Prototyping Mystery boxes for social interaction

Second year students at Humtek used the FabLab as an integrated part of their explorative process in an interaction design course. The theme was “reclaiming the streets”, with emphasis on understanding ways of facilitating socially playful interactions in everyday life. To explore this they designed multiple mystery boxes. The boxes were placed in various public places and requested different forms of performance from bypassers, e.g. “carry me to a specific location”, “give another bypasser a hug” and so on to experimentally explore how people behave and interact (or not) in public spaces. Through the designs students were able to gain understanding of the social dynamics in context and understanding of the consequences of design choices made in the process.

• Mads Saustrup Kristensen
• Magnus Holt
• Malte Matias Egbert Rasmussen
• Niels Debel
• Tobias Lindhardt Wilhelmsen