Category: Assignment 9

1. nut allergy: Co-living with people who just met you, makes it difficult to always remember about your food allergies. If not properly cleaned, some of the ingredients you are allergic to, may have come into contact with surfaces. Sound production when nuts have touched specific areas.
2. When you are stressed, house should automatically produce calm sounds or light condition, that could help you calm down and force you into short breaks from studying.
3. Never been locked out by your flatmates. Notify if everybody is home/returned, so that people know when to lock the door.

• Elevators in my tall apartment building (22 floors) can take a long time to arrive because we’re limited to 1 household per elevator trip. If there are multiple people waiting for elevators during ‘rush hour’ (and yes there is still rush hour during covid times, many people walk their dogs at the same time) it’d be good if a chirping sound was made before I’m about to leave the house.
• The recycling area in my apartment building is usually overflowing; I wish that a sound would be made if it’s empty so I can immediately bring my recyclables over.
• It can be hard to stay on top of perishables in the fridge, both stocking what I need (e.g. eggs, bananas, milk etc.) and making sure that I consume food in an orderly manner (First in, First out) so if the fridge could make a sound to remind me if I need to replenish something or if I need to consume something soon.
• My white whale in cooking is making toast in my oven. Unlike boiling / frying, there is little sensory feedback (smell, sound, sight, etc.) on how hot the burner is and I often end up burning my bread. I wish that the oven would tell me once it was done.
• I have a humidifier and air purifier – I wish they would let me know when their filters needed changing.
• When my keys are not in their appropriate storage place, I wish that they would make a sound to remind me to place them back.
• If I wake up and we might have a few hours of sunshine that day, I wish my home would encourage me to go outside by playing a spritely tune when I get out of bed in the morning.
• If I haven’t meditated that day, I wish my meditation chair could make a sound to call this to my attention when my roommate isn’t on work calls.

What sounds would you add to your house to make it more accessible?

• Pretty much every gadgets in my house talk/play sound when something happens (even the cat feeder..or the toilet..) but one thing I wish is my studio room!! As you can tell from my past projects I have many issues with my studio regarding my health! Wouldn’t it be nice for my studio room to have a detector that tells me how toxic the air level is right now..
• Or I want some sound that tells me how the water temperature is just right when I shower. Like when the water’s temperature reaches the user’s set temperature, it makes a sound.
• My dad tends to fall asleep while he is boiling something on the stove, and it sometimes overflows. He says that he wishes that the sound could tell him that the stove is overheating.

As Jet briefly mentioned in class, in some countries including Korea/Japan, the “singing toilets” can be commonly found. Even the toilet at my house not only plays music but also it has a speaker and a microphone that connects to the doorbell, so you can answer someone outside the door while you are using the toilet.

I wondered, why does it play music? why not just a sound? Is it also a way to show the luxury of listening to classical music even while you do your business? I asked around many people, but I couldn’t really get an answer. Therefore, I called the interior consultant who installed this at my home.

He says it is more of a cultural thing. Not only the calm music lets you concentrate better on your business, but basically, for the toilets that are located in a shared area such as a public bathroom/my parent’s room, it is considered “rude” to let others hear the sound that your stuff makes. Therefore, there’s music to stealth the sound so that you don’t feel embarrassed. It is not always music, too; for example, the Incheon airport toilets have buttons next to them that you press when you use the toilet, and it makes a flush sound — no, it doesn’t flush the toilet, it only makes a flushing sound (you flush your toilet after pressing the flush sound button.

Therefore, I wondered again. While I use the microphone in the bathroom, classical music doesn’t stop. However, everyone in this building has the same toilet installed, so I was always afraid that the delivery guys can hear the music while I talk. The fact that the music doesn’t stop while talking on the microphone is defeating the whole purpose of that music.

So I designed a singing toilet module that fulfills all of the purposes.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pMVpjTm3tO2JzSIfYPkowj36UpNh8F3g/view?usp=sharing

It plays the intro of “Spring” by Vivaldi. (this is where my musical talent came in handy) The full jingle can be played here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cWwLkompyNM6D4IXzH8UUfemVE9Hp2lo/view?usp=sharing

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What’s up with the LED? Why is it necessary?

• According to the interior design consultant, he says that so that the “visual” bothers the person less.