|
|
|
Automate the process of buying
a pair of shoes.
Design the stages that we go through when we buy a pair of shoes without
the intervention of a sales person: no shop assistant, no teller, no one
but the customer.
The brief for this project inspired us to take an honest,
mechanical approach to the design. Intrigued by early mechanical machines
of the industrial revolution we went about creating an arcade shoe shop
of the type that might blend in on Brighton pier or it's equivalent, that
would provide simple, one style, personal shoes.
The process follows a circular motion and the machine
drags the user around itself by means of it's own mechanical workings:
Side one:
Here the user searches through swatches of material, choosing the upper
and sole of the shoe. When the decision has been made the disk and square
are inserted into the slots and pushed into the machine. Up comes the
materials that the user has chosen and around they go to the next side
of the machine.
Side two:
On this side of the machine the user is asked to commit to the choice
he or she has made by paying for the shoes. This request is indicated
by the protruding sign, not allowing the shopper to proceed any further
until this side has been dealt with. Shoes paid for and the materials
bring the user around to the third side.
Side three:
Side three is where the shopper has his feet measured by the machine.
In he steps into the gauge and up pops the female mouldings of his feet.
Again the materials lead the user around to the fourth and final side
of the shoe shop.
Side four:
On arrival at side four the materials are thrown into the manufacturing
process, which the user is made aware of by both the noise that the mechanisms
are making and a view of the workings. And finally a pair of shoes...
|
