closer to home
Inspired by the discussions surrounding guns violence in the US and the idea that if people had a greater empathy for the victims of gun violence whose stories appear in the news, we decided to create a tactile way of bringing the impact of gun violence closer to home.
We designed two approaches to creating this tactile awareness. The first is a bracelet with an embedded vibration motor that pulses each time a news article containing a keyword about gun violence is rolled over with the mouse.
The second is a pendant with embedded vibration motor that pulses when the word gunshot appears in a Twitter feed.
https://twitter.com/GunDeaths
News Browser Empathy
We are desensitized by the violence we read in the news. Stories are read and dismissed with the click of a new headline. In this design, we imagined a world where people are physically impacted each time a story describing someone else’s pain is read. Not practical for the real world, we see the project as a commentary on the desire to go throughout our lives with blinders on to what is uncomfortable to think about.
Pendant
This pendant gently jolts you out of the mundane activities of daily life to contemplate the violence that happens at every moment.