Keep Working by Bean Chon is an online, interactive music video that has a fun yet depressing feel to it. Playing as a Minecraft-esque character, your goal is to keep up with constant advertisements and chase success in a monotonous, consumerist way. This game was fun for me to play, partly because it felt ridiculous, and partly because it felt like a decent RPG. In the end, all your efforts fail miserably and you inevitably lose.
The two Slow Design principles that come to mind with this project are Expanding and Reflecting. First, I think games are usually used for entertainment, and less about sending a life message. Chon instead aimed to reduce gameplay in favor of telling a story about the dangers of consumerism. It felt like less of an RPG game and more like a sad story about a guy trying to make his life better. Chon did a good job of expanding the use of this medium into a social message. Also, this work definitely makes the player reflect upon society and their own lives while playing. Even the act of playing a video game is the act of consuming, symbolized by the man in the game playing a video game.
If you happen to come across usb sticks embedded in brick or sticking out of objects in the street, you might be looking at a part of the Dead Drops offline peer-to-peer file sharing project. The idea is simple- add USB storage devices to public areas, and let anybody plug in, upload, or download files to these devices. Even though this project is more idealistic than practical, since one has no way of knowing which files a random USB stick contains, the principle is fun and forward. Kind of like the early days of Snapchat or YikYak.
Two Slow Design principles that come to mind when thinking about this project are Participating and Engaging. This network of independent, offline devices necessitate that its users create this environment and participate in its further development. The design is simple, yet the network itself can be constantly growing thanks to the users. Users can engage with the openness of this project since literally anyone can embed a USB device. Its simplicity is the foundation for its transparency, though files are essentially “hidden” until you plug your device into it.