Utility Pets

Output details

Lists

Utility Pets

Caccavale, Elio (2003) Utility Pets. [Artefact]

Images

Details

Profiles

Creators/Authors:

Caccavale, Elio

Abstract:

Utility Pets is my first project that used a “Critical Design” methodology and was initially developed as part of my MA thesis in Design Products at RCA. Over the years, the project has gained national and international interest, and received funding for further development from Fundación Bienal Internacional de Arte Contemporáneo de Sevilla.

The project explored the ethical consequences of xenotransplantation – the transplantation of animal organs into humans. As part of my research, I developed a narrative-based approach to explore a hypothetical future scenario where shortly after birth, people will be given a piglet with their own DNA engineered into it. The pig, known as a ‘knockout’ pig in the scientific jargon, is a form of living insurance policy – an organ bank. This project explored what kind of new design objects might be needed if the pig lived in the home with its owner’s family.

Output Type:

Artefact

Additional Information:

This work has been referenced in the book "&Fork: 100 Designers, 10 Curators, 10 Good Designs" (ISBN 978-0714847689, pp 82-85), a global survey of 100 of the world’s most important young designers, as selected by 10 renowned design experts. This work has also been referenced in the book "Designing Interactions" (ISBN 978-0262134743, pp 610-611) which narrates the stories of designers who changed the way people use everyday things in the digital era, including the founders of Google, the creator of The Sims, the inventors and developers of the mouse and the desktop, and many others. Digital technology has changed the way we interact with everything from the games we play to the tools we use at work. Designers of digital technology products no longer regard their job as designing a physical object - beautiful or utilitarian - but as designing our interactions with it. In Designing Interactions, award-winning designer Bill Moggridge introduces us to forty influential designers who have shaped our interaction with technology. Moggridge, designer of the first laptop computer (the GRiD Compass, 1981) and a founder of the design firm IDEO, tells us these stories from an industry insider's viewpoint, tracing the evolution of ideas from inspiration to outcome. The innovators he interviews-including Will Wright, creator of The Sims, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders of Google, and Doug Engelbart, Bill Atkinson, and others involved in the invention and development of the mouse and the desktop-have been instrumental in making a difference in the design of interactions. Their stories chart the history of entrepreneurial design development for technology. Moggridge and his interviewees discuss such questions as why a personal computer has a window in a desktop, what made Palm's handheld organizers so successful, what turns a game into a hobby, why Google is the search engine of choice, and why 30 million people in Japan choose the i-mode service for their cell phones. And Moggridge tells the story of his own design process and explains the focus on people and prototypes that has been successful at IDEO-how the needs and desires of people can inspire innovative designs and how prototyping methods are evolving for the design of digital technology.

Uncontrolled Keywords:

Science and Society, Bioethics, Science Communication

Media of Output:

Design Artefacts

Schools and Departments:

School of Innovation and Technology

Dates: