My First Blackout Kit
A speculative look at Ireland's data centre expansion!
Design Brief
Create a speculative design project.
Duration
4 weeks
Role
Everything
Context
What is the my first blackout kit?
My First Blackout Kit imagines a future where children must relearn how to play, create and tell stories without electricity. It turns the anxiety of blackout into a playful critique of our dependence on data centres and digital life. An artefact from a future Ireland faced with extreme data centre expansion and the resulting constant black outs.
Chosen Concept
Scenario Storyboard
The scenario my kit will be designed for is where there has been a blackout and a child is feeling sad and bored. The kit offers self generated light entertainment and education. This will help children adjust to their new living situation. The kit gives children and parents the ability to make their own stories and puppets with the story the kit with comes based around data centres and blackouts.
Making
Box development
Making
Kit Sleeve
For the packaging, I went through extensive ideation. I wanted something that looked clean and professional, and I decided it should be printed on card to give it a protective quality. Since I didn’t have access to a printer that could print AI designs, I chose to laser cut it.
I decided on black card because I was inspired by the shadows and silhouettes the product creates.
I called it my “First Blackout Kit.” The phrase “my first” signals that it is for a child, following the convention of similar children’s products. “Blackout Kit” was chosen to make it feel important and essential, like it contained vital equipment, but in our world, entertainment itself is seen as essential, so the name plays with that idea.
Final Product
My first blackout kit is designed for Ireland’s future of data center expansion, where electricity might become a scarce resource. The kit aims to comfort, entertain, and educate children during electrical blackouts. Future generations, accustomed to constant digital entertainment, WiFi, and electricity, may find this adjustment challenging and even frightening. That’s where the kit comes in. Utilizing the traditional storytelling technique of shadow puppetry, it creates engaging stories and dialogues about our data-driven society. This fun activity encourages children to use recycled materials to craft their own stories, mimicking screen-based experiences. Handmade and distributed by the activist group Power to the People, the kit is 100% recyclable. It serves as a reminder to the youth that, despite government claims, large corporations are responsible for these issues and must be held accountable for the real costs of the internet.
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Problem
Rapid Data Farm Expansion
Data farms are growing fast in Ireland and worldwide, using huge amounts of electricity and water. Without careful planning, this could cause serious environmental and resource problems for the future.
But... how did we get here?
This project explored speculative design by finding a single thread, pulling on it to see how it unravels, imagining a possible future, and then bringing back an artefact from that world.
Research and discovery
Future Wheel
The Futures Wheel is a simple practical tool that helps you brainstorm the direct and indirect consequences of a decision, event or trend. STEEP (social, economic, environmental, technology)
Research and discovery
Inspirational Projects
The project aims to change user perception, improve individual environmental impact and challenge how we interact with digital services.
Green screen
This projects is a Ikea catalogue from the future that includes furniture that collects your data so you can sell it and make a profit from it.
Domestic Futures
The project explores the materiality of data and the interwoven human, environmental and cultural impacts of communication technologies.
Entanglement
Research and discovery
Inspiration and Research
From Annex's project Entanglement I started thinking about storytelling and how that was originally done around campfires and light.
Campfires
From this point I started focusing less on spreading messages and more on storytelling and entertainment and forms of entertainment that are offline.
Offline Entertainment
Because this project is rooted in Ireland I started looking at Irelands rich history of storytelling through Seanchoíche.
Seanchoíche.
Making
Pieces
Research and discovery
Signal Finding
I made future wheels to generate ideas around my chosen signal.
