luke talbot

How do those experiencing homelessness charge their phones?

From conversations with people who were experiencing homelessness, I found out mobile phones serve as precious lifelines. However, ways of being able to charge phones proved a common issue. This lack of consistent power severely hampers their ability to utilise essential digital services, including banking, social aid, and benefit schemes.  

To address this pressing issue, reduce the digital divide and empower the critically homeless population, I designed "My Powerbank." This power bank offers a unique advantage—it can be charged for free. Its innovation lies in the integration of dynamo technology, allowing it to be attached to any stationary Santander bicycle. Users can effortlessly charge their phones (or other devices) by pedalling backwards, engaging the chain-driven dynamo, and generating power stored in the power bank's batteries.  

“This is a Clock.”

All the Time is a time keeping device. It uses colour to communicate time instead of numerical units. Every hour is represented by a colour on the traditional colour wheel. The minutes are read by the shade (light/dark) of each colours hour.

Its purpose is to subvert our rigid concept of time and open our mind to a more abstract one in aims to free us of our unhealthy obsession with where we need to be and to focus more on the moment.

We were briefed by STEM to create new devices with novel interactions by extracting physical touchpoints phones had absorbed (a wall clock for example) and return their forms with injecting a novel interaction. I kept the form of the Wall clock to add a recognisable typology to the design while still creating something new.