A speculative vending machine from 2060 that sells comfort and mental support, and asks what we lose when we take it from a machine.
The brief started from technology, not a user need: what can a machine that listens, sees and decides do, and what should it be allowed to do? In three weeks we had to build a speculative prototype that makes people debate the future. The catch: the more personal a machine gets, the more private data it needs.
We started at the most boring machine on campus: the school's vending machine. It knows nothing about you, and making it personal would take exactly the data people feel most private about. From two brainstorm rounds (a music machine, a snack-picking scale, a dream visualiser) one uncomfortable idea stuck: a vending machine that gives hugs.
We each wrote a scenario set in 2060: Vendi as a Trojan horse that collects your face and heartbeat to steer you, and Vendi as the cure for "skin hunger" in a world where touch has become taboo. Backcasting from 2060 to today made our core assumption explicit: people may prefer comfort from a machine because it never argues back and never asks anything in return.
The hug was the plan, and we tried several ways to make it physical, but time and technical limits stopped us. So the physical part moved from one arm into the whole space: a light- and sound-isolated chamber with a massage chair, reacting lights, a scent machine and a plasma lamp where you choose your own stimulation. The conversation followed the same path: a TouchDesigner pipeline didn't get far, so we switched to an LLM agent with a live ElevenLabs voice.
To pull people into the story before they stepped inside, I made a promo video: shotlist, generated imagery and edit. Every shot was tied to the project's question, not just to what looked good. Teachers picked up on the references to Before Sunrise, Her and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Your face, handed over, never scraped. We considered letting Vendi find visitors' public social media to surprise them, and decided as a team not to: the field study showed that transparency matters most when a machine gets personal. So I designed and built an onboarding app where visitors give Vendi their own photo, and that photo is all the face recognition knows. In the 2060 story Vendi remembers every chat you've ever had with it; at the expo we kept nothing.
Vendi
Een moment van aandacht, precies ingepland rond jou.
Rise of the Vending Machine — Dani · Niels · Anne
Er is deze week één moment beschikbaar.
Zodat Vendi je herkent op vrijdag.
Je foto wordt alleen bewaard in een afgeschermde database die alleen het Vendi-team kan inzien, nooit publiek. Je kunt op elk moment vragen om je gegevens terug te zien of te laten verwijderen.
Zoals bij elke app: niemand leest dit. Wij ook niet, eigenlijk.
Door dit vakje aan te vinken, of door simpelweg in de buurt van dit scherm te ademen, ga je akkoord met de Algemene Voorwaarden van Vendi B.V., een fictieve entiteit die niettemin het volledige, onvoorwaardelijke en eeuwigdurende recht claimt op alle gegevens die je hier invult, hebt ingevuld, ooit zult invullen, of waarvan gedacht kan worden dat je ze had kunnen invullen.
Vendi B.V. is niet aansprakelijk voor gevoelens van herkenning, ontroering, ongemak, existentiële twijfel, of plotselinge behoefte aan een knuffel die kunnen ontstaan door interactie met het apparaat.
Deze voorwaarden zijn geldig in alle rechtsgebieden, tijdzones en, waar van toepassing, parallelle universums. Niets in dit document is bindend, met uitzondering van alles wat hierboven staat.
We zien je vrijdag om 13:00 bij Vendi.
Alles draait om jou
Kies een moment
Een moment van aandacht, precies ingepland rond jou.
Je foto wordt alleen bewaard in een afgeschermde database die alleen het Vendi-team kan inzien.
Door simpelweg in de buurt van dit scherm te ademen, ga je akkoord met de Algemene Voorwaarden van Vendi B.V., een fictieve entiteit.
We tested the working chamber live with teachers. Vendi recognised visitors (not always on the first try), greeted them by name and kept asking about their day. The feedback was sharp: one teacher never felt the loss of control we designed for, and another asked the question we hadn't solved.
"What if someone on a bad day can't find the words? Then 'ask for a hug' isn't accessible design."
Next time I'd push for a prototype that actually hugs. The hug was the whole promise, and without it the physical side of our question stayed untested. I'd also be much more specific about who Vendi is for and what they need from it.