Final Bachelor Project - B3.2
Kalliope
Squad: Vitality
For my the first try of my Final Bachelor Project, I returned to the vitality squad. Out of all the different topics in the squad this time, I wanted to do my project about motivating women to go for a workout. I created Kalliope, a poetic provocation in your house.
Kalliope tries to find the poetry in sweat and translates it into a piece of art. Sweat is often seen as something unwanted. Kalliope uses the sweat as a way to reward that someone has been working out. Just like the person herself, it shows the effort on the glass plate. It tries to help women to get their motivation for a workout by remembering them about the good feeling they had during of afterwards. It triggers the curiosity of someone by creating a changing art piece. It is a central non-intruding piece in your living space and could be placed in any room and any place you would like it to be. It is supposed to trigger your attention when it starts to run.
Kalliope is an art device that will start working when you upload a workout. Little drops will fall down the surface, mimicking the sweat that slowly falls down your skin. After a while, the art work will dry and the water leaves some stains on the work, just like real sweat can do on your clothes. Every time Kalliope works, it leaves a different trace. This means that the art piece is different every single time. Kalliope will run twice per workout. Once just after finishing your workout and once a couple of days after.
The poetic approach of Kalliope shows that sweat can be nice too and uses the sweat as a form of motivation for women to go for a workout.
Learning Points:
Doing a project on my own for the first time triggered my anxieties. When doing the Design Marathon together with Master students calmed me. However, after this we had some trouble who would get the idea as we were not allowed to work on it. It gave me a lot of stress and I lost a lot of time here. After overcoming this barrier, I was working hard. I developed myself in Technology & Realization. Building the prototype gave me a lot of energy. On the other hand, it took me way longer than it should have taken me. I was afraid to ask for help and lost a lot of valuable time because of it. This is also the reason why I wasn't satisfied with the look of my design and so my progression in Creativity & Aesthetics.
Doing a project very close to my life outside my study was very interesting. I thought trying to motivate someone to go for a workout was a step far enough from me being a top athlete. However, it showed me that I was making too many assumptions although I was trying to put myself in my target user's shoes. I realized I should have found someone to (dis)agree with these. I also realized I should try to work towards my vision in different aspects on health and leave the exercising aspect for now.