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The Compliment Project

Mingna Li

The Compliment Project is a web app that allows ITP students to compliment each other as a community, in order to relieve stress and give moral support in making creative projects.

https://www.mingnaliblog.com/quantified-humanists/2019/4/1/final-project-proposal

Description

The Compliment Project derives from the compliment service I offered at ITP last semester. My past service was that clients can reserve a period of time (from 1 day to 1 year), and I would compliment them in different way every day. The service last for a month because when I reach to more than 10 clients, I got too busy.

This semester, I decided to change my strategy and let people compliment each other, so I designed this web app for ITP community. ITP students often encounter frustration and stress when working towards their creative endeavor. I hope through receiving and giving compliments, this app can give more encouragement and moral support to people in the ITP community.

This app uses express and SQL database, and it is deployed on Heroku. The database saves all compliments people entered. This app is intended to be installed at somewhere that many people pass by and can quickly interact with, for example, near the elevator or at hallway.

Classes

Dynamic Web Development, Quantified Humanists: Designing Personal Data

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The Nature of Internet

Stefan Skripak

“The Nature of Internet” is a critical object which highlights the self-destructive environmental consequences of internet usage.

https://www.stefanskripak.com

Description

Most daily internet users do not realize the full environmental impact of their browsing and streaming. In addition to the energy used to power our devices, the bandwidth served over the internet is stored in server farms with massive carbon footprints. In 2016, the IT sector used over 7% of the world's energy (equivalent to the whole aviation industry) and that amount will only continue to increase as services become faster and the reach of the internet broadens. “The Nature of Internet” seeks to illuminate this cost of internet usage and highlight the self-destructive nature of this behavior. As the user browses the internet, the heater inside of my sculpture is activated according to the amount of data they are using, which then increases the speed at which the iceberg inside will melt. As the melted ice collects in the circuitry it will eventually lead to a “short circuit”, shutting off the connected computer and preventing any further usage.

Classes

Critical Objects, Quantified Humanists: Designing Personal Data

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Life expectancy calculator

Karina Hyland Hernandez

Self-tracking is not done for nothing; it’s to live better. And honestly, longer.

https://karinahy.com/life-expectancy-calculator

Description

As a response to the rapidly growing Quantified Self movement and the obsession to defy death by keeping track of everything, this project’s purpose is to question to what extent do we rely on these methods. Why do people usually fail to maintain a tracking habit? How many aspects do you need to track continuously to gather a reliable conclusion?
The life expectancy calculator is a questionnaire that will determine how many years you have left to live. Instead of calculating this number with a common method (health, genetics, age, etc.) I am proposing that your life expectancy depends strictly on the amount of things you track about yourself. In other words, how many things you do to improve some aspect of your life by using a digital tracking device.
In an ironic language, the calculator asks you a variety of questions about any self-tracking practice that you may have done during the past month. The scale is defined by 9 ranges of life expectancy portrayed by a fictional character. These characters are inspired by the characters in the animated series “Sponge Bob”. They include two easy recognizable characters that represent the extreme ranges. The first one is represented by a version of Squidward looking extremely beautiful. As a metaphor of “live fast, die pretty”. On the other hand, a fish jerky on a wheelchair barely living is the highest score in the scale. The rest of the characters represent the different ranges based on the life span of these aquatic animals.
This project proposes that even if we keep track of many things, in the end the numbers are just a reference to conclude what aspects we could change about us. The one who really knows how to be happier, is ourselves.

Classes

Quantified Humanists: Designing Personal Data

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Wander Compass

David Azar

Wander Compass is a wearable that takes you to streets where you've never been before.

https://wander-compass.herokuapp.com/

Description

We are creatures of habit. Our everyday commute is the same, and we tend not to take a longer, more scenic route in order to prioritize efficiency and time. In that process, we don't see beautiful, unpredictable things that contribute to our creative subconscious.

But what if there was something to nudge us to make a change, even for a few minutes, and help us discover unique spots and places around the city?

Wander Compass is a wearable that goes around the back of your neck. It connects to your phone via Bluetooth and tracks your GPS location. Whenever you reach an intersection, the compass will vibrate on the back of your head or on either sides of your neck to indicate you where to go next. It keeps a record of the streets that you've visited, so it will always take you to a new location.

Classes

Homemade Hardware, Playful Experiences, Quantified Humanists: Designing Personal Data

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Pleasure Principal

Arnab Chakravarty, Gabriella Garcia

A vibrator that rewards you for creativity, battery charged by making art.

https://pleasureprincipal.me

Description

This speculative proof of concept explores how behavioral intervention and self-tracking can stimulate creativity, literally. By tuning erotic reward toward art-making, we can recursively elevate both art and pleasure toward the virtue of bringing more imagination into the world, and honor the sexual response system for its purpose of creation. When a user interacts with the drawing app, their time spent doodling is sent to a database which translates to a number of minutes the device will power for.

Classes

Quantified Humanists: Designing Personal Data, Rest of You