Balance

Focusing on the relationship and the emotional bond between product and user, Swiss Japanese designer Fumiko Schaub questions today’s consumer society which has lost the appreciation for what a product means, the value it embeds and the impact they have on our lives. Balance is the result of a poetic process in which the focus lays in the actual meaning and story of a product. The aim of this project is to strengthen the emotional bond between consumer and product through interactive experience and a storytelling product. The designer is convinced of the affect emotions have on the user’s perception of his or her belongings. Thus setting the scene for emotions to arouse, may enable long lasting relationships between user and product. The mechanical scale has been banned from the kitchen in the past few years. It has been replaced by unemotional products that are rather exchanged than repaired. Due to the complexity and lack of quality the consumer can not bring any value towards these kind of products. By bringing back the low-tech kitchen scale, Fumiko Schaub strives to stimulate this, once existing, emotional bond to be created between object and its user. In most cases consumer do not understand the product caused by its complexity and opacity; it is the designers duty to create understandable and trustful products. Furthermore, long-lasting products plays a key role against the throw-away-mentality of today’s society. The scale is made out of valued and natural material such as brass, locally crafted marble stone, wood and porcelain. Filled porcelain containers play the role of counter weights. In order to verify the desired weight, the user must actively interact with the scale by touching the pointers. Our fingers are capable of sensing the slightest change of discontinuity - when the weights are balanced, the fingers will sense perfection. This interactivity is essential in order to fully experience the product; allowing for a relationship to burgeon.