Mino

How might seeing your future self help you make better provisions? Mino is a small ambient device that displays predictions on your future based on your current behavior. It will help you to better understand the possible effects of what you are doing now - and ultimately make better financial provisions. Mino allows you to monitor your financial data in relation to other aspects of your life: your health, your social life as well as global scenarios. Alternate between chart-based and iconographic visualizations to understand the meaning of numbers. Your future self turns into a present friend that you can nourish with your actions - providing an immediate reward for something as far off as your retirement.

ClientIndividual school project at UID for the Brasilian bank Itaù
Date2013
Category, , , , ,

 

 

The (secondary) research, more ideas and thoughts behind this project are documented in detail on a project blog.

Research

Scientist like Dan Goldstein have shown that seeing a rendering of ones future self increases the likelihood of making financial provisions. What if, some (not so unlikely) day in the future, algorithmical predictions could be used to make detailled personal predictions? I have long been interested in the impact of data mining on our personal lives, so this was a great opportunity to speculate and plan such a service. Who would use such a service? What would they like to know? I used personal interviews and a simple google spreadsheet survey to find out more.

I identified 3 main attitude clusters – people who wanted to know nothing about their future open enders), people who wanted to be warned fuzzy protectives) and people who would like to know everything time-travellers)
I gathered some feedback on what exactly different people would like to know
How would you like to learn about your future?

Ideation

What kind of experience would be nice and adequate? With “fuzzy protectives”, “time travellers” and their initial ideas in mind, I came up with some scenarios.

Final Design

I wanted to create a device that, despite a formal clarity and functionality, retained a ambiguous character. Fortune-telling, after all, has been a very mysterious science for most of human´s history.

I imagine mino to be a playfully contemplative every-day device