Inspired by the Japanese design Chingdogu
and its concept of “unuseless”, I created a series of absurd products that serve everyday life’s needs. This series involves multiple collaborations with artists and designers.
experiment
Collaboration with: Angela Juarez
My role: Design & Electrical Engineering
The Excuse Generator is a phone plugin designed to generate absurd excuses to turn down unwanted invitations. It acts as a keyboard that can be plugged into any phone with a USB-C port. It is small, lightweight, and doesn’t require a battery or network to operate.
After being plugged in, the Excuse Generator will take over the keyboard. To generate new excuses, turn the blue button clockwise. To erase previous text, turn the button anti-clockwise. To send the message, press the button. When turning the button clockwise, the generator will also automatically erase previous text before generating new excuses.
Some example excuses.The excuses are generated programmatically by combining random phrases from a text library we wrote.
Package design by Angela Juarez
Collaboration with: Yitong Chen
My role: Design & Electrical Engineering
The Door Holder is a portable device that can stick to most doors. It can kick, which will effectively prevent the door from closing, or retract, which will allow the door to close. All actions are controlled by a remote control.
The Door Holder uses a suction cup to stick onto doors, which makes it easy to attach and detach from the door.
The remote control can set the Door Holder in an on/off state using a Bluetooth connection.An LED indicates the battery status as well as the connection status with the remote control.
Collaboration with: Astro Lee
My role: Design & Electrical Engineering
The Bloom Cup is a sound-reactive cup that blocks saliva from loudspeakers. When it’s quiet around, it serves as a regular cup. When the sound volume is above a certain threshold, the Bloom Cup will flip the panels up to protect the liquid against saliva.
The cup has sound sensors on all four sides. Each panel is controlled by a separate servo motor. We challenged ourselves to make the cup direction sensitive, but it will still take time to realize.
At the bottom of the cup is a potentiometer to adjust the cup’s sensitivity to sound. The device is powered through a rechargeable lithium battery and can be charged through a usb-c port.