TetraBIN

 Motivated by the idea of play as a way of inspiring people to be aware of environmental sustainability issues.

Collaboration with VIVID Sydney, Sencity and UNSW and artists Steven Bai and Sam Johnson.

Product design | Game design

A once overlooked rubbish collection unit can now be transformed into engaging and delightful street furniture.

Reminiscent of 8-bit era video games, TetraBIN allows you and other players to collaboratively control light blocks on the ‘screen’ to play Tetris.

The pattern of these blocks is affected by the size and shape of your litter, as well as by the timing of your act of disposal.

These approaches are designed to enhance the experience of interacting with urban furniture, with the goal of encouraging more active attitudes from people formerly partaking passively in a relatively insignificant activity.

In particular, it tackles the problem of littering by associating the act of rubbish disposal with a fun and rewarding activity. The act of putting rubbish into a bin is turned into a game, where a piece of rubbish is mapped to an interaction within a game world displayed on a computer-controlled screen surrounding the bin.

We used sensors fitted to the inside to track and position rubbish placed into the bin with low fidelity LED matrix on the exterior of the bin to display where each ‘block’ is located.

TetraBin needed a lighting system that could be programmable and flexible around a curved surface. We worked with Media Facade to find the right product for our needs.

We chose the model C18 from Media Façade as it was:

• Programmable
• Had a Flexible mesh structure
• Was shock resistant
• Bright LED but with Low power consumption
• Ready-to-go installation attachments available with the product
• Can be fitted into our plastic protection sheet after we drilled holes.

TetraBIN explores how digital technologies can be used to motivate positive change in urban environments. We used gamified approaches – making use of game mechanics and game thinking – to turn an activity traditionally considered trivial, such as depositing rubbish into a bin, into a joyful event.

Pretty impressive right? We should talk about it!