Week 01:
I was surprised to see this menu in a museum, which seems to me to be the most usual thing, a classic style of menu from a small roadside restaurant in my country. Usually, they are not very good materials either, but it is collected in a museum.
They are a subtle way of humanizing design. While reflecting the diversity of the city’s population, they also give migrant workers a taste of home. The title of the label ‘working away from loved ones’, and the social media-enabled soft toy Mon-Mon displayed on the same stand, all convey the theme of ‘love’. There is a Chinese saying that ‘food is lifeblood’. In a way, it might represent home, a place to belong, an emotional attachment.
I like the way the author invites the public to add tags to the interaction. Having unrelated people post notes describing what they imagine all the things like people or vehicles in the surveillance video to be. It’s a huge collection of public ideas that show how different people focus on the things in the video, but actually reflect a contradiction： When what you are doing is seen in public, how is it explained? What’s the difference between them? Does a message written by one person interfere with the thinking of others?
During my high school and university years, the Meitu phone was a very popular “selfie phone” at the time, with the powerful selfie function as its main selling point. It created the historic concept of the “selfie phone” and solved the pain points of taking selfies with mobile phones at that time (no need for retouching, and the ability to retain a good skin texture, which solved many of the shortcomings – for example, no reflections when taking pictures with glasses, etc) and started the selfie craze. Even though the system is crude and overpriced, it is still a huge hit with the female market because it captures what women want from beauty. At the same time, technology is influencing our perception of beauty.
Yet it sold for less than five years before it was withdrawn from the market because it was difficult to expand the market with just the beauty function. Thinking further from this, is the beauty of popular perception and social media really the beauty we should be striving for? Is beauty on social software really what it really is? Is beauty so singular in form? …