Open Object’s People Powered Database

It is said that every object tells a story.   This is very true in our oft-branded world where the packaging and design of object are there to tell us the story the object’s makers wish us to see.  Some of that information is helpful – what the object is, how it works, how much it costs.  But much of it is missing – the conditions under which it was made, its environmental costs and more.  Open Object is an interesting project by Jessie Baker to allow us to tag objects (not locations this time) with information about an object to share with others, to tell other stories:

Open Object is a novel software innovation, designed and programed by Jessi Baker, enabling access to independant data and crowd sourced and verified information (created via a wiki interface) about products and brands in Augmented Reality or via an online pop-up window.

Visit the web app using any smart phone/tablet computer, curate your information preferences and browse customised independent and wiki sourced information appended to the package or brand logo you are interested in through an AR browser (if shopping in reality), or a pop-up (if online)

The Open Object application was created as part of a degree show project at the Royal College of Art, London in June 2011 and is still in beta version. It is available for testing, however to integrate much more information and product types further development and investment is required. ….


The Open Object AR Interface for many different types of user information curation, ranging from wiki comments on animal testing, to tagging newspaper headlines to independent ratings, whilst comparing three best selling face creams. The amount and type of information is controlled by the user and the content is all editable and can be rated whilst browsing…

Design for the Open Object Web Interface

Find out more via Jessie’s blog….

(Hat-tip to Michel for the link. Also posted on my blog.)

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