The Dessert Button

Designing for Internet of Things

Johnny Wu, Monisha Gopal, Shaan Sharma

3/28/2017

Video

https://youtu.be/BkUDx5eMLo4  (see below)

Concept

The idea is a dessert button that randomly orders a dessert to your door. It would use an API from a delivery service (or even multiple) and then randomly selects a dessert from one of them.

Reason

We decided to choose this idea because it is a device with desirable utility, however could harm the user if abused. While it can be used to quickly satisfy a craving, the user could easily fall into bad habits and even overspend. These scenarios can be extremely toxic to the user, resulting in an unhealthy lifestyle.

Desire

The desire that is fulfilled is the user’s immediate satisfaction of a sweet tooth.

Dangers

There are many dangers to the device that we identified. We sectioned them off into 4 categories, Personal, Social, Moral, and Ethical dangers. These possibilities are listed below:

1. Personal - Orders something too expensive and you go broke, Develop unhealthy lifestyle

2. Social - Takes away from face to face desert-eating-experiences

3. Moral - Orders something you’re allergic to

4. Ethical - Restaurants can pay to get their desserts sold more, Can sell your information? (when you buy desserts/any other information inputted), Has access to credit card (so credit card number could be stolen)

Design Recommendations

• Security is extremely important, especially concerning sensitive information (maybe password protect that data/encrypt all information)

• Food Freshness is imperative

• Establish safeguards against potential unhealthy usage (sugar/fat/calorie tracker)

• Create limits for amounts of money the user is willing to spend