gritófono

      the yell 'o' phone

is a provocatype that embraces our dearest grandmother who believed in the power of yelling their grandchildren back from the playground to the dinner table, on time.

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Practise: Tangible User Interface @ CIID 

Timeline: 1 week

Project team: Aakash, Jose, Shin

Role: Concept narrative & physical building

FULL CONCEPT VIDEO ↓

HOW DID WE GET THERE?

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We were given the opportunity to explore and challenge the meaningfulness of tangible user interfaces designed in our current reality, where everything is designed to optimize our day to day activity.

After 2 weeks of learning about three network technologies -  LoRa, Wifi, and short-range radio, we had one final week to develop products that exemplify the method of designing for meaningfulness in the context of Costa Rica with a secondary narrative that explores distance and connectivity.

During brainstorming, all the team-members shared their ideas of what does meaningful moment mean to each of us.

What struck our ♥ instantly was when Jose (our Tico friend) talked about his grandmother always yelled at the top of her lungs to get him back for dinner, and how that actually is an act of love in the loudest, slightly  embarassing way. But we all also know that our grandma is only doing so her beloved grandchild doesn't get starved right?  

↑   That call of love

It made us reflect on how convenient communication got nowadays that people had less opportunity for interesting moments like this.

Also the fact that Costa Rica doesn't have a standardised address system and how Costa Ricans rely heavily on landmarks as a wayfinder, we thought -

what if the telephone system is also...reference-based?    

 ' Instead of dialing telephone numbers, how does it feel if the phone call to your friend is by...

YELLLINNNGG!!??'

We imagined the telephone coverage could only cover the size of close neighborhood area, all connected using the LoRa method. The neighborhood is a circular residential area, different volume level would connect the phone to their corresponding radius.

The fun part is, everyone of the same radius will be able to hear it.

Since authority surveillance seems to be a concern nowadays, we thought a closed communication where we have our neighbours being the local surveillance, doesn't sound like too bad of an idea.

Prototyping

We bodystormed some imaginary scenarios and felt amused by how yelling interaction can potentially create a beautifully chaotic conversations in your friendly neighbourhood. And who knew yelling could feel so good?

Then we started looking into the form factor of how a yelling phone could look like.

Inspired by the walkie talkie + camera lens, we thought what if its a handheld device with iris diaphragm, where the radius distance is determined by the diameter of central opening. Could it be a built-in communcation tool that already existed in the house?

We then tried playing with the idea of having an extendable phone receiver. The longer the extension, the further the radius you could reach in the neighborhood.

We were really intrigued with the idea of an extendable phone and decided to bring it to the next fidelity. 

Due to the time constrain, the team planned to hack a cheap toy talkie for it's radio transmitter and receiver, which unfortunately didn't work out as the transmission signal weren't stable.

In the end we made our own circuit as a simple test by using 3 different colour LEDs (representing 3 different radius) as an indicator that it reacting according to the yelling volume.

↓ thanks walkie, you've been helpful

The final prototype was built in the timespan of 1.5 days. We found some wooden objects, such as the broom and tortilla maker, hacked it's ready-parts to make the handle and the base station of the phone. We also made a low-poly cones using white acrylic sheets to contain the electronics of the phone receiver.

Final prototype

We added a yell'O'book at the end as final touch. There was a discussion about how would people know the right volume to reach each other. It got us thinking how does the "telephone number" look like in this world.

What if the telephone number looked like the solar system, where we see other's coordinate in relation to our central position?

It was largely inspired by the nostalgic remembrance of the yellow pages + address book that we used to have in the past.

↓ How to find the perfect connecting friend to extend your yelling network?

This concept prompted some some speculative thinking among our team.

When communications are limited and contained within a neighbourhood, how would that affect people's way of living? 

Would this largely impact their decision making of choosing the place to stay?

Would they be more driven to move closer to their friends?

Would people start choosing their friends based on their location in order to expand their neighbourhood connections?

project reflections

1

Doing a provocative project is a good way to immerse in understanding a technology from a fun perspective.   

2

Don't be afraid to test ideas that sounded illogical. There's always some interesting perspective that is valuable to look into.

3

Yelling is a good analogy to think of a radio signal coverage.

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