Electrolux want to position themselves as the “Thoughtful Design Innovator” with their brand message “Thinking of you”.
But what does thoughtfulness mean to you?
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This project is set out to explore the interaction between people, brand, technology and space in designing an overall experience environment for and with Electrolux and their customers (participants).
Relying on scenario building, experience prototyping and design probes this project aims to stimulate conversations on topics surrounding a life together with intelligent machines and a possible near future of branded interactive experiences in the domestic environment.
We are moving towards a reality where intelligent technology increasingly is getting embedded in our homes and our lives. How can we make technology not just intelligent, but also more empathic and sensual?
Considering design as conversation, we may think of the product as a presence of a subject rather than an object, in this case as a spatial presence of a personality that we can reach through our senses.
From a commercial perspective and in an era where “the product/service is the marketing” and “the experience is the brand”, the acting and behavior of design artifacts become crucial in terms of authenticity and trust to the brand message. When using goods as props in staging spatial events, engaging participants in their own homes, will the experience of these interactions become more emotional and “human” with a design process influenced by thoughts from interpersonal communication and rhetoric?
In response to our move towards an economy based on experiences, ‘A spatial presence of thoughtfulness’ draws from these ideas to bring the Electrolux brand philosophy “Thinking of you” into life through an emotional experience of thoughtfulness in the home atmosphere. An ambiance created in dialogue with the participatory presence of people and their actions.
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The Electrolux-tiles
Since thousands of years, tiles have been a fundamental part of architecture, and still are, when it comes to building rooms and spaces.
“By covering your walls with Electrolux-tiles you will bring the soul of Electrolux into your home atmosphere.”
In an extended view, this concept must be understood as a part of a larger system with several sensitive, responsive, interconnected tiles that interact with the people, the room and with each other. A system aimed for small apartments in urban areas, where different tiles, working either alone or in group, thoughtfully serve you in different ways depending on your needs.
The system consists of components that control the climate and atmosphere in your home. A system that easily can be composed and upgraded according to individual needs.
The tiles become building blocks for customers to co-construct their own “service mix” and to personalize and instantly co-create their individual experience according to their own values and current moods.
Now, let’s start with the “Breathing Tile” and the “Listening tile” and how these tiles thoughtfully, with insight, meet an increasing need in a thoughtful way.
According to most scientists and allergy researchers, the amount of pollen in the air will radically increase in the coming years because of the global climate change. The pollen season is already getting extended and due to harder winds and temperature changes, an increasing amount of people is expected to be suffering from pollen allergy all year round, especially in the urban areas.
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BREATHING TILES
The breathing tiles are responsive tiles that communicate wirelessly with each other. They interact with the air in the room, detecting particles and thoughtfully breathe fresh air into the room atmosphere, while collecting pollen and other harmful substances inside.
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Image below: Breathing Tile (active)
“A sense of breathing”
The Breathing Tiles are thoughtfully acting silently. Only the sense of the breathing air-flow in the room and the breathing-like change of the front surface tell about their activity.
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LISTENING TILE
With a Listening Tile connected, the system becomes more intelligent and more responsive to the presence of the people in the room. As time goes by, a thoughtful relation between the people and the system is being developed.
With insight and thoughtfulness, the Listening Tile, listens to and learns the behaviour of the people in the room. It communicates wirelessly with the other tiles and tells them how and when to act, contributing to the spatial experience of thoughtfulness.
Examples: After a while it starts to learn at what time you usually are coming home and tells the Breathing Tiles to thoughtfully keep the air in the apartment fresh and clean for you. It hears when you have visitors and tells the Breathing Tiles to bring more fresh air if needed. When you are not at home the Listening Tile tells the system to shut down to save energy, thoughtfully saving on natural resources and your electricity bill.
If the presence of thoughtfulness becomes too much, all tiles can be muted with a keen, sensitive touch button.
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Image below: Listening Tile (muted)
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Listening Tile (surface)
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Close-Ups Listening Tile and Breathing Tile
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THOUGHTFUL PRODUCT BEHAVIOURS
We often rather believe in what we really see and experience than in what we are told. Demosthenes, one of the greatest orators in ancient Athens, known for making efficient use of his body to accentuate his words, regarded “delivery” (gestures, voice etc.) as more important than style.
From a rhetorical point of view, the physical evidence of the “service delivery”, the acting and behavior together with sound articulation (actio, pronuntiatio) of the products becomes crucial, in terms of creating authenticity and trust (pistis) to the brand message.
To further bring the Electrolux brand philosophy “thinking of you” into life, this “delivery” is carefully considered as an important part of the design.
Referring to the home as a “stage” and the products as “actors” on this stage, while thinking of Electrolux as a thoughtful character (ethos) and how this person would act in a “play” partly co-directed by the customer, several factors that influenced the design were generated.
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A thoughtful position in space, a thoughtful gesture
Never standing in your way, still always there for you. The products can be seen just like square shaped offsets of the wall. Reaching towards the center of the room, to meet and to help the people, in an emphatic gesture of thoughtfulness.
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A thoughtful visual expression
Always there for you but without disturbing. Thoughtfully blending with the architecture, the products themselves are given visual expressions that make them become unobtrusive additions to the domestic landscape.
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Thoughtful sound articulation and air-flow
Contributing in the creation of empathy and an experience of a personal presence, silently without disturbing, the Breathing Tiles are acting with an organic and dynamic air flow.
The fresh air is smoothly let out towards the wall, through the textile on the back surface.
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Thoughtful and calm presence
A Breathing Tile is always thoughtfully acting calmly. It randomly takes breaths to taste the quality of the air. If fresh air is needed it starts a continuous breathing. If more fresh air is needed, nearby Breathing Tiles start up to help, making the thoughtful calm presence seamlessly float over a larger area.
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Thoughtfulness, respect and integrity
By respecting personal integrity, the Listening Tile that reacts to the people’s presence in the room, is made as an optional choice, that can be added to the system.
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The level of thoughtful presence
Each of the tiles is given a sensitive Mute-Button that lets you adjust and control the level of thoughtfulness in the home atmosphere according to your own choice.
While muted a soft pulsating light appears from deep inside of the tile, changing in intensity and size, like the beating of a heart, showing that the thoughtfulness of Electrolux is still always there for you, whenever you want.
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RESEARCH OBJECTIVES
With a Research through Design approach, the main objective for this research is to gain a holistic understanding of the experience in a broader context supporting future design direction.
Intelligent technologies along with our increasingly connected environments afford new and unique opportunities for more intimate customer/company relationships to evolve. But this evolution also comes with new and broader implications important to consider. The co-creative experience prototyping sessions together with participants in the context of their own homes were of great value not only in terms of bridging brand gaps, they also highlighted several topics of importance such as privacy and control.
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FURTHER NOTES
While embracing the importance of incorporating affections and arousing emotion (pathos) in design, when we are talking about authenticity, the functionality of the products also becomes crucial in terms of rational design arguments (logos). In cooperation with the Swedish Asthma and Allergy Association, the design was made to fulfill their recommendations regarding construction and air cleaning/purifying capacities.
With thoughtfulness and care of our natural environment in mind, the tiles are not only designed to be able to be produced with environmental friendly materials and to be easily dismantled and re-painted etc. They are designed as a part of a system of building blocks that allow the customer to compose and upgrade according to individual needs over time, to foster more sustainable consumer behaviors and to provide overall longer product life spans.
This presentation should be seen as an introduction to the project focusing on the conversing aspects of the design and the sharing of thoughts on designing affordance for spatial experiences around the narrative theme thoughtfulness.
Thank you
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This research was conducted by me over a period of 10 weeks in collaboration with several experts in their respective fields.
The process included in-depth ethos analysis and mapping of corporate vision in collaboration with the head of marketing at Electrolux – co-creative experience prototyping sessions with potential customers in the context of their own homes – deep interviews with people suffering from allergy – research and sketches of technological constructions in collaboration with subject matter specialists such as Swedish Asthma and Allergy Association and Electrolux engineers – as well as sketching, prototyping and making of high-resolution product models.
Please see below for some selected images from the process.
