In the modern era, emphasis has been placed on the
design of things to increase our efficiency and solve our
utilitarian needs, aimed at saving us time, so that we can
produce or work more effectively. One outcome of a
proliferation of timesaving technologies is the generation
of waiting time waiting to send and receive emails,
waiting for pages to load, and ultimately waiting for the
processing of all this highly effective data. This paper
describes the project Tic-Tac-Textiles (fig.1) and its
reinterpretation of waiting time to investigate an
alternative set of values in design such as reflection,
delight and play.
Tic-Tac-Textiles takes 'down-time' as a space for
exploring new forms of social exchange through subtle,
tangible interfaces embedded in everyday things. A set
of furniture objects has been designed as seats with builtin
tabletops, the textile surface of which act as an open
communication channel between the objects. Activated
by the heat of coffee or teacups, the table doubles as a
board for sending and receiving marks in a shared game
of tic-tac-toe. In Tic-Tac-Textiles, everyday furniture
becomes a setting for a new kind of communication, a
waiting game to be discovered and played with others
through the dynamic textile surfaces of everyday objects.
Subtle, slow and waiting patterns transform the habitual
Swedish fika into an aesthetic and playful ritual.