by The EnvisionaryWe often like to display quotes in our homes in photo frames but what if there was a way to change the quote? Enter the sustainable, digital wallboard.
CURRENTLY WORKING ON Challenge: To turn wall art quotes into useful inspiration that would create social interaction and activate daily action
The Background
When you search through lifestyle magazines you’d likely see well-constructed room layouts that display trendy and simple-toned furniture often with a wall picture with a quote like ‘make it happen’, ‘today is the first day in the rest of your life’, or ‘keep calm and carry on’ etc.
Within the comforts of our own home, we often display messages that are meant to be inspirational or motivational, with the lounge and office being the most popular locations for such quote displays.
However, what if we wanted to change the quote?
Often we can’t. We are stuck with the same message that might not hold any meaning anymore, and which might not have held any meaning in the first place (it may have just looked nice and fitted in with our room).
On top of that, once we put a picture up on our wall it can be hard to move after, or at least lead towards more holes in the wall (command stripes are a solution but they aren’t cheap if you want to frequently take a photo down to replace it with something new (and the print isn’t cheap either). If you rent a place then you run the risk of ruining walls after a while of chopping and changing.
This led me towards working on a self-directed product innovation-based project, with my aim to fix this issue and come up with a solution that would allow homeowners and renters to be able to be inspired with different wisdom each day.
The Solution/s
The resulting idea was to create a thin yet durable digital ‘wallboard’ that could relay quotes, messages (from friends), or images easily, and be changed easily too.
Like any product design, it takes a LOT of iterations to get right but the eventual solution was to keep it as light and simple as possible.
Most people have fairly simple wall colours and the idea was to ensure the digital wallboard had no border edges physically (only an option to add a border digitally is required), so when a quote was relayed to the wallboard then it would blend into the wall colour as seamlessly as possible.
Shine was another issue from nearby lights, so I researched into matted material that could be used digitally too. The wallboard had to be eco-friendly and light, and I took inspiration from the light whiteboard film that you could manually fix onto a wall to be as thin as possible (only this would be fixed like a photo frame).
The function was simple in theory. Using a simple app that initially connected to the wallboard via Bluetooth you could transfer over your next image for the day, or set it to do so automatically to change a quote throughout the day (so long as your nearby phone had Bluetooth enabled).
It could’ve also worked similar to how HDMI cables feed an image through but this would’ve meant that your laptop would have to be connected at all times to display the quote image, which isn’t ideal, so instead, the idea of creating a ‘frozen snapshot’ that was initially transferred digitally via Bluetooth was preferred.
When Bluetooth was turned off the currently selected image would just sit on the wall statically without any device needed to project it. It would also have been transferred across.
The App
The aim was to create a digital wallboard (one that in time could be purchased in different sizes) but without the ability to add different quotes or memes across then it would just be the same as another normal quote picture frame.
Therefore, I looked into help in developing a simple app that would make this process easy but then furthered the idea to ensure that quotes/images could be bought and sold from users, who could then use any bought high-res jpeg/png image and then transfer it over to their wallboard as the ‘chosen’ ident to display at that time.
There would be a limit to how many images they could store in their wallboard library unless they paid for a subscription to unlock unlimited stock.
The app would also allow people to upload their own creations to use or sell, and curate their own daily or weekly mood board, allowing the image on the wallboard to be changed through the day/week.
This product idea led to another product/app innovation that I’m currently working on called ‘3 Things Today’, where quotes come in 3 simple powerful words like ‘make it happen’.
The Social Outcome
The main vision behind this product and app was to create a more inspiring home/office environment that wouldn’t just stick to the same outdated or outgrown quote.
With users able to craft so many quotes and messages in so many different ways (you could take the same quote but design it in a completely different way to someone else, or make it fit a room style), then I thought about how this creativity could be pushed further to become a way of socially communicating.
The concepted solution was to allow users of the app to connect with other ‘wallboard’ users and send visual messages through the board. This would prove to be much harder to develop in practice (mainly the changing messages and communicating channel), and it’s a work-in-progress still, but what I did manage to achieve was to allow users to display personalised quotes (like birthday messages with their name attached) on the wallboard, so users could upload their digital birthday ecards to the app and display them on the wallboard.
There’s a lot more potential in this space, and it’s something I’m currently working on with an app development and product design team, so the fundamentals within the project can’t be publicised yet, but watch this space.
Another productive use would be to use this home wallboard as a memory bank for previous birthdays and events where you could go back and select a date and display a visual quote or message from that time on your wall, as we too often lose memories in digital clouds never to look back on them.
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