Robots

Building fortune-telling robots with existential dread

How do you accurately predict the future?
Tarot cards? Palm reading? Gazing into a crystal ball?

All excellent fortune-telling techniques with, let’s face it, less than perfect results.

But how about robots? Why don’t we just ask some robots?

Working with a team of developers and designers, I wrote personalities for four little fellas who claimed to read your future by analysing your postcode.

I created over 40 different types of response that would spool out of the top of their heads when they received a text. Each included accurate information about the sender’s neighbourhood based on data from the Office for National Statistics, making every prediction unique.

The Robot Oracles were created for Place Your Bets, a data design exhibition curated by Signal Noise as part of the London Design Festival. Our team included Anthony Cossins, Zdenek Hynek and Adeline O’Moreau.