Tradery

2019
Collaborator - Vicky Zhou, Amber Lee

Speculative Design
Experiential Design

To incite discussions over the control of personal data, we imagined a speculative data bakery in  a dystopia where data becomes a form of currency. Here people can directly trade goods with their personal data. We presented the bakery and its transaction interface for customers to sell their data and purchase pastries at the Future Bazaar.

Inspiredby Jaron Lanier’s book Who Owns The Future, we inspected a future of decentralized data to incite discussions over the control of personal data.

• What would be a fair trade for data?
• Are we knowledgable about our data to trade with it?
• Can we actually gain more control in consumerism by having more control with our data?

In 2025, data transaction has transformed from informal to formal economy. Tradery, as the biggest data transaction plaform, connects you with diverse data marketplaces, so you have full ownership and profit over your data.

To give visitors privacy but also provides a warm bakery social environment, Tradery pop-up bakery is inspired by ATM machines for its security & convenience.

The design of the point-of-view interface allows users to sell data and purchase pastry. What information can help users make data selling decisions?

We installed a simple stall in the Future Bazarr to test people’s reaction to the future we proposed. People can choose their donuts, put their phones on the scanning platform and customize their data transaction. People find the process of data transaction ceremonial yet uncomfortable when giving out their information although they had full control.