Turing Mugs

Turning Mugs was a design-led research project seeking to explore if the personality of objects could affect how people use them. We created plugin which turned Slack into an interface that allowed the four team members to act as somewhat of a mechanical turk as people texted with the coffee cups. This system allowed us to experiment and adjust in real time how people might react to the personality of machines.

Initially four mugs were made made and given personalities on a scale of amicability from nice to mean. We were wondering if people would share mean objects more versus holding onto the nicer ones. 

Irving Farm Coffee Roasters Cup Launch

Our main takeaway from phase one was that people were somewhat good at obeying the mugs. They often sent us pictures or checked-in from coffee shops we recommended. This led us to partner with Irving Farm Coffee Roasters who was hoping to use the talking cup platform to inform and inspire people to bring their own mugs. We launched one hundred cups on a busy sunday morning. Engagement was much lower than the shareable mugs, but we did develop a process of informing people and have metrics to prove the concept.