“If the surface of a product could react and reveal its composition, how would it tell its story? What is it made of? Where has it been? Inspired by the way the natural world communicates, this design project envisions an alternative to labels and packaging: a living skin, translating consumer information into patterns, smells or textures. In the same way a fruit tells us about its nature, could products themselves inform us of their ethical credentials in an immediate and physical way?”

The "Does It Smell Like Fair Trade" exhibit on opening night. In conversation are Dr Apurba Kundu, principle investigator of the Fair Tracing project, and Professor Tim Unwin, a member of the project's advisory board.

Guests taking a closer look at the "Does It Smell Like Fair Trade?" exhibit on opening night.

These thoughts were represented by a table on which were placed eight generic objects wholly covered in white. This allowed moving images to be projected onto each item in turn, showing how the item’s “skin” could reveal information over time. At the same time, written text was projected onto the table to illustrate just how complex the information represented might be in the future. Note that, while the exhibit represented information visually, in the future information might also be conveyed by changes in the smell or texture of a product’s skin.

The Impact! Exhibition catalogue contains a two-page entry for each design project; the first gives a very brief description of the research project which inspired the design, while the second shows a preliminary illustration of the design.

Immediately below is the two-page entry for the “Does it Smell Like Fair Trade?” design inspired by the Fair Tracing project. (Click on the image to get a larger size, and then on the larger size to get the full, original image.)

A description of the Fair Tracing Research project:

Project 3: "Does It Smell Like Fair Trade?" catalogue text entry

“It’s a familiar dilemma for shoppers. How do you know exactly what you’re buying? Where supposedly ethically produced goods are concerned, how can you tell precisely where your hard-earned money goes and how much ends up with the producer?

‘Fair tracing’ digital tagging systems could provide the answers. It may soon be possbile to access the back story of any product, simply by pointing your mobile phone at a special barcode. Instantly, a world of dtat would be dispatched to your mobile, covering every stage of the chain linking producer and consumer — and enabling you to make genuinely informed purchasing decisions.

This research hasn’t just underlined the viability of such technology. It has also identified the kinds of data that producers in developing countries can realistically provide.”

A description of the designer’s inspiration:

"Colour, smell, texture -- could products communicate their ethical credentials in an immediate and physical way"

“If the surface of a product could react and reveal its composition, how would it tell its story? What is it made of? Where has it been? Inspired by the way the natural world communicates, this design project envisions an alternative to labels and packaging: a living skin, translating consumer information into patterns, smells or textures. In the same way a fruit tells us about its nature, could products themselves inform us of their ethical credentials in an immediate and physical way?”

The Impact! Exhibition poster

The Impact! Exhibition – featuring  the Fair Tracing project-inspired “Does It Smell like Fair Trade?” exhibit - has now opened at the Royal College of Art (RCA), London.  The exhibition is free and open to the public in the RCA’s Darwin building from 1100-1730 from Tuesday to Sunday, 16-21 March 2010. Follow this link to a map.

The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) collaborate with the RCA Design Interactions department to create an exhibition that sees 16 designers teamed up with groups of EPSRC funded researchers from Universities across the UK [selected from a shortlist of projects from the entire EPSRC remit of thousands of grants]. The mixed media exhibition will explore the relationship between science and society and will show how research is making a huge impact on our everyday lives, such as healthcare, crime prevention and climate change. Participating designers include Onkar Kular, Noam Toran, James Auger and Revital Cohen.

L-R: Dr Dorothea Kleine, Dr Ann Light, Nicolas Myers, Dr Apurba

On Monday, Fair Tracing’s pricipal investigator Dr Apurba Kundu fielded interviews from a number of media outlets (details will be blogged as they are published) in the morning, and attended the Gala Opening in the evening along with co-investigator Dr Ann Light, research fellow Dr Dorothea Kleine and designer Nicolas Myers (see his other work here), and hundreds of guests from academia, industry and the media. (Unfortunately, co-investigator Dr Ian Brown could not attend.)

Food tracer uses d-touch visual markers which can be read at point of sale with a mobile phone. It is designed to address several “ethical issues” such as carbon cost,  packaging, local food, Fair Trade and organic. Many of Guiseppe’s ideas take the thinking behind the Fair Tracing project into exciting new directions. He says: “Fair Tracing has been an importnat source of inspiration for me”.

Have a look at Guiseppe’s project website: http://www.giuseppecostanza.it/foodtracer/index.htm    

Foodtracer is also on display at the Central Saint Martin’s 2009 Finalist Exhibition, June 22-25 between 10am -8pm at Candid Arts, 3 Torrens Street, London, EC1V 1NQ

• A. Dearden & Ann Light (2008) “On Social Function: New Language for Discussing Technology for Social Action“, Proc. DIAC (Directions and Implications of Advanced Computing) 2008 (California) June 2008.

• A. Dearden & Ann Light (2008) “Designing for e-Social Action: An Application Taxonomy“, Proc. Design Research Society 2008 (Sheffield) July 2008.

Both the papers are also listed on the Fair Tracing “Publications” page.

• CHI2007: Workshop on ‘UUCD and International Development’, April 2007.
• CHI2008: Workshop on ‘HCI for Community and International Development, April 2008.
• OzCHI2008: Workshop on ‘Inclusivity, Interaction Design and Culture’, December 2008.

The clothing company MADE-BY (based in Copenhagen) is “decicated to promoting sustainable clothing manufacture…You can recognise items produced…by the blue button…[Using its Track&Trace technology] you can even find out who made your T-shirt or skirt, and who picked, spun and wove the cotton”. (Source: “Track and Trace: Who made your skirt?”, Jackpot Magazine, Autumn 2008, p 77.)

“MADE-BY Track&Trace follows the trail of your clothes. With the MADE-BY code in your garment you can find out where your garment was made and by whom. In this way, MADE-BY brands open up the doors to the production process…MADE-BY Track&Trace is the very first system to trace the origin of clothes.” (Source: MADE-BY Track&Trace page at http://www.made-by.org/tracktrace.php?lg=en.)

Track & Trace is a database system…for manufacturers that was developed by MADE-BY in collaboration with Organic Exchange and the English IT company Historic Fu­tures. Every link in the production chain enters production information into the database and forwards it to the next link. This gives the brands as direct access as possible to production data from the other suppliers in the chain. Consumers can enter the code found on the clothing label into a simplified consumer page to see who was involved in the production of their clothing”. (Source: ”Track&Trace: what is it?” at http://www.made-by.org/downloads/TrackTrace_EN.pdf)

TimeTube, created by Dipity, the interactive timeline site, takes YouTube videos and arranges them by date, offering a useful (and often unexpected) perspective on search terms.

MotoGP statistics viewer

This is an interactive visualisation dashboard of recent statistics from MotoGP, the motorcycle road racing championship. The project explores different means of viewing to provide a novel way to understand the championship, individual races & the interrelationships between riders, manufacturers, tires & teams. Users can drill down into each race to explore different visualisations of lap graphs, gap differences by lap, lap times & average speeds. These details can then be cross-referenced by tire, manufacturer & lap time data.; see http://www.minglebee.com/gp/

Baby names

Dynamic graph that visualises baby name trends across time; see http://www.babynamewizard.com/voyager

Barcode visualisation

An algorithmic visual representation of barcodes, of which the numerical codes determine the positions, curves & colors of Bezier curves in a tree structure. The number of curves varies in correspondence to the number of figures in the code. In addition, information details of the country of origin, manufacturer, product number & sum are displayed; see http://barcode-plantage.com/index.htm

Since one sheep provides exactly enough wool for one sweater, Dutch designer Christien Meindertsma has created a collection that can be traced back to source. Products from her company Flocks are tagged with a specific animal’s ID number and comes with a certificate. Information provided includes breed, weight, year, place of birth and a picture of the sheep.