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Input Log | Week 14

On Friday, I played SOMA, a science fiction survival horror video game. To some extent, it is more of a psychologically thriller. The game examines the philosophical questions of  humanity, cyborgs, and ethics. Are people still considered human when their consciousness is copied into a computer? Players need to make ethical decisions throughout the game. They could choose whether to be humane or be a killing machine. The protagonist himself, as a surprising revelation, is discovered by the player a robot as well. Though I haven’t finish the game, the world building of the game is interesting explore.

I also played Always Sometimes Monsters, a RPG game where it is all about making choices. I played this game before but didn’t finish. This week, I revisit the game but with moral choices design in mind. The game seems to be a great example of subtle moral choices. The protagonist is broke, a writer who doesn’t write anymore, and is still not over their past relationship. Most of the time, you are offered the options yet they are not in the obvious choose A or B way. For example, you have the option to help the old lady next door with groceries and take all the money from the bank card. But it is not an obvious choice, rather it is an action you could perform. The ethics in the game is really not black and white. Considering different circumstances, with different mindsets, players may have different understanding on the morality of their choices in the game.

I interviewed some of my friends on the topic of staying alone at home as a kid. I wanted to make an interactive story about this. They shared some of their childhood fear and anxiety, which is really helpful.

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Project | Smart Wallet Documentation

For the Frankinbuild, initially, my idea of having a smart wallet is to have it to control spending, as a way to budget and a way to trace financial credits. My inspirations are drawn from real-life experiences by looking at bank account statements and my own wallet. I didn’t think it would look much different than a regular wallet.

https://alexbecreative.tumblr.com/post/172596722510/project-speculative-design-inspirations

I was imagining it could do everything a budgeting app could do, and maybe even more. At this point, it seems like the digital screen behind the wallet could do everything a smart phone does. At first, I present smart wallet as a positive and convenient technology. 

Back of the wallet, a digital screen and even a device ID as if it is a smart phone.

Front of the wallet has some kind of lock control which only the user could open.

Overall, the size of the Frankinbuild  is relatively small and the shape is soft made with cardboard, paper and tape.

For the first draft, I started to think about the story behind the wallet. At this point, I come up with the idea of government surveillance through smart wallets disguised as a convenient technology. 

https://alexbecreative.tumblr.com/post/172900574200/project-the-story-of-smart-wallet-bulletpoints

I also realized I was kind of ambitious in brainstorming the functions for smart wallet. So I minimized it by making it so that there’s only an identity strip at the back of the wallet instead of digital screen. However, the user would need to connect their other digital devices to the wallet. I realized that this is not the best idea because connecting other digital devices minimized the functions the wallet itself has.

For this draft, I used tape, cardboard and used a suede-kind of fabric which I used later throughout. The shape is quite similar to the Frankinbuild while become larger in size.

At this point, the functions it has is not quite thought-out. One of them including biological electrics conductor that recognize the user. However, this idea does not seem scientifically realistic at this point.

For the next prototype, the shape of the wallet is quite different--its has more of a box shape. This is because I wanted to demonstrate security of the wallet since I describe it as anti-theft. It shouldn’t be so easy to crack open if someone else take it. This prototype is made with wood glued together by rubber cement and tape. The flipping I did for the top cover of the wallet is kind of similar to the previous prototype but more seamless. The size is smaller than previous one but still quite thick. 

Function and story-wise, the idea of a digital screen comes back, but it definitely has more limiting functions than I first brainstormed. For story, I wrote a fictional blog from the future and comments for it. The blog in fact documents the history, functions of smart wallets and exposes the government surveillance background story. The comments shows the responses and perhaps the society construction at that point. 

https://alexbecreative.tumblr.com/post/173134642550/project-the-story-of-smart-wallet

For the high-res prototype, I was thinking of more automatic sorting function, so I made it thinner. The digital screen is now in the front and fingerprint is now in the back to make it more intuitive to use (don’t have to flip to open wallet). I used acrylic, which is my final material. However, I still used rubber cement but it doesn’t work as well with acrylic as there’s less friction. So this prototype is really not stable.

For  the final prototype, I used hot glue gun that makes the prototype much more stable, and a tape with some thickness, which helps soften the surface and edges of the acrylic. It becomes slightly more comfortable to hold. There are now two fingerprint panels in the back, where people could use either one to unlock when holding with both hands. There is a wire/spring inside the wallet to represent that the wallet could push cash and cards when users need. I also used magnets instead of tape.

Throughout, I really struggled with the functions. For final, I simplified them to five main things:

1. tap, select and make transaction

2. cash counting

3. transaction recording & checking

4. GPS tracking

5. Identity recognition through fingerprint

As presentation, I made multiple twitter account. One of them is a smart wallet official accounts which shows updates on the wallet, promotional text etc that demonstrate the history of the wallet.  

https://twitter.com/smart_wallet_

There are also a number of other accounts that would make comments and like the posts, because I wanted to show how different personas would respond to  smart wallet.

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Project | Smart Wallet High-Res Prototype

For presentation, I might create a website promoting the smart wallet or a better conspiracy-sounding blog post & comments.

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Response | Museum of Future

Original text here.

The starting descriptions and scenes seem to demonstrate a kind of monotony in our speculative future, which seems unsettling to me, because there’s the fear that such design would lead to a completely uniformity in the future. But later in the article, it states that there should be cultural specificity within design. This idea of design that fits the context seems to be a really promising idea for the future and could be a very positive thing. Designs that are believable and immersive like this could indicate the direction for future technologies 

But on the other hand, having a set design might limit our perceptions for the future. There is also the need for being ideologically neutral in designs like this perhaps because “If you can render the future in advance, after all, maybe you can also control it”. Though I wonder if design really have this much power.

To me, designs in fact allows us to be optimistic for the future, just like Tellart’s work related to the environment. Designs create something that we would want to work towards. Even if we are creating something out of dystopia, we then can learn what we should avoid for future technologies. So I think designs can be motivating with reasonable specifications.

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Input Log | Week 13

On Friday, I watched the movie The Quiet Place in theater. The movie has a very dynamic soundtrack that distinguishes itself from typical horror films. The theme of quietness has an interesting effect, which makes audiences more sensitive to any sounds in the movie, even in theater.  Since I watched it with a group of engineering students, their comments on the movie were really interesting. They notice the illogical aspects of the film’s and even offered solutions for the characters living in the post-apocalyptic world in the movie.

I was studying in the library with some friends and they were discussing on various topics, including asking each other seemingly pointless but fun “would you rather” questions in some imaginary scenario found on the internet. For example, would you rather read mind or teleport? Would you give up wifi or AC if you must? Such questions might be really absurd but they seem to be inspirational for fictional world-building. It is also interesting to hear about different perspectives and arguments of choosing each side. 

I played a game Papers, Please. Players is placed as a border control officer, reviewing papers from people who intend to enter the country. The level progresses as more documents need to be reviewed, with anecdotes here and there. An interesting mechanism that put players under some pressure is that the amount of people you process is directly related to your earnings, which is directly related to how much your could spend for and take care of your family. This puts players in the mindset of moral dilemma: do you rush through things each day and provide more for your family? Do you let someone in because they plead for their circumstances? Would you be ruthless and detailed in reviewing those papers? Moral choices are embedded in the system of the game play.

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Project | The Story of Smart Wallet

The Things You Do Not Know About Smart Wallet

Date: 04/18/2028

By Anonymous

Dear readers, if you are smart, you should STOP using smart wallet.

You may ask why? Why should I stop using such a convenient technology? Just one tap, some quick swipe and select, you could make a payment or transfer so easily. Not to mention security with identity verification and GPS tracker in the wallet. No one could ever steal it!

If this is what you think, you are naive. Have you ever consider the GOVERNMENT could have stolen from you? Perhaps not the physical wallet, but the data, the financial information! EVERY PIECE of YOUR information is exposed to government surveillance!

Now let me acknowledge you some history of the smart wallet, some intell I dug out from years of research.

You may remember the slogan “Secure what you own, transfer with a breeze, use smart wallet.” or “Be smart, use smart.” from the advertising campaign in 2025. I call it the “year of brainwash”. Do you remember in the same year, there were numerous news and reports, such as “Men Got Back His Wallet Using the Latest Smart Wallet Technology”. So many people were convinced in that year that they need smart wallet to keep up with the new payment trends.

These campaigns, though portraying smart wallets as commercial products, were in fact sponsored by the government! Do you know why smart wallets were first introduced? Before smart wallets take over our country, businesses avoid paying taxes by accepting “cash only”, which makes their profits untraceable. Black markets existed by trading with only cash. Internal Revenue Service finally decided to resolve this issue by introducing smart wallets for businesses, which are significantly bigger than the portable ones people own now. The amount of cash can be counted using the “wallet”, and such information is then uploaded to the cloud into government’s databases. Businesses are willing to own one of those smart machines as they were promoted as anti-theft and easy accounting purposes. 

But of course just tracing the transactions of businesses is not enough. Individual transactions were still quite untraceable. Government decided to cooperate with the largest tech company XXX in 2024 to mass produce personal smart wallet. They updated the business smart wallets to connect with personal ones so that people can make a payment in stores just by taping, and then the right amount of cash would pop out. But of course, since smart wallets can count the amount of cash in your wallet, all that information is uploaded to government databases. In the beginning, the wallet had a screen saying the owner’s name and contact information, powered by one AAA battery.

Then they decided to combine the cash information and card/bank information of an individual to have every single person’s financial profile. This is when they introduced the “tap, select payment method and transfer” function, as well as the GPS and  fingerprint recognition. But it’s funny that those old versions needed to be recharged, unlike the solar-powered ones people have now.

Nowadays, we see brands collaborations and variety of smart wallet starting to occur. You can even have a Gucci smart wallet. To me, there is no difference! No matter how rich you are, you are under surveillance.

I hereby state that these are the TRUE history. Be smart, do NOT use smart wallet!

Comments

user210948: Hey anonymous writer! Why so cynical? We all know it’s no secret the gov would extract information by all means. They need data, we need tech that makes our life easier. Common sense, period.

hello-hey: I’m terrified...just got an ancient wallet from a thrift store...but do they even accept swiping or inserting your cards in the store now?

becauseYea: Well I have nothing to hide, so why would I stop using it?

uuuuuu: This is absurd. Are you telling me to stop using smart wallet and go back to those old-school money bags and bring actual cash with me everywhere and getting robbed??? This is as ridiculous as abandoning my EPhone 300 and go back to...iPhone 7 or something.

noJustNo: You have a fair point. Privacy of our financial information is a real issue here. Our consent needs to be given for any use of our information.

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Project | Lo-fi Prototype 2 for Smart Wallet

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Input Log | Week 12

On Friday, I played a game Bulb Boy with some friends. It is a point and click adventure game developed by a small team of two. It is described by the developers as a horror adventure, but I would think of it less of a horror, but an absurd and quirky one (in a very stylistic way). The art style is really unique, colored with shades of greens. What’s specially interesting in this game are the characters. The monsters in the game are derived from real-life entities. What’s special about the main characters that the player control is that they themselves seems to be the root of the horror, especially with their uncanny laughter after beating each monster.

For my interactive narrative class, we used Twine to create text narrative games. We reviewed some of my class’s short games and I find it really inspiring that people have many different approaches and styles using the same engine (medium?). People use humor very differently and use text as a medium to create different feels. Some text can be very fragmented to represent the mindset of an animal character. Some can be conversational as if speaking to the player. I learned that there’s so much potential for me to make something unique and fun.

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Project | Lo-fi Prototype 1 for Smart Wallet

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Project | The Story of Smart Wallet (Bulletpoints)

- Businesses avoid paying taxes by accepting “cash only”, which makes their profits untraceable. Internal Revenue Service finally decided to resolve this issue by introducing smart wallet for businesses, promoted as anti-theft. 

-Just tracing the transactions of businesses is not enough. Government decided to cooperate with the largest tech company XXX in 2030 to mass produce personal smart wallet. At first, they sent out prototypes for testing.

-News report coming out, “Men Got Back His Wallet Using the Latest Smart Wallet Technology”.  Promotional campaigns “Secure what you own, use smart wallet.” More believe in the benefits of owning a smart wallet.

-Brands collaborations and variety of smart wallet starting to occur.

-In the beginning, the wallet had a screen saying the owner’s name and contact information. Powered by one AAA battery.

-Started to adopt fingerprint recognition. Rechargeable.

-Invention of identity strip and no longer need to be powered by electricity. Biological electrics conductor to recognize owner.

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Input Log | Week 11

On Friday, I played the board game Risk with a group of friends. We played it before, when it was the first time I got to know this game. At that time, I wasn’t really thinking of anything besides continuing the game so was only playing with instincts. Replaying this game, I got more familiar with the rules and systems of the game. My second play allows me to learn more strategies and to analyze more. This makes me think of the dynamics of the game systems, where it allows the players to experience different narratives by having a systematic set of rules yet room for players’ own creation.

We also played another RPG horror game Paranoiac. The story of the game deals with psychological struggles. A key verb I would use to describe the mechanics of the game would be “hide”. The map of the house is constant and player unlocks room as they proceed. Each night, the protagonist need to choose to hide in the places in this house. The safe places each night would be different. This design choice seems to be viable because it gives some variety and uncertainty in the game play, but the assets of the game such as the map design stays stable. 

On Thursday, I went to MakerSpace with some friends and they showed me some electronic engineering tools. They showed me what they were working on with wearable technology. One thing interesting to note is that they are able to program things into the physical applications with Arduino. 

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Response | How to Use Design to Tell a Story

Here is the original article.

I think it’s really interesting the author describe design as “a language of expression”. Usually when I think of expression, I think of artistic expressions and less of the practical designs in my surroundings. But when I read on, this idea starts to make sense to me. A design could be expressing the need for its existence.

The author suggests to design with a reason instead of pure decorations, but I’m not entirely sure if every element in a design needs to be practical. Because I feel like the visuals or the aesthetics are a part of the design as well and perhaps they are a part of the design stories. For example, the evolution of the design of iPhone to some extent, does represent an aesthetic trend of minimalism.

I think the idea of creating a cultural and social environment surrounding the design really resonates with the speculative design project. In order for the existence of the design to make sense, we really have to think through the context for the design. The author also suggests something that gives me more of a direction when they say to set a scene, which possibly is inspired by something and we should try to make an effort to discover the particular thing that inspired our feelings. I’m still not quite sure how to adopt this into the story of my speculative design project but I feel like this is a good thinking method even if when I design something else such as a game.

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Project | Frankenbuild of Smart Wallet

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Project | The Timeline of Projector

1895: The Magic Lantern 

It is an image projector putting pictures painted, printed or produced photographically on transparent plates (usually made of glass), with one or more lenses, and a light source such as candles or oil lamps.

1925: The Filmstrip Projector

This projector added the use of filmstrips. It was used to show educational films in classrooms. The teacher could turn a knob on the side in order to pause any image being presented. It no longer relies on oil lamps and candles, but instead a light bulb illuminating through a printed slide.

1940: The Opaque Projector

This projector doesn’t use another medium like filmstrips, but allows the user to project printed material or small objects. It projects the object by shining a bright lamp on the material to be viewed and directing the reflected light through a projection lens. But users need to remain mindful of the heat generated by the light source and the potential for damage to heat sensitive documents or objects.

1950: The Slide Projector

The first patented slide projector was created by Kodak. Unlike opaque projectors, slide projectors require that the presented material be transferred to a 35mm slide allowing the user to project with more versatility.

1960: The Overhead Projector

The overhead projector allows a printed transparent sheet to be placed on the overheads source of light, and then would be conveyed onto a wall or screen using the lamp and optics that are built into the projector. Users are able to annotate the projected image while presenting.

1980: Digital Projection Panels

The digital projection panel consists of a large LCD, electronics, cooling fan, and a plastic or metal enclosure with a glass plate on both sides of the LCD. It consisted of an electrical sheet encased in the hard shell of the projector that are unfolded to allow light from the overhead projector to pass through the LCD, and could be plugged into a computer to convey images.

1984: The Home Theater (LCD) Projector

LCD (liquid- crystal display) projectors projected a light beam from a metal halide lamp that passes through a prism that contains liquid crystals to help control and direct the intense light beam supplied by the metal halide lamp. This surpassed the digital projector by providing video in higher quality and better display.

1990: The Computer Projector

The computer projector combined the overhead projector and the digital projection panel into one device making it smaller and more portable. It can be compatible with most computers.

1992: The Video Projector

It’s an image projector that receives a video signal and projects the corresponding image on a projection screen using a lens system. 

2000:  The Multimedia Projector

A multimedia projector is a compact, high resolution, full-color projector capable of projecting text, images, video and audio with more efficiency. The projector will takes inputs from a computer, DVD player, VCR, CD player or storage device. 

2005: The Pocket Projector

The pocket projectors sees a decrease in size and is more portable. A bunch of LEDs acts as its light sources, each of them can be connected in circuit with a battery or plugged directly into an outlet. This version is more portable while still keeps the quality compared to its predecessors. 

https://www.timetoast.com/timelines/evolution-of-the-projector

http://www.projectorcentral.com/projectors-evolution.htmhy899

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Project | Speculative Design Inspirations

Eventually, I decided to design a smart wallet. Perhaps ten years from now, majority of population would own a smart wallet. The wallet can be connected to the owner’ other electronic devices such as through an app on their phone. This wallet can be set up so that each individual could control their spending per day, per week, per month etc. If the individual spends more than their limit in their settings, they should get a warning. If they system detects credit issues, the person needs to file an application.

My inspirations were mostly drawn from real-life experiences.  The look should be somewhat similar to a regular wallet but smaller in size, with digital screen on the outside.

As for the concept of it, I was looking over my bank balance on Bank of America app and I thought of spending, credit, and budget. If we are limited by a physical object in terms of spending, perhaps we could follow our budget better. Also, if the wallet is connected to banks, banks could track credit better.

Nicole gives me another inspiration. The wallet can also be kept from theft if it can identify the the owner. When another person try to use the wallet, it cannot be opened. 

One feature that I would like to adopt from smart phones nowadays is to use fingerprint or facial recognition to unlock the wallet. If to even think more unrealistically,  perhaps the wallet could recognize owner’s brain electrical activity and pops out the card the owner if thinking of using. Another thing is  that the wallet is connected with GPS, and just like the Find My iPhone function, you could Find My Wallet.

The wallet may also have the functions as Apple Pay and other similar apps. Perhaps by taping the wallet you could just pay instantly at stores. It could also take the function of a subway card, this is inspired by the subway system in Shanghai, China where people could tap their phone using Ali Pay or WeChat pay to take the subway.

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Input Log | Week 10

On Friday, together with some friends I played a psychologically horror game Lisa. It is a platformer set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, where the battle mechanism is turn-based. After playing Lisa for a while, we realized we were no where near finished, so we decided to play a RPG game with pixel graphics The Witch House.

Something I noticed playing these two games in a group is that though some games are sometimes designed for a one-person play-through/control, people are still able to play them in a group. There is still a potential layer of social interactions in those game. However, there’s a difference in those two games in terms of the versatility and suitability for a group play-through. The experiences playing these games in a group makes me realize that The Witch House is more versatile in having social interactions than Lisa. When playing Lisa, though we take turns in controls, the game progress slowly and a lot of the mechanism involves repetitive actions of moving around and get into a turn-based fight. Some of us lost focus as the story also progresses slowly. It seems that this game is more suitable for an individual to play and experience alone. On the other hand, The Witch House seems more fast-paced. Though the characters have the standard movement control, there were small jump-scares and surprises in themes that make it more exciting. Sometimes the control requires more diligence as some monsters might be chasing after you, in which case we would take turns to achieve the level. There are also puzzles involved in the game, which would result in group discussions and a sense of corporation among us.

I also played The Red Strings Club, which is a point and click, cyberpunk narrative game. The topics covered in this game is very contemporary and also involves speculative design. It’s a futuristic speculative story about mind-control and the potential of AI domination, which kind of reminds me of our speculative design project. The art style and music in this game is really interesting and together create a mood. It’s something I could learn from. This game also reminds me of the interactive narrative class I’m taking. During the game-play, you seems to make choices, somewhat similar to choose your own adventure. However, the narrative, though seem to be influenced by the choices players make, is really designated and would leads to basically the same ending. So the interactivity in the narrative is actually limited.

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Project | Idea for Speculative Design

1. A wallet that controls your spending. The wallet would link to your credit profile, bank account etc. You could put cards and cash in it, and it would read how much you spend every time you take those things out. Once you hit a certain spending limit (per day/per week/per month), you are not allowed to open the wallet again until you fill out an application.

2. Emotion controller. Maybe something wear on your head. There’s parameters you could set at the beginning, e.g. happiness 100%, anger 20%, sadness 20% so that your brain only experience X% of the emotions. The device would detect your current emotions and control them under the parameter settings. This is a dystopia device.