Critical Making Exercise (G.Pombo)

Collab between Goretti Pombo, Olivia Evans, Anne Ram & Sophie Jilesen

We were set the task to reimagine an existing technology or platform using the provided sets of cards, so we began by picking the following cards.

Nowadays, vines and memes have taken over a large part of the internet. However, the only people that really seem to understand these are youngsters. I am one of those. Out of experience I know that I cannot show my mom just any vine or meme and expect that she will laugh along with me or even understand what is going on. It will take a lot of explaining because a new language has been born with all of the vines and memes. Based on this idea, Olivia, Sophie, Anne and I thought: What if, in the future, a whole continent was taken over by people that only use this internet slang to communicate? Visitors that do not understand this slang would need a dictionary! Therefore, we created a dictionary of slang and memes which was printed into a booklet style. We showed it to the class and they immediately understood the situation we presented. However, the true test will be when I show this dictionary to my own mother. Below you can see a preview of the dictionary:

Jamir Fecunda and I also went a step further and created the 'WhatAreThose?!' app. This app allows the user to insert the slang word in it and the app will redirect them to the meaning of the word on the Urban Dictionary website. Below you will find some screenshots of the app and the app download. Warning: It can only be used on Android phones.