A Pig, A Bird, and A Mailbox is a series of metaphorical objects that you interact with to login to your everyday go-to websites and applications. The inspiration came from our experience teaching older adults about the internet, where sometimes even just opening a web browser, going to the right site, and remembering their login details is a daunting task. These simple objects aim to make this process more user-friendly.
The objects aim to simplify the login process by making it more tangible and adding sound as feedback. What once took four frustrating steps can now be accomplished in one delightful step. The pig opens your bank account, the mailbox opens your email, and the bird opens Twitter. We thought of many other functions but settled on these for their frequency of use. Although our inspiration came from older adults, younger people told us they could see themselves using this as well. We made our prototype with this mainstream audience in mind. The objects are made individually, but can be mixed, matched, and grouped together to form a suite — in this case, a farm setting.
