A small design decision made in the movie is a coffee machine that dispenses different types of coffee to the passenger based on his travel class, by scanning a wristband that contains the passenger’s information. For example, an economy-class passenger like Jim has access to only a regular coffee, whereas a gold-class passenger like Aurora can get a latte. This smart coffee machine reminded me of a smart Japanese beverage vending machine that has an in-built camera that detects age and gender, and then displays drink recommendations based on the data it captures. You can read more about it here: http://retail-innovation.com/japanese-digital-vending-with-facial-recognition
On a random day, Kate received a video message on her device. The device started to play the message and to Kate’s surprise, she saw herself on it. The message warned her that she should not invite one of her classmates, Joe, to hang out after school. Kate thinks that the message was a prank therefore, chose to ignore it.
When she reached school, she realised that there was a class gathering that day and Joe marked that he was unable to make it. Kate found the accuracy of the message weird but brushed it off and eventually, continues to persuade Joe to attend it. He finally gave in and went ahead with the class but the next day, Joe did not turn up in school.
Subsequently, every morning before school, Kate will receive one video message warning her on the things she should not say or do to Joe. However, Kate continues to ignore those video messages.
One day when Joe suddenly did not turn up for school, Kate found it weird. Kate approached her two other friends and there was a sudden revelation that all of them are receiving weird messages in the morning. At that point, they realized that those messages were serving as a warning of Joe’s suicide.
As days passed, the three of them will come together and discuss their video messages. From there, they found out that Joe was suffering from depression. When Kate finally gathered courage to talk to Joe about it, she found out that he lost his parents on the day they hung out. This caused Joe to resent himself and has always been thinking of committing suicide since that day. However, things did not become better.
One fateful night, Kate received another message, asking them to go to Joe’s house. She rushed to Joe’s house to find Joe trying to commit suicide. Joe was perplexed about the situation as he did not mention his suicide plans to anyone. It was then that Kate told him about what was going on. Joe eventually broke down in front of Kate.
After that night, things got better, and Joe started to cherish his life together with his friends.
In the second dimension:
The three friends started to reminisce on their days together in front of Joe’s tombstone. They thought about the day they received the news that Joe had committed suicide and passed away. On that day, they recorded a video of themselves. The video consists of the things they wish they could tell their 18-year-old selves, to save their friend. At the end of the day, they left the graveyard together, thinking about Joe.
2. Method
The story will first show the video message that Kate received and how she ignores the video messages. Joe will start showing weird behavior that lead the group to confess everything that they have been receiving. It will slowly progress into how they work together and eventually, managed to save Joe.
The story will then move on to the second dimension where she did not manage to save Joe and the changes in their life without Joe. It will also show the origin on the videos.
3. Technology
The role of the device is to portray how the messages were sent from one dimension to another. It will also show how technology had advanced. The 3-dimensional video messages and the exclusion of phones in the world. The wristband will have to also show how people now video calls each other instead of texting and just normal phone calls.
I think that there is a need to create other materials to prove that the parallel dimensions do exist, and things can be transported from one dimension to another.
Science Fiction Movie: USS Callister (Black Mirror Season 4 Episode 1)
The small design decision I noticed in this movie is that the protagonist, Robert Daly, harvested DNA from saliva on a lollipop to steal Walton’s son’s DNA and create a clone for his virtual reality game. This cleverly illustrates the potential of saliva to replace blood (which is the golden standard) for DNA analysis in the near future, unbeknown to many. In fact, collecting DNA from saliva is less expensive than DNA from blood, and saliva yields high quantity high-molecular weight DNA. (Read more facts about pros and cons of using saliva for DNA analysis here: http://blog.dnagenotek.com/8-facts-most-people-dont-know-about-dna-from-saliva)
In the goblin world, goblins travel by flying cars and live in mushroom houses. They could also teleport to different time periods with time machine doors everywhere. They also have healing armour to heal themselves and other goblins, and build houses with a scanning property. This is to protect themselves and ensure that they will have a roof over their heads. They could also come up with any food they like simply by thinking about it and rubbing their tummy pocket. Ingredients will be formed and food will cook by itself in the kitchen.
Goblins have tasks and missions to execute in the human world. Every time they finished one mission, they are allowed to rest for 2 years in the goblin world. One day, a few goblins of power working in the heavens decided to mess up the system because they were unsatisfied of lack of rewards and rest given to goblins, including those of their family. They also felt unfair that they were not treated as well as fairies. So, they opened the heavens door for the goblins to escape to other worlds. Only goblins who had true unhappiness were able to escape.
The heaven gods found out and closed the doors in time. Only 20 goblins managed to escape. They went to the candy world, where everything in the world is made of candy. They tried to survive there, but regretted as they preferred living in the goblin world with their friends and family. Hence, they tried to make their way back to the goblin world, and kept sending messages to their fellow goblins for them to open the heavens door for them again. But it was in vain.
Hence, they stayed at the candy world, hoping to someday get back to goblin world. Over time, Hardworking Goblin fell in love with Pretty Candy. Forgetful Goblin also fell in love with Cute Candy. As time goes by, Pretty Candy and Cute Candy told their goblin partners that they have special powers to open the heavens door. The goblins were happy and wanted to go to goblin world to bring their family members to the candy world to live in, since they do not want to leave their partners. And they could not bring their candy partners into the goblin world. They came up with a plan to do so, but it would mean their partners might risk getting smashed by keeping the door open for a long time. Hence, the goblins would have to act as soon as possible.
The goblins went in, but their family members did not want to leave after hearing about how living in the candy world will be an aimless life, with no missions or goals. They also did not want to risk not being able to come back to their loved ones. Seeing that their attempts were futile, the goblins left, but just as the goblin door was closing, Hardworking Goblin changed his mind as he thought about his sick mother and went into the goblin world, attempting to pull Pretty Candy in. But the suction force was strong and prevented Pretty Candy to enter. By force, Pretty Candy was pulled in. However, in the goblin world, she started melting into a pool of sugar. Only her soul could move around. Devastated, Hardworking Goblin hired witches to help him put together his lover but they failed.
For a long time, Hardworking Goblin lived with the invisible soul of Pretty Candy, until his sick mother died. After that, they escaped into the candy world yet again, only to realise that candy world had been in disaster for years. There had been sugar tornado that crushed many houses. Hence, they tried to save the people and houses with their goblin powers as Pretty Candy has absorbed some goblin powers back in goblin world. They also had healing armour that can detect sickness, give out medicine and even operate surgeries for the people. They also possess scanners that can assess the damage done and restore houses the way they were. Their tummy pocket also allows them to come up with food to save these candy people. For 2 years, they rebuild the entire candy world and rescued the people, and Hardworking Goblin became crowned the king of the candy world.
The character list:
Hardworking Goblin
Forgetful Goblin
Hungry Goblin
Laughing Goblin
Pretty Candy
Cute Candy
HOW will you tell your story? –
Props, material and the role of devices:
Healing armour – inflatable balloon
Scanning property with antennas
Tummy pocket – food
Candy characteristics:
Bumper for them to bounce into anywhere of the universe, including goblin world
The cultural probes I came up with were for my friend who makes earrings out of clay.
The cultural probes were made with the intention of getting to know the creative practitioner a little bit better, and also to better understand the creative process that the practitioner goes through as she creates her earrings, with a slight focus on how/where she gets her inspiration for the different patterns and designs that she comes up with.
Questions from the question booklet.
Activities from the activity booklet.
She mentions that her workspace is “always a mess”. Her love for nature is also emphasised through her choice of pattern, but definitely doing her craft in nature may not be the most feasible at the moment.
Gave us the idea for our story world, where people are crafting on the train. Also noted is the need for a flat surface.
Storyworld Linda is a makeup artist is facing a huge crisis.
It’s 2025 and the threat of global warming is more real than ever. Singapore has recently passed a law that requires all materials to be recycled and reused. No one is allowed to produce more than a kg of trash.
Revised Storyworld It’s 1 August 2025, five years after EOD, or Earth Overshoot Day. The scientists had warned us in 2018 that Earth close to reaching an ecological debt, whereby there’s a deficit in natural resources caused by the population’s overconsumption. And of course, nobody believed it. Even Trump himself said that global warming is a “bogus”, a ruse conjured by scientists to request for more funds for their research. Well, little did he know that all the findings reported were true: we were indeed living on the last few dregs of resources. Words says that as soon as the electricity at the White House went down, the president immediately came to an absurd decision that it’s time to go green albeit too late.
In Singapore, we are glad to have been consistently managing our resources so our EOD has been extended, with a price of course. A law that restricts our waste production to a single kilogram a year, to allow our landfills to have time to decompose into the land. We’ve switched over to electric powered-everything. How do we manage to do so you may ask. Spin classes. Those bike that people pay horrendous amounts for? They generate enough to power the entire nation.
Me? I’m Linda. Just an average makeup artist trying to make a living, while trying to not flout the rules. Law by law as the ‘Poreans calls it. NEA deemed my MAC cosmetic caboodle “too environmentally unfriendly”, reasons unknown. And now I have to make something out of thin air to carry all my equipment around. Maybe YouTube might have some DIY videos back in the days. Before EOD.
In the year 2150, pizzas are driven to extinction due to the extreme shrinkage of carb diets due to the fad Keto dieting that made everyone grow independent of carbs. And how everyone is on the go now so small-food take outs are all the rage while bulky large pizzas are the age of the past.
So Peter the Pizzaiolo, grandson of Italian pizza-making prodigy, Penelope Pepperoni, never giving up his dreams of continuing family tradition, decides to make Pizzas great again.
SO HE INVENTED THE PIZZA HAT, combining the fad diets to make small pizzas now available on the go and also reaches out to people’s nostalgia to restore the glory of pizzas again!
Finalised Microstory #1 (Darren)
‘Ring ring ringgggg …!’ The loud and quirky alarm broke the silence in the room. Bobby, with his face still planted on his pillow, reluctantly stretched his hands out to reach out for his iPhone XXVII. He slowly raised his head and slowly open his eyelids to glance at the time. His eyes widened.
‘IT’S ALREADY 10AM?! I’M SOOOOOOOOOOO LATE FOR WORK! PETER IS GOING TO KILL ME’, yelled Bobby.
On his future-high-def-AR phone screen (like JARVIS’s UI in Iron Man) was 20 missed calls from his boss, Peter, the Pizzaoilo. There was one text message left in a following notification: ‘YOU’RE LATE FOR WORK PETER!!!! WHERE ARE MY INGREDIENTS!’ – every character in caps, demarking.
Bobby leapt out of bed, hurriedly put on his signature green jacket and held his hair back before placing on his work cap. He was two hours late for work and he was in charge of preparing the ingredients for the wacky experiments for the invention that will revive pizza for mankind, the PizzaHat.
Finalised Microstory #2 (Karin)
As Bobby was making his way to Peter’s house for his daily job, he heard the usual Boom! Crash! Thud! of Peter tinkering about in his workshop/former pizza parlour. He sighed and entered the space thinking for the umpteenth time when this was going to end. At least there are free pizzas for me he muttered to himself.
“Free pizzas for you? Oh boy when I’m done with this machine there’ll be free pizzas for everyone!!!” exclaimed Peter suddenly from his side. “Or at least for a day, then we open for business officially” he pondered.
Peter was always so optimistic about everything, even when his family-run pizza parlour closed down and everyone had shifted on to the Keto diet officially, Peter was still determined to #makepizzagreatagain. Instead of letting people’s smaller appetites get to him, he adapted around it and focused on creating the ultimate device that would still get people to eat pizza! Although the only problem was that the device had to actually work first……
Meanwhile, Bobby, his intern was as done with this as he was with everything in life. He stayed purely for the delicious free pizza and money he made that could sustain him just enough. But deep down, Bobby actually had a soft spot for Peter and his zealous enthusiasm for his dream. He and Peter both knew that despite his many complains and comments, he would still come to help out the next day.
And so, this 2 distinctly different characters embark on the journey to make the world’s first ever PizzaHat and on that very day indeed……..
“Bobby! Come quick! Over here!…. I think…. I think I did it!”
Finalised Microstory #3 (Celine)
Putting an end to the 20th time he has dialled Bobby the Intern, Peter the Pizzaiolo heaved out a sigh.
“I really should be firing him or cutting his paycheck… but ya he’s working for free… and actually… I don’t have anyone else so URGH!”
Thinking back 10 years ago on a rainy night when he first met Bobby the Intern, little Bobby was no more than a street castaway… abandoned by his family due to poverty. He remembered feeling sorry for Little Bobby and decided to bring him home for the night, at least out of the rain.
That night, he relived his memories of his family’s age old pizza making tradition with Little Bobby, and little did he know, Little Bobby shared the same dreams with him! They both wanted to make Pizza great again… reintroducing the world to Pizza once again! That was how their little partnership began….
10 years on, the duo finally had some breakthroughs in their technology and today was the day for the world to change. Today was the day the PizzaHat would revolutionise the world and bring pizzas back into people’s lives. Despite Bobby the Intern’s tardiness, Peter the Pizzaiolo knew he was the only one he could count on… the only one who shared the same dreams and aspirations as him…
In the year 20XX, traditional news outlets have become universally banned in the global effort to combat fake news. As a result, citizen journalism has become the main source of news, and individuals now sell their self-recorded news footage directly to broadcast stations that are willing to pay lucrative amounts of money for footage of a high standard. In this video-quality-competitive world, gone are the days of blur and shaky videos recorded on mobile phones being shared on social media, as stable top-grade Ultra HD video footage has become the expected standard across all digital platforms.
In the wake of this newfound universal demand for professional videography, Wonkru Designs has created an innovative camera bag that has the storage space to hold a 12K UHD camcorder while simultaneously having the function to unfold itself into a sturdy tripod.
Finalised Microfiction #1 (Shangyou):
Title: Blinded by Night
Genre: Horror
Octavia is a freelance videographer who makes her living selling video footage to broadcast companies and alternative media outlets. Although only 21 years of age, she has already become the sole breadwinner of her family of wastrels. Her single mom, Aurora, constantly abuses her emotionally, always convincing Octavia that she is a shameful “useless daughter” who deserves to be tormented. Her good-for-nothing brother, Bellamy, is a delinquent gang leader who spends his whole time doing whatever the hell he wants, which is almost never a good thing, to say the least. Her abusive boyfriend, Lincoln, is a quiet but physically aggressive guy who is overly-possessive and gets jealous extremely easily.
While driving home on her scooter one day, Octavia witnesses a young man robbing an elderly woman. She initially intends to jump in to help the old woman, but suddenly realises that she was carrying her Wonkru Designs Camera Tripod Bag. It was tough making ends meet, and she knew this was an excellent opportunity to shoot some juicy footage that she could sell. It would feed her and her family for at least a week—she thought to herself. Much to her shock, the petty theft turns into a murder, when the elderly woman refuses to give up her handbag, and the young man stabs her in the chest with a knife. She had just recorded a murder on video, and she was completely beside herself. Afraid of being implicated in the crime, she quickly flees the scene with her footage before the police arrive. When she reaches home, she is tormented by her mother once again, and cries herself to sleep as she always does.
The next day, Octavia heads over to Polis Broadcast Studios and offers to sell the footage to them. To her surprise, she is offered US$20,000 for the video, which is more than she’s earned in the past 6 months of covering boring live events! She agrees to sell the video, and leaves the studio gleefully with the full US$20,000 in cash, just as she had requested. Hesitant to tell her family or her boyfriend about her sudden windfall, she decides that she should spend the money on herself for once. After all, she deserved it anyway. She heads over to a nearby Azgeda Autos dealership and spends US$18,000 on a blood red Shadow Valley BR-5—her dream motorcycle ever since she was 13 years old.
When she reaches home, her mom catches her with her new motorcycle, and begins unleashing a verbal and physical tirade upon her. The confrontation escalates out of hand, and Octavia accidently kills her mother in self-defence. Realising what she had just done, she is completely distraught, but then she looks over to her Wonkru Designs Camera Tripod Bag and an idea springs to her mind. She unfolds the bag and sets up her camera within seconds, and records a video of the blood oozing out of her mother’s skull. Then, she quickly wipes her fingerprints off the glass mug that she had hit her mother with, and phones the police. The police arrive and she puts on a show, crying and begging for them to catch her mother’s killer, and they comfort her, assuring her that they will do so. Eventually, her brother Bellamy arrives home, and upon learning about the situation, assumes that one of his rival gangs had been responsible for the murder.
The next day, Octavia heads back to Polis Broadcast Studios once again, and sells them the footage for US$6,500. The amount was a lot less than the previous video, because this video did not show the actual murder as it occurred. Disappointed, Octavia leaves the studio with the US$6,500 in hand. She had her eye on the brand new Arkadia T-100 motorcycle, but that would set her back at least US$35,000. Then, she has an epiphany. If she wants more money, all she has to do is create more news to shoot video footage of—it’s just that simple. Thus, she begins planning the murders for her next victims—Bellamy and Lincoln.
Finalised Microfiction #2 (Jiayi):
Title: Animalification
Genre: Adventure
Cover Photo:
In this world overfilled with citizen journalists aiming to earn great quick bucks by selling their video footage to conglomerates, Max was struggling to make ends meet to support his wife and growing son.
“Get out of my way!” citizen Z shoved Max away with his bulky equipment bag, blocking his camera lens from shooting the latest celebrity scandal.
The constant ‘beep’ ‘beep’ from his phone reminding him of his low account balance broke him out of his mental tirade of that obese man. This can’t go on. Max packed his bags, kissed his wife and son good bye and left, vowing to come back a man with greater prospects.
One month passed, then two, then three… Nothing. Jane did not hear a word from her husband. Strapping her giggling son to her back, she left for the woods – supposedly her husband’s last location detected by his ID chip. It was a deadly place, overtaken by whatever animals were left roaming. Those animals were mad, their family and friends having been rampantly killed by humans a few decades ago. Since then, nobody who entered their territory ever left alive.
Jane sets out to find her husband in the treacherous location, and slowly finds herself warming up to those wild animals. After weeks of searching, she finally finds her husband who had been camping out to film the never-before-seen sights of the wild creatures. Armed with enlightening footage of the misunderstood animals, the couple return to civilisation to set things right again with the animal kingdom.
