This project was a response to the brief “Make me… think” an interaction piece which the visitor has the opportunity to react and interact with playful, insightful and occasionally shocking designs exploring novel material, technological and sensorial approaches.

I began to look into terms & conditions as it tends to be a rather common problem where we skips the reading to reach the end goal that we were aiming for (which is to get to the next page) I explored and researched the various T&Cs and in particular why people don’t read them. One of the responses was that they were too long and rather complicated. I decided to take this as my line of enquiry, looking into the longest T&Cs and then being playful with the method in which the text is presented, considering different formats to emphasise this idea so that people would think exactly how long the T&Cs really are!

I began printing rolls of T&Cs and placed them around my university to truly get an insight of how long the T&C is. I then experimented with creating mini books with different column sizes and seeing what affect this had. Another idea consisted of cutting the T&Cs into text strips, resembling the confusion and complexity of the standard T&Cs that we have today. 

I then decided to go through some of the T&Cs that we encounter in our daily life particularly via social media and analysed over 4 days , highlighting the most worrying parts and then updating a google sheet with my findings. I then collated over 50 different sentences that were rather shocking and then began the design process of communicating what has been said in a rather simplistic method but conveying all of the important information. There were several iterations that were made however I ended with a style which not only working as a card form but also as a poster. 

I then began to prototype a box in which I could get the cards to be stored and then when a user pushes a button, one of the cards falls out and then they’ll be able to read the T&C; giving the user an active role and interaction with the terms and conditions rather than clicking Agree without knowing truly what they have ‘agreed’ to. I experimented with cardboard, foam board trying out different styles and ways to get the card to fall. I ended up getting the cards professionally printed from MOO to ensure the professionalism. The cards ordered were about 1.264mm thick and 600gsm.

For the final I ended up creating a mechanism in which the cards are held in a holder lifted about 1.3mm in height so that a single card can be pushed through. The final was created utilising both glossy and tinted black acrylic with the user of the laser cutter for the professional finish.

The piece was exhibited in the Ecology Pavilion in Mile End.

The final piece was then placed on an acrylic bed of which had a space for the card to fall and a pen so that the user could voice their opinion based on what they have read. In addition to this piece, I included a mobile which would hang roughly 40cm above the piece which included string and clips at the end so that when the user would voice their opinion they would be able to hang the cards for others to see. The idea of this project was to create a physical version of the T&Cs, allowing a human interaction to be required in order to work. The more cards hanged, the more opportunities visitors can get lost in the T&Cs not only reading the statements but also what people had to say.

*This project also had a enclosure at the top which had a GoPro recording the event, time lapses and videos of people interacting with the piece.