Dating prostheses

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description

Interaction Design research / HFK Bremen

Transcript of Dating prostheses

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Keywords: Design Noir, Critical design, design fiction & speculative design, satire

Abstract

“Internet reflects human nature in all its imperfections while the material world of consumer products only reflect idealized notions of correct behavior.” (Raby & Dunne, Design Noir)

Situation overview: Online dating has never been preciser, faster, more ubiquitous. It started as a matchmaker service in 1965 initiated by a Harvard student Jeff Tarr, who created algorithm on IBM 1401 that would match questionnaires with similar responses.

Now we have thousands of utterly precise dating websites for any kind of preferences.

Question:critique-driven, problem driven, need driven, research

How can we fill in the gaps of the love algorithm in finding love? ( How far can we go in providing information that would match us accurately with our possible partner)

“We shape our tools and then our tools shape us.”- Marschal McKluhan.

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Digital tools dictate the temporal dynamics we live in. The digital dating tools of today can answer to these requirements, they are precise, accurate, connect space and accustom and embrace and complement the global digitalization and glorification of “busyness”.

Dan Slater in his recently published book “Love in the Time of Algorithms, What Technology Does to Meeting and Mating” states: “Like the sexual revolution of the 1960s and ’70s, the digital revolution is forcing us to ask new questions about what constitutes “normal”: Why should we settle for someone who falls short of our expectations if there are thousands of other options just a click away?… we have, for better and worse, embraced technology in the most intimate aspect of our lives”.

People divorce more, change partners more because they are aware of the “market” outside, of the numerous choices and alternatives where the dating scene resembles a huge supermarket where each product displays its specified information.

The tools are our extensions, they help us go where we are not able to go by ourselves. Also, the love algorithm can only take us as far as the first date. From there on, you have to go on your own.

According to a recent study from 2012 by the Association for Psychological Science the most crucial for predicting the success or failure of relationships are:

*the communication patterns

*problem-solving tendencies

*sexual compatibility

Dating tries to beat the theory of propinquity (one of the main factors leading to interpersonal attraction according to social psychology), but it doesn’t seem to help people find these tree things out. Therefore a speculative solution in form of an artifacts (prostheses) would aid the “first date”. Trough a conversation which is the only mean to show “communication patterns” with the dating prostheses the potential couple can explore their sexual compatibility even before being intimate with each other and put their problem-solving tendencies to the test.

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Speculative solution

“The artifacts need to be grounded in how people really do behave, viewing values as raw material and shaping them into objects”(Dunne & Raby, Design Noir).

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//Sex organ display tag *sexual compatibility

This is an analogue extension to people’s digitally enhanced needs. Wearable display tag that extends the field of precise information and enhancing the chances of the “perfect” match by displaying the “un obvious” results. Contains information with measurements of the users genitals (dimensions, shape, color).

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This artifact falls into the category of objects that provide complex aesthetic psychological experience of everyday life.

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//Pheromone container *sexual compatibility

Our true body smell is disguised by our hygiene practices and hair and body care products. The dating couple offer each other their own “laboratory extracted” pheromone ( a chemical factor that triggers a social response in members of the same species )

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//Electronic pheromone *sexual compatibility

In case your pheromone offer is not excepted you can “disperse it” into the air trough your pulse measuring watch that also contains a sample of your own pheromone inside. When your heart beat raises the wrist watch emits your previously stored pheromones. It is an electronic device that enhances the person’s natural body reactions.

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//VR crisis simulator (personality crash test)* communication patterns

The daters reveal their reaction in complicated situations, their problem-solving tendencies even on the first date. Reactions to situations like: stresses, coping with illness, bankruptcy, midlife crises, death of a family or friend could be tested with a simulated virtual hyperreality crises scenario.

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“Design noir focuses on how psychological dimensions can be expanded, about product misuse and abuse, where desire overflows it’s material limits and subverts the function of everyday objects, this product genre addresses the darker, conceptual models of need limited to cinema and literature.”

(Dunne & Raby, Design Noir)

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Methodology

“We don’t have to use them, the imagination of using them is an effect on us… The effectiveness of design noir wears off with increased familiarity.”(Dunne & Raby, Design Noir)

1. Designing the artifacts

2. Production of the artifacts

3. Photo-story (3 different dating situations aided by dating prostheses)

4. Conducting an online survey that makes the idea of a dating prosthetics tangible

5. Visualization of the survey results

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Bibliography

• “Design Noir: The secret life of electronic objects”- Anthony Dunne & Fiona Raby,MIT Press, 2001

• “Herzian Tales”- Anthony Dunne,MIT Press, London, 2005

• “Love in the Time of Algorithms: What Technology Does to Meeting and Mating”, Dan Slater, Pinguin, 2013

• “Online Dating: A Critical Analysis From the Perspective of Psychological Science”- Eli J. Finkel, Paul W. Eastwick, Benjamin R. Karney, Harry T. Reis, and Susan Sprecher, Association for Psychological Science, 2012

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