Secrets Machine

Background: The Secrets Machine is a conceptual installation porotype created for my final project in Northeastern Univeristy’s 3D Fundamentals course. The assignment was, over the course of about a month, to design, improve, or combine an existing or new product to fit the needs of contemporary society.

The Challenge: The parameters were that the product must be tangible and fabricated to the highest level of craftsmanship possible given the available materials, and the limitations of our makerspace, which amounts to being under a foot tall and made primarily from plywood, acrylic, or via 3D printer. .

Project Duration

1 months

My Role

Product Designer

Team Members

Alara Hakki

Deliverables

Functional Prototype

Concept and Development

  • Having felt we understood the basics of static sculpture using plywood prior to tackling this project, our primary goal was to create a prototype that preformed some sort of transformative process. This concept stemmed from a desire than anything can be used as currency for a product if one subscribes to the value of the transaction and the transformation that takes place.

    After ideating multiple hypothetical transactions, we decided that an exchange of secrets between anonymous users would be our transaction of choice. We embraced the idea that secrets as a currency really only hold value to the owner, and once detached, can be traded like candy, passed like notes, or swapped like pills.

  • Given our scale (limited to about 12” high) our immediate reaction was to construct an analog to a gumball machine. We researched how gumball-type machines operated, and even simliar projects creating cardboard analogs to those types of machines.

    The largest challenge we faced, both conceptually and functionally, was the inclusion of a mechanism to prevent the machine from working if nothing is inserted. After many drafts, models, and prototypes involving the need for insertion of an object for the return of another (see Secrets Machine Test 1), we ultimately decided that our efforts were best directed towards the functionality of the transformative process—changing what you put in into something else.

    Our final transformative mechanism involved cutting discs of plywood with identical dimensions, then carving out a space for our object from the stacked cylinder (see Test 2 and sketch). This created an interaction where if not turned over on the cutout, the hard edge of the discs would prevent the objects from exiting their container (Test 3).

Product

  • The result of our efforts to create a transformative, interactive experience given our constraints was the Secrets Machine. The user is first instructed to take an capsule containing an empty strip of paper from the box, open it, and write a secret on the paper. Once resealed in the pill capsule, the user inserts the pill into the clear top container, and turns the wheel, and receives a secret placed in the machine by anyone who has used the machine prior to themselves, using their own secret as payment. This allows the user to decide what to write, how truthful to be, or if to write anything at all, creating an equal chance of such for the result. The success of the mechanism is entirely dependent on its users, using a currency that only has meaning to the one who wrote it.

  • If I had the chance to iterate further on this product, the most significant addition I would make is some kind of indicator instructing the user to turn the wheel, as without reading the instructions, the key interaction to set off the transformation could not happen. The other key element I would change is improving the overall craft and construction of the piece, as wood glue is clearly visible on multiple edges of the machine, some pieces aren’t exactly symmetrical, and scrap, scratched acrylic was used for the container vessel. I would also alter the overall shape to something more uniform, as the shape of this piece was largely dictated by the amount of material we had remaining.