With all the new digital technology available to designers it can be easy to forget about something people have been forever using: physical objects.

This is what two of the co-founders of Red Paper Heart collective Zander Brimijoin and Charlie Whitney had to say at FITC Toronto on April 23. In their projects they always try to incorporate some sort of physical element the user will interact with. 

 

"We're not hacking code, we're hacking the things around us," said Whitney. 
 

Zander Brimijoin (left) and Charlie Whitney (right) speaking at the FITC Toronto conference.

Physical objects can make the user feel in control and come to expect a certain experience each time they use the item, they said. They cited the example of a coin slot at an arcade game, with the idea that you drop a coin in, press some buttons, pull some levers and you expect to have some fun until your time runs out. That idea can be a fundamental part of design, then by combining with today's technology there's the option to add many more frills to that experience, but Whitney and Brimijoin said the user should still feel in control by physically engaging with the design. 

 

For instance Red Paper Heart was asked by the musical festival Escape to New York to create a design that incorporated a fun summer activity, so they came up with the Urbandaddy Cycling Classic. They had stationary bikes on two stages and as people began cycling, images would react accordingly on the large projections behind them. There were four different environments to progress through and if a cyclist was going especially fast then particles would start to fly up around them. They said some people would get on expecting a casual ride but were soon pumped up by crowd and the changing environments. 

 

"Everyone who rode felt like they were giving a performance," said Brimijoin. 

 

It doesn't even need to be an item every time, but just something the user is physically in control of, such as a smile. At the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, Red Paper Heart contributed to the Stefan Sagmeister The Happy Show exhibit, which had a component made up of sugar cubes. If onlookers smiled at a nearby motion censor it caused a series of lights to illuminate against the sugar cubes.   

 

"People would give a fake smile, but then it lit up and it'd turn into a real smile," said Whitney. 

 

At FITC Toronto they had a set-up involving a stuffed animal the size of a bed, which when jumped on caused the projection behind it to illuminate a pattern based on how hard the "hug" or impact was. 

 

"New technology may be available but this what we're interested in," said Brimijoin, "We're interested in a simple bike crank and asking 'what can you do with that?'" 
 

The stuffed bear exhibit in action.