In an effort to change people's connotations with email -- a once loved technology -- Brendan Dawes started a project that turns emails into real life, physical objects. Commissioned by Mailchimp, Six Monkeys analyzes electronic mail interactions through internet-connected things. The project consists of six connected items that challenge the way we see email and make us fall in love with it again.
The six objects are named after six monkeys used in a linguistic experiment. For example, Lucy listens to commands sent by email by changing color. Nim allows you to turn your inbox on or off with a literal switch. Sarah offers paper notifications instead of cold pop-up alerts on your phone.
Brendan Dawes sees email as a "ubiquitous, easy to understand system, working across any platform that can deliver not just the unwanted and the unloved but often the exact opposite."
Key Themes Behind This Trend
- Physical Email Objects
- By turning emails into physical objects, there is an opportunity to create a more tangible and engaging email experience.
- Internet of Things Email
- The use of internet-connected objects to analyze email interactions opens up avenues for personalized and innovative email communication.
- Reimagining Email
- Exploring different ways to interact with email, such as paper notifications, challenges the status quo and sparks new ideas for email design and functionality.
Where This Applies
- Email Marketing
- The integration of physical email objects presents an opportunity for marketers to enhance email campaigns and improve user engagement.
- Internet of Things
- The use of internet-connected objects to analyze email interactions has the potential to revolutionize IoT applications and bridge the gap between digital and physical experiences.
- Product Design
- Reimagining email and creating physical objects to represent email interactions requires creative product design thinking and presents opportunities for designers to innovate in this space.
