“The procedure requires three very specific objects in order to work correctly. This foam insert holds them snugly in place while I travel. When I arrive, I carefully remove them from the foam and assemble the device. Then I begin my work.”
“I barely escaped the subway platform with my life. My poor screwdriver fell out of my pocket though. RIP Screwdriver.”
“I had to cut a scrap of this mesh to help patch a hole in the wall. I put the hole in the wall, but I’m embarrassed to say how…”
It lived in the window sill of my apartment. On a sunny stretch it would turn reddish, then back to green. Maybe it’s only pretending to be dead. Maybe it comes back to life at night?
“This is a piece of a child’s sled. When it broke, the hook part lived another life as a combination cat toy and back scratcher.”
My nephew and I made a potato gun using off-the-shelf hardware store parts like this. The moment it was finished I realized how dangerous it was and took it away. He cried. Doesn’t the blue part remind you of a hat on a weird green face?
“It’s the end-piece from a mechanical sculpture. It played a critical role as a counter weight, required to generate the necessary swinging motion that gave the sculpture its unique behavior. The piece showed in a few galleries several years ago.”
“The mouse problem at my house suddenly stopped being a problem. I figured it was a neighborhood cat, you know, doing it’s work. I found this in the yard. Is it the skin of some kind of snake? Could it be responsible?”
“I found a box of these on the street. Some of them were pictures of boring stuff like furniture. Others were… a bit weird. I keep it in my desk because if I ever quit, I want to hide some of the weird ones among the old project documentation. I know, it’s pretty mean.”
“In Minneapolis, there’s a store that only sells what they call “experimental stationary”. It’s called “Forget Me Nauts”. I bought this while attending a conference there. I like the idea, but it doesn’t fit in my bag comfortably, so I started tearing pages from it to write Thank You notes and things like that.”
A.0.01 (A blank can)
“In between jobs I worked a stint in my uncle’s store. We got our usual shipment of new inventory in the evening. I noticed this blank anomaly in a shrink-wrapped palette of its more complete counterparts. I’ve had it for a few years now. Only I know what its actual contents are.”
A.4.07 (Metal hand tool)
“I grew up on the same block as a textile factory. Around the age of twelve I used to sneak in there and look at the machines. I tripped over this, it fell down a flight of metal stairs and it made so much noise that I ran home and never went back. I took it with me when I saw it at the bottom of the stair case.”
A.4.06 (Dice)
“I’ve collected these dice over the years, the yellow and purple are the oldest and I got them at different times in high school. I add a new one every time I go through a major life change and use it to help me make important decisions. I like using different ones for different questions.”
A.4.05 (Rock)
“I found this rock on my desk the day I walked into the office here at IDEO. I thought it belonged to someone so I let it sit there, assuming someone would come back to pick it up. Six months later no one would acknowledge it as theirs. I’ve claimed it as my own and named it Peter. He’s been in my bag for ever work trip.”
A.4.04 (Electronic object)
“This is the first musical instrument I ever made. I made it in my senior year at Cornell and had used it to write some cheesy love songs for [name redacted]. I had planned to ask her out and give her a mix with the songs I wrote mixed in with some of my favorite songs, but the hard drive I had the music on died. I never made her the mix and we slowly drifted apart.”
A.0.16 (Medical equipment labelled “Experimental. Not for Human Use”)
“The medical bag inside was left over when [redacted] visited. Then [redacted] printed the sticker from this label maker by the printer, stuck it on the plastic bag and left it in the kitchen. No one wanted to touch it, I think [redacted] finally put it in the basement.”