to our worlds. Lamp pulses light in the direction of world news, and can also be reconfigured to track storms, migratory species, or any area of interest and display them with very low fidelity.

Radio wants us to learn about the little details we might’ve missed; Bubbles proposes a playful alternative to the dings, buzzes, or flashes of our digital devices; Lamp connects us to the world, but also refuses us the ability to engage further than to just notice them. The rapid inclusion of technology into every moment of our lives is a concerning phenomenon, but it also presents opportunities to be explored in this project. Project ToI proposes different ways of interacting with digital products, in the pursuit of healthier relationships with technologies.

The name ToI is a reference to the recent mass adoption of IoT (internet of things) into product design, and it attempts to address the shortfalls of IoT. All three appliances are equipped with microcontrollers, they connect to the internet and are fully functional. All submitted images and videos are not renders!