Context

Adults and children live in their own imaginary worlds despite the fact that they are living in the same space. Their everyday lives are sometimes incompatible and their physical differences can form separate territories in the same space.

Description

Plable is a table, which has a normal tabletop and an imaginary world on the underside.
With this table, children can build their own imaginary world on the underside of the table, which is their secret special place, with opposite gravity. Adults can use the surface of the table as usual.
The movement, such as moving tea cups, that happens on the tabletop will be a trigger of the happenings on the underside. They can show children some exciting tricks and do their own things at the same time.
The connection of the surfaces gets children and parents together.
It also might help children and adults to play together more often through their normal activities in the everyday environment.

The idea

The idea comes from my old memories. When I was a child, I like to put sticker everywhere in house, and my father hated it and took off all of them when I was sleeping. However, one day, I realised there were some stickers left underside of the table, then started to think of that as my secret space. Since then, I put many stickers on the underside and tried to create my world.

As can be seen with this experience, there are some children’s territories in a house and normally they are in very low level or in narrow places, in other words, these are places that are too confined for adults and they rarely look in.

Moreover, another experience expanded this idea. I have a nephew, who is three years old, and I played with him sometimes. Maybe most children are the same, once they like one play, they keep asking to do it again and again. I remember, it is very difficult have their own time to do something relaxing when people have a little child. When I started to look for the way that kids and adults play together, I wanted to give parents some space to do their own things to treat themselves, like reading papers or having a cup of tea.

Then, I started to design this table.

Brief

How to tell the message that you want to say, but really hard to say?

Description

Sometimes we should not say something, even if we really want to say. If we have to be polite to others and just be patient not to say the words, or feel embarrassed to say it.

For example, when you have a guest in your house, it is very difficult to tell them that you want to go to bed and want them to go home. This is a common problem and there are many classic tips to tell the message through some actions, such as looking at the clock or stretching out your body. Even if you kept sending these signals, some guests do not understand your message and be relax in your house. This is one of the proofs that you gave them the full treatment and you succeed to do, so you feel happy, but feel tired at the same time. It is the time to use the cup. Serve them the last cupper and drink it in calm. When your guest finishes the tea, they must realise it is the time to go home.

You can tell them the message without saying the words. And the words are straight enough to let them understand.

The message ‘come again’ is one example, you can put any message on the bottom of a cup. For instance, if you want to proposed to your partner, you can put the message ‘marry me.’ on the cup, and have warm nice tea with your partner. He/She will be amazed to find the message. Then the cup will become one of the romantic memorial things for a long time…

The brief

We started to be interested in these feature of lights and think of other ways to use light sockets.

The idea

Light is a unique electrical appliance.
There are too many lights in every room and we rarely use all of them at once. These lights are set in different places and have various types of switches. The light on the ceiling is especially interesting, because it has a switch on the wall away from light itself.

We started to be interested in these features of lights and think of other ways to use these places. We try not to think of these places just for a light, and think differently. Then we started to think of them as power supply working with a funny screw part. Moreover, we also interested in the fact that light bulbs have to be parasite to lamp and environments. From these two qualities, we made some gadget type of products and explore of the situation with the light.

The brief

Scientists are developing methods of growing meat in labs using animal cells. This area of research, called In Vitro-Cultured Meat Production raises all sorts of complex issues about the meaning of food, our relationship to animals (and nature), human values and behaviours, and even taboos.

Think about the different stages of the process: production, distribution, commodification, consumption and disposal. How it’s produced, what services, environments and products it might give rise to, and how human values and attitudes might change towards animals, nature, people, and taboos.

The purpose of the project is to explore how design can be used as a medium to draw attention to the social, cultural and ethical implications of ‘cultured meat’. Your design proposals should pose questions rather than provide answers, making complex issues tangible, and therefore debatable.

The idea

Cultivating the meats = cooking

Think about the difference between cultivated meat and natural meat.
Cultivated meat …
- does not need to be cooked.
- does not have a shape.
- takes a long time to grow.
- has never been rotten.
We can control everything to make a taste of meat, such as a flavour, a texture and a shape, through the process of growing meat. We can also make it bacteria-free, so the meat does not have to be cooked.

I focused on the process of growing the meat at home and imagined the story to
have a dinner party and explained it with a scenario film.

The brief

Science Museum Project :
‘My fantasy computer collection’

This project will allow you informed and contextualized access to the collection col- lections, which many hundreds of objects and machines lie in store at either Blythe House or Wroughton, and ask you to think about how best public access to these resources might be expanded in the future. To think, in fact, about what the com- puter ‘collection’ of the future might look like.

Our interests

Educational, but Playful

- The experience of the launch pad in science museum
- The education of science and technology through experience
- Experience as a trigger for the interests by using the fundamental idea of computers

Design an exhibition

Punched Card Exhibiton

The exhibition devided into two parts :
1. What are punched cards?
- The notion of punched cards
- The ways of using punched cards (looms, music box, computer) – How the notion of punched cards was developed to digital

2. Try using punched cards!
- Using same format punched cards for different outputs

The brief

Invent computer connected puppet.

Discription

To focus on the way of control the puppet, I decided to make a simple on screen puppet and tried to let users to understand the connection between the controller and the puppet easily.

wooden cross switch :
There are two switches to zoom in and out on the top of the wooden cross, two on the left back to control left arm and foot, and other two on the right back for left arm and foot. The position of the puppet is controlled by tilt of
the wooden cross. This switch is handy and easy to control.

metallic cross switch :
The positions of the switches are almost same as the wooden one’s. But this one is bigger (50 X 50 cm) and heavier. It demands us big effort and biceps and makes us tired. I tried to find out the relation between difficulty of the task and how much into it, but this metallic switch is too heavy to be absorbed.

The brief

Invent a mechanical puppet.

Discription

- What is ‘mechanical puppet’?

A puppet is a model that can be made to move. And ‘mechanical puppet’ is a puppet that can be made to move with mechanics. I thought the puppet with simple motion could be enjoyable, because people can understand how it
works straightaway. These are the points I considered as important things to create simple mechanical motions.
- It might have only one power point. Every motion is connected to and affects each other.
- It might have continuous movement. It should have a short span of repetition to attune to normal human perception.

- The purpose of making the puppet.

I focused on gear works and tried to understand how it works by combining many kinds of gears. I tried to change a direction of the gears and made some cranks. Then I put one motor into move all the gears at once.
On this project, I specially wanted to concentrate on finding out the gear system, so I used handy tool LEGO to make this puppet called ‘Rhino’. It can walk with six legs and looks like a robotic insect. Since it has started walking as its task, I had to think about friction and weight and some sort of physics. It was good experience to learn a lot of things through actually making the puppet.

The brief

What job can a dog use a mobile phone for?

The idea

Early idea: Social Space of dogs

Social dog meeting for owners, chat room via dogs. Extending the social contact between owners beyond the leash. Maybe something about transmitting the information of the owner or dog? you know how picky sometimes dogowners are of their purebreed dogs and how they donｫt want their dogs to mix with other halfbreed. so maybe info about the dog and his ancestry could be transmitted as well?

Research: Dog Society

We went to Hyde Park to ask about the relations between owners through their dogs. We could find the strong community has existed already without dog mobile phone.
— see the video of legworks.

Liberating the dog: remote control by instruction

By using mobile phones, dogs can be controll. They are basically trained well as sheep dogs, guide dogs and police dogs. So they can improvise in the urban environment. They will be given limited directional control through instruction from the phone or respond to sound signals in the environment.