Alice Wang: Peer Pressure

We started quite the debate last June when we blogged about Alice Wang’s Audio Sticks— her personal vision of what the future for sellable-audio might hold, in this case she experimented with USB flash memory keys decorated in album art. Her latest project addresses another big phenomena that comes up in everybody’s life: Peer Pressure. She says not everyone has the potential or enthusiasm to act through life just to impress others. Can products be designed to create these similarities for you? She created a line of products with this in mind, like double sided headphones for when you’re worried about other people hearing music you’re listening to, you can play your music inwards, and something else (popular songs) outwards. She also designed a mobile phone application that makes you look popular in public by sending you text messages, a keyboard that makes it ‘sound like’ you’re typing fast, and my favorite– a printer that only prints out positive emails for your co-workers to accidently find. Her concepts always bring up life issues in neat and digestible ways– nice work Alice!