Here is something I built earlier…
It is often hard to imagine how the appearance of something new in our culture will affect it. This is why every new paradigm is pre-ambled by a plethora of experiments that are a mix of the old and the new. This is obviously true for creative technology and the experiences it can create.
The Social Listening Radio shown below let’s you listen to social media. Enter a phrase or subject by tweeting #listento and the radio starts filtering and analysing content on that subject. It then starts talking tweets(Stephen Hawkins style), their sentiment analysed and comments on klout scores
and number of followers.
It was designed to be an internet of thing, thing and a manifestation
of social listening logic.
It’s not a product. It is a stepping stone for a conversation between client and agency. The Internet of Things is a prognosed multi-billion dollar consumer market and analysing trends and brand chatter are already
essential tools in brand campaigns.
One might see the overlaps of the project with product, service and critical design and this is also relevant, because many of the old silos don’t apply anymore, but it sometimes needs a tangible object to really bring a point across.
Prototypes are more than just proof of concept vehicles. Their tactile nature makes them perfect artifacts to help focus conversations in an otherwise ever more complex and confusing world. This talking talking-point and its brothers and sisters might be something to consider the next time you need help getting someone excited about an idea.