Time Capsule Project

Step01

A time capsule is a way to experience the life, feelings, and thoughts of the past through objects from that time. In Evocative Objects, I found inspiration from the Polaroid camera, which turns memories from the past into photos, thus evoking our emotions.

This reminded me of something I used to do: collect all kinds of tickets, including movie tickets from the cinema, Disney entrance tickets, supermarket receipts, business cards from new acquaintances, bank statements, and so on.

Sometimes, going through these old tickets really brings back memories of significant moments in life, especially the little details. For instance, I can recall buying fireworks from a small shop near my apartment last winter, which reminds me of the time I spent with my friends setting them off. This kind of unintentional nostalgia makes the content especially touching.

So this folder where I store my tickets is my time capsule, allowing me to travel to a random moment and unintentionally slip into a memory from the past, reliving the emotions I felt at that time. I think this is something important to me, one of the few things that can unexpectedly bring me warmth

What I'm gonna do is to scan those receipts with a machine. And automatically store the data.

I will use OCR to scan the receipt decently. Just use gpt to show here .....

Also, I wish I can also bound those receipts together with stapler. Just to keep those memories authentic.

In the meantime, the data in receipt will be turned into some virtual photos.

That's an example of what I've bought last year.

When this photo is shown to me like 3 years later, that will remind me what really happend that day, why I bought candles and Christmas plates.

Then the software can combine everyday's picture together, making a 'video for this year', that will be a great way to review the whole year.

Step02

First, I organized my thoughts to determine the goals I need to achieve in order to tell this story. Essentially, my time capsule is a receipt collection device that, while binding the receipts into a booklet, can also generate and print a Polaroid photo based on the content of the receipts. Therefore, I need a convenient slot for inserting receipts and tickets, along with a scanner, a stapler, a button, and a Polaroid printer, all integrated into one device.

Then I made a paper model with paper very quickly. The way to use this time capsule is quite clear, but there is a button for binding and creating an abstract for all contents is still not covered. But this step, I want to prove this user flow is intuitive. This is pretty like some piggy banks, so I think people can easily know how to use it too.

So then, after using the paper model to test the availability, I used Blender to create a more detailed version of it.

The device should be a similar size as a Homepod, therefore tickets and receipts can fit in it.

There is a button on the side of the device, this is the key interaction point of this device. Once we press the button, the receipt and tickets stored in the device will be binded into one booklet, and all information will be summarized into a AI-Gen picture, printed by the instant photo printer.

That's how scanner and stapler works.

Step03

So one day, when my grandson comes to my tomb, he can read about his grandfather, in a very interesting way！

Then he will be interested, how his grandfather created these thing, then he discovered the time capsule machine.

He will know that I was a person who has the habit to collect the tickets and receipts. Each day I will put the things I collected into my time capsule machine.

There is a scanner on it, so it can read what I’ve done today and guess the whole experience.

Then he will know the comic I left beside my tomb, was the depiction of my entire life.

Each day, I will press the button on the side of the time capsule machine. The model inside it will get my information and turn that into a comic.

After a preset limit of days or months, the device will inform you to ‘switch up‘, means I could get a monthly comic or annual comic.

So regularly, I will get books for myself, about my daily, weekly and monthly life. If he wants to learn more about me, he can then check those monthly and yearly comics, stored both somewhere else and on the server.

This time capsule not only keeps the track of my daily, monthly or yearly life for myself, to memorize the little and touching moment for myself. In the long run, it will be an ‘abstract‘ or myself, which is a very good thing to keep, enable my siblings to know me better. That’s a kind of warm connection across generations.