The buzzword “gamification” is everywhere these days. From apps like Foursquare to Get Glue, to daily tasks and even weight loss, social takes on video game nuances are seeping into our daily lives. It’s almost becoming a sort of “doing it because it’s the in thing” inclusion in products lately.
The premise behind a new project by design student Lee Wei Chen Kingston University takes a different approach to gamification. Instead of earning rewards as a result of our daily tasks, Chen’s arcade cabinet concept forces us to play games to achieve those tasks.
The design idea stems from Chen’s life as a gamer, where skills developed shooting aliens don’t generally translate into the “real world” all that often. The classically-themed concept incorporates a washing machine on the bottom and an arcade game on top. Both devices are linked to each other electronically, and function off of the same quarter input. Playing the game not only helps kill time while waiting for your tighty whities to get clean, but it can also save you some money. The better the game is played, the longer the washing machine functions; the worse you play, the more you have to pay to keep going.
It’s a novel idea, and one that should bring a new meaning to money laundering.
Yeah, that was a horrible, horrible pun.
DesignWeek via Core77
1 Comment