As part of a collaborative project at Uni, I worked with friend and fellow product designer Flo Anizet to create a piece of design based on social cooking. We began by hosting a series of research experiments to watch peoples behaviour when they are in a social situation.Our first experiment was a dinner party where we invited 3 other friends over to have a dinner party. When at the party we tried a few experiments such as eating blindfolded, cooking together in a small kitchen and feeding each other to see what happened. Looking back at our research we found that the wine was a very key aspect to the dinner party and we started sparking ideas from this.
After this experiment we experimented with a friend hosting a pancake day party. Whilst there with a group 6 friends we asked them to be silent but to be as social as possible. From this 3 of the people went on to their phones as they were unable to socialise at the table. We found this a really interesting outcome and had become part of our final outcome.
Our next experiment was in university where we conducted a sound, social and sight test. We gave the user some food and experimented with using different sounds to see if this altered the effect of the taste and enjoyment of the food. The sight test involved blindfolding the user and seeing how they felt when being spoken to whilst eating and if being able to see the other person or not effected them as well. This gave us some very interesting outcomes such as people talking and becoming more relaxed when listening to classical music compared to drum and bass or even people chatting in the background.
We started to think about how you could still be social even though you may live on your own.Our brief was to create a project based on urbanisation and a product that would used in 10-20 years in the future, but based on our lives in the present day. We started to think about the individual who works all day and doesn’t have time to go out and socialise all the time but enjoys being able to talk to someone when eating or drinking. When then looked back over our research experiments and looked at the wine/drink being the centre of the social encounters at the table. We then developed this idea and started to play with the idea of a decanter and how it could be a device to connect you to other people. So we carried out some very quick prototyping ideas of how it could actually work.
We had the idea of using an electronic tablet device, external to the decanter to connect you to people around the world with similar interests to you.However we still wanted the decanter to be used within the product so started to play around with how this could be used. We stumbled across Ham radios and how they are used to connect people around the world, and how people can communicate over them. From this we really liked the idea of turning and object and tuning into a person in order to talk to them, and this is where the decanted comes in. The cork from the top of the decanter is used on top of the tablet device to control the app to select the person who you wish to talk.
Our final outcome is Cork Talk a product that explores how to be social when you live alone. The user uses the decanter to pour themselves a drink and then enters into the application what they are drinking at the time. The app then searches for other users around the world who are drinking the same drink; the more specific the user is the less results are found. The user can then choose who they wish to speak to and ultimately enjoy a glass of the same drink with anyone around the world.
Cork Talk is not quite finished but when it is why don’t you come along to Ravensbourne Degree Show’13 on the 13th and 14th June to see it in action and to see lots of other brilliant products.
