Willem Willemsen, one of our master students, designed a decorative toy tree to create awareness about domestic resource consumption. “I chose this metaphor because trees are associated with the environment and the better you do the better your tree (representing the environment) gets. The size of the tree doesn’t only represent the environment, but also the user’s personal effort on reducing resource consumption. Plants are also something that people use a decorative objects in their houses, so the object wouldn’t be an alien object in-between the rest of the objects in the house. The way it works is that the user can build the tree with building blocks. These blocks have a light source inside them that will light up when a level is gained. Each time a level is gained the next block turns on until all blocks are turned on. When this happens the user can add a piece to the tree, and the level starts over again. This means that the system has no levelling limits and can keep growing indefinitely with enough pieces.”
Download the PDF [2M] for more details.