Have you ever formed a real connection with an object? A bond forged through nostalgia, maybe it was an endearing gift, or you broke and repaired it that one time. How often has a story been attached to an object, and how often has such an object been carelessly discarded?
In my year long research thesis, I travelled across India collaborating with makerspaces, craft institutes, design firms and the local community to reinvent product design from a storyteller's lens.
Through making, crafting and 'playing' with the worlds these objects imply, we as consumers can make these objects 'ours' through building stories.
For example, many of us have owned an iPod before, but through what angle did we interact with it? Some of us may have been into music, or travel, or exercise. Through interacting with the device we 'intersected' these worlds, growing us as people and building a stronger story with the object.
By the virtue of us being acquainted with one interest of a product it infects us to grow an interest in the other parts of it's object world as well.
In fact, these stories cascade on an object the longer we grow alongside it. Just as an object can alter our story, we alter an object's story, This resultant effect is a product of Object Oriented Ontology and Rhizomatic System Thinking to product speculative futures of objects.
In simpler terms we can use this world thing to discover what an objec'ts future would look like, and a person's too! Maybe you dropped the iPod on a hike somewhere and now that is your unique story to tell!
This project has laid the groundwork for rethinking design as a playful, repairable, and community-driven practice. Moving forward, the focus is on expanding its impact—building open-source toolkits, collaborating with makerspaces, and developing new interactive experiments that challenge consumer culture. By integrating playful making into everyday objects, we can foster hyperlocal sustainability and extend product lifetimes.