Dilemmabox Brings Tactile Upvoting

Here’s a fun art installation which you might run into downtown. It’s called the Dilemmabox and lets you pull a rope to up or down vote a question. [Christoffer Lorang Dahl] realized that touchscreens are wiping out a lot of really fun user interfaces of yore. He incorporated the two hanging rope inputs as an homage to doorbell ropes.

The built process works much like a laptop-to-digital photo frame conversion. The first step is to liberate the LCD screen from the laptop body. Both are housed in a wooden box, with a window cut out to show the screen. The mechanically clever part is the rope pulls. They’re both just pressing a key on the keyboard in a roundabout sort of way. [Christoffer] attached a smooth hemispherical piece to two keys. The ropes are connected to wooden levers which are held in place by springs. They rub on the hemispheres just enough when passing by to register a keypress.

The photo above was taken during the Dilemmabox’s brief appearance at a shopping plaza in Oslo.

7 thoughts on “Dilemmabox Brings Tactile Upvoting

  1. In Norway this would work….look at the cute civilized couple thrilled to play with the interesting installation.

    In America the 3rd or 4th adult along would decide to test how hard they could pull the cord…if the first kid who came by didnt try to swing from it already.

  2. In NYC some idiot kid would come by and pull as hard as possible on both ropes in hopes of breaking it, if that did not work, he wound then head butt the screen.

    We have some of the most uncivilized people on the planet here in the OOsa!

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