Design literally shapes our day to day life. All objects we use have been designed in the near or distant past. With the virtual world becoming more intertwined in daily life, scope for designers increases as well. In the absence of physical requirements the range of possibilities increases – as does the room for spiraling frustration since you cannot kick a program that does not work. Not that kicking generally fixes a unwilling object, but it does feel good.
The untouchable character of the virtual world has real life implications. Separating from a stack of cash just does hurt more than swiping a small plastic card and typing a random number. It seems that our loss aversion, which creates all kinds of seeming irrational behavior in the real world, is at loss in the virtual one.
A project by Jaap de Vries address this issue by designing an app that visualizes your finances – giving shape both the changes in the amount of money you have as well as to the virtual money itself. The idea of his project is that virtual money is not designed, in contrast to coins and notes which are always a treat when you are travelling (although with the euro you need to travel a lot further to enjoy this part of being on the road). Inspiring idea on shaping the untouchable, since architecture is all about designing emptiness. After all, people live and experience the space left by architects.
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