If you’re a pet curmudgeon like me, there’s nothing that makes you angrier than seeing a big steaming pile o’ dog poo in public (except maybe seeing the dog doing it and the owner walking away without picking it up).
Italian interface and service designer Aram Saroyan Armstrong has come up with a…ah… shitty idea for dealing with the menace of public pet crap. It’s a “mobile poop awareness and avoidance system” he’s dubiously dubbed “Pooptopia.” He explains how it would work on his site:
“On her way home from the market, Signora Pelle wheels her cart into a fresh pile of dog poo. Infuriated by the indignity of the situation, she takes out her mobile to document the uncharted poo and fires off pre-formatted SMS to local city officials stating “No shit is good shit. Enough with irresponsible dog owners!” with photo and GPS coordinates attached. The picture is then uploaded to the Pooptopia website where other angry Poogilantes gather to vent and crook fingers at the filthy pictures and lament over falling real estate value of their neighborhood on Pooptopia’s message boards. From the comfort of her apartment, Signora Pelle pecks on her keyboard, “Let’s show them we mean business!” She organizes a flashmob of Poogilantes and descend into the heart of their Pooptopian neighborhood to poolog en masse. Nearby at a city substation, a small squad of sanitation workers wheel out on specially modified Segways and head off to the new, large blip on their Poodar PDA screen.”
Okay, so maybe this guy has an unhealthy interest in pet excrement (and a penchant for corny coinages with “poo” in them), but it’s all a means for him to evangelize the potential for location-based Net-connected services and his ideas for making “service design” more entertaining.
[Via We Make Money Not Art]