Big Mouth by Ishaan Arora, Julie De Hingh

Uddannelsesniveau
Kandidat
Fagområde
Industrielt design
Fokusområde
Design for Play
År
2023
Uddannelses projekttype
Kursus

About the project

What if free speech was monitored and filtered through AI via a face mask, in order to elevate teenagers into inoffensive global citizens and better guide their socio-emotional development?

Big Mouth is an educational tool that corrects inappropriate speech. It is an AI-powered mask, which guides teenagers into being better global citizens. The product comes with an app that helps you track your progress and gives you advice on the same.

The design decisions we made for Big Mouth are made in a way to find a balance between intrusiveness, and creepiness but still being able to sell it off as a wearable accessory. For the straps we chose to go with leather, to refer to BDSM. But to make it not too harsh, we decided to go with soft colors. The main material for the mask is silicon, we tried to get as close to a flesh-like color as possible, which wasn't as easy as we thought. We made it uncanny by making a huge set of teeth smiling at you, but then again tried to find a balance by not making them too realistic and using a metal mesh. Lastly, we used brass rings and buttons, to make the face jewelry feeling really come to life.

The main discussion we want to trigger with Big Mouth is how intrusive people let AI, technology, and design be in order to be inclusive. With the usage of the app, we also touch upon helicopter parenting. And last we touch upon Virtue signaling. In our worldbuilding, we would like to propose that Big Mouth would be a form of virtue signaling. Not wearing one would suggest that you wouldn't want to invest to be more inclusive and considerate to other people, and you would be considered asocial if you don't wear one.