Pooneh & Joana: Week 11

​Pooneh’s update
 
The case of X pillow
 
One idea Joana and I are exploring is to make a sachet and attach it to a pillow using velcro. We are trying to catch up and hopefully run this project. We're thinking about choosing the fabric and distributing the pillows in the city.

Not only it would be a great project to the participants, but also it is helping us understand the concept more clearly.

So for our slow dating project we will draw a pattern with a specific size and shape to make the sachets and will add the smelling stuffing (white cotton fabric).Well, I was thinking of something thin like herbal tea sachets, let’s see... Both Joana and I are interested in envisioning how it might play out in the near future.

Questions obtain by this study should be the following:
Is the recipient interested in meeting X?
After sleeping with his letter is X interested in return?
But what If they meet?

We’ll see where it goes. We want to dive in and discover the answers to these questions.

We know nothing about where our soul mate is. Of course some people try to fake it! Some of us hold some unconscious list of notions describing a “real” partner. And we judge people according to our ideals. As a result, many relationships that have potential are blocked. Will this trial help us?
 
As a result of working together for such a short time Joana and I believe on slow dating. We believe it is not an imagination, but a realization based on a real-world track record, already tested by time. We don’t just meet a “person” and live happily ever after, we grow together in certain ways, and this project is just a trigger.
 
Tim Minchin said:                            
With all my heart and all my mind I know one thing is true:
I have just one life and just one love and, my love, that love is you.
And if it wasn't for you, baby,
I really think that I would
have somebody else.
OH YEAH?

Real intimacy vs. the fake stuff. Can we distinguish these based on body odor?

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​Joana’s update
 
My dayjob is product management - a role that that has many interesting contrasts with being a visual artist. A product manager needs to understand their user and design an experience that meets a need, ameliorates a pain or increases a gain (or all of the above). An artist doesn’t have the same type of objective.. objective, some artists may not even consider the participant or viewer of their work and some artists may even be interested in creating or exhacerbating a negative feeling! In this project, it was useful to consider some of the similarities and draw directly from a PM’s tools - specifically the consideration of a user “funnel.” 
 
What audience are we trying to reach with our “love pillows”?  X (our “sender”) is a heterosexual female searching for men. We are not allowing any other constraints or requirements since that would defeat the intention (the men also won’t know any details about X). We’ll leave pillows in location that X likes or frequents, which may hopefully increase the chance of finding like-minded partners. 

We can only create a finite number of pillows - let’s call this step 1; of this number, only a fraction will actually be picked up (“found” in the picture) - step 2; of these, only a fraction will actually make it into the person’s bed - step 3; and of those, only a fraction will have enough persistence/patience to follow the instructions and sleep with a shirt for so many days and send it back - step 4; and of these, (since X has committed to follow through and sleep with all of them) there is no guarantee that a single one will have an odor that X is willing to meet - step 5! 

How can we increase our chances? We can look at the drops between each step and figure out what is causing the attrition. For the pillows to get into bed with men, many steps can go wrong. We can address this by also posting online about this project and asking for participants. We can then ship directly to any respondents. These folks will get the pillows delivered and are more likely to get through step 3. If we send them a shirt and detailed instructions via e-mail, they are also more likely to complete step 4. For guys organically finding the pillows, we can decrease only step 4 by making their prep easier - maybe they only have to mail in a shirt worn to sleep for a few days.

This analysis is another reminder to consider the intention of the project: this is not a dating project, it is certainly slow and difficult compared to Tinder! It’s about creating a moment for strangers to encounter X, to transport them to the moment of intimacy deep into a relationship, a moment of comfort and abandon.

This week I did some experimentation sewing and glueing velcro strips to fabrics - it seems to work ok but covers the needles in glue. We many not be able to use a sewing machine for this step because of this but doesn’t take very long. Most importantly though...

​… the smell of the velcro has decreased significantly! I think it can be used in our pillows!  This week, I’ll seek out fabrics and patterns.