Props

by Matt Sheret

dConstruct was fabulous. Lots of fun with a few hundred lovely, lovely people, not to mention some really interesting talks.

I talked about design at the scale of pockets, and how we use the contents of our pockets to humanise huge networks. It went well, thanks in no small part to my prop; a sonic screwdriver that operated my slides.

My sonic is a blend of a wireless remote and a sonic screwdriver toy. The spring mechanism was stripped out of the screwdriver, with space made for the working parts of the remote. The ‘hidden’ button on the toy was removed, and replaced by one which triggered the remote. Meanwhile a new button was added further up the handle to make sure the glowing lights and sounds still worked. After that it’s just a matter of plugging the remote’s receiver into my laptop and hitting play on Keynote.

Simple! Well, not so much. Jonty‘s description of the fiddly wiring has left me gobsmacked at his patience, and the last thing he said to me was that a) the batteries might be quite low, and b) replacing them would be a nightmare. The expression on his face said ‘Matthew, this is going to fail during your talk’.

Luckily fear is a great motivator.

The genesis of the sonic screwdriver came from a few directions. Seeds were planted watching James and Russell talk, who have both used props in the past to tremendous effect (the Iraq War Wikihistoriography and the Big Red Button in particular), plus I’ve had some really warm experiences with the hacking community in London in the last year which really I wanted to surface in some kind of way.

Not only that, but it was important for me to ground what I wanted to talk about with a thing. I’m not a product designer or a maker, but I was talking to those disciplines, urging attendees to think about intimate contexts. The sonic channeled all of my enthusiasm and all of my themes into a grab-able, fragile, brilliant toy, helping me throw focus both onstage and while I wrote the talk.

So a huge thank you to Jonty Wareing, who worked on this when he’d have been better off sleeping. It worked like a charm sir (although I’m sorry I put this photo on a screen in front of 800 people).

Huge thanks also to all at Clearleft, who put on a brilliant show.