Storied objects: design thinking with time

Abstract

The traditional approach to the design of everyday objects is articulated by form and function. This thesis aims to model an approach to design thinking that extends the praxis of form and function to include the expression of time. Designing objects to explicitly express the passage of time extends their useful-useable-desirable quality to include a storied expression of their everyday existence. We introduce a design synthesis framework with a set of principles for object-story-construction. These are used to refigure a recorded history to project an object-centric perspective. Our principles and method suggest a new class of objects that could be present in future spaces. Situating point of view, experiential compression of time, and the privileging of extraordinary over ordinary events within a collection of records are critical to the art of history-making. In our approach, the object is instrumented with sensors to continuously capture the passage of time in an audio stream. This stream is parsed in order to highlight extraordinary events from the perspective of the object. These events are then arranged such that the object can express its everyday history to humans and/or other objects in a timely and aesthetically engaging way: we call this "audio time-lapse". The audio time-lapse provides a temporal compression of the historical stream. This thesis considers how the capability for recording and expressing history can add aesthetic and cultural value - a "storiedness" - to the object.