Map Project Office and Google create ambient home sensors
No more barking at Alexa and Google Assistant? Little Signals – these sculptural objects by Map Project Office and Google – are next-generation notifiers, home sensors that communicate in subtle and surprising ways
Awareness of our immediate environment is often cited as a dying sense, clouded by the fog of technology and notifications, blinded by incessant screen use and the always-on nature of modern life and work. Google’s new Little Signals home sensors project, developed by the company’s Seed Studio in collaboration with London’s Map Project Office, is a suite of ‘unassuming but charming objects’ that reinvent the art of the notification.
Strictly conceptual for the time being, Little Signals consists of six different devices, each utilising a different method of unconventional communication to attract attention without unnecessary distraction – a tightrope walk that modern technology usually fails to master.
Little Signals ambient home sensors
The six objects – Air, Button, Movement, Rhythm, Shadow, and Tap, offer an array of subtle nudges using sound, movement, and visual cues. The end result verges on the realm of hauntology, adding a barely perceptible layer of animation to the home in the form of taps, knocks, and flickering shadows.
Describing the objects as a collection of ‘thought starters’, Map Project Office and the Google Seed Studio hope this array of unassuming but charming objects are forerunners of a new era of ambient computing.
It certainly makes a change from barking at Alexa or patiently spelling things out to the Google Assistant – both devices that offer colossal improvements in convenience but hardly encourage a more reflective or contemplative approach to life.
See how each of the Little Signals communicates below.
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More information at littlesignals.withgoogle.com
Jonathan Bell has written for Wallpaper* magazine since 1999, covering everything from architecture and transport design to books, tech and graphic design. He is now the magazine’s Transport and Technology Editor. Jonathan has written and edited 15 books, including Concept Car Design, 21st Century House, and The New Modern House. He is also the host of Wallpaper’s first podcast.
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