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Creator: Anton Reponnen
Title of Work: UP Memory Tower
Year of Creation: 2015
Link to Project Work: http://work.repponen.com/UP-Memory-Tower
Link to Artist Bio: http://work.repponen.com/About
Anton Reponnen is an interaction designer focused on developing visual identities, forms of interaction, and livable spaces. This is evident in her redesign of the hardware memory system, called UP Memory Tower.
Anton found a design opportunity within the product ecosystem of external hard drives — she saw the process of buying new and/or upgrading to better hard drives as “not-connected.” Likewise, she identified that the web-based cloud system has its own limitations, such as needing internet access and having to log in to an account.
The UP Memory Tower personalizes the external hard drive as users add to a base-memory dock when more storage is needed — all memory is still stored in one central location. Likewise, only a portion of the hard drive can be take with you — it still acts a portable storage like a usb or SD card. I find this product fascinating for its versatility, and its accordance to social conventions — it sustains the expected nature of existing products while introducing new behavioral concepts towards an established object.