Intent

The intent of this project is to confront the changing relationship people have with their career expectations in light of an increasing role of technology and artificial intelligence in people’s lives. In conjunction with familial expectations of career choices, we wanted to create a device that would have people reflect on their work lives - what they chose to pursue, why they chose to pursue it, and what might the future bring for that work. Doljabi is a tradition in Korean culture where a baby chooses from a series of objects, and the object they choose predicts what their future career will be. Rather than having ambiguous items with symbolic meanings, we chose to carve out clear icons that people choose for their career - a gavel for law, a stethoscope for healthcare, and computer for computer science. This is because we wanted to subvert people’s preconceived notions of what those career paths would be. Our project offers a humorous, surprising, and unexpected perspective of what those traditional careers could evolve to in the future, in face of a changing workforce technologically, but also changing in the way that we perceive and value work.