Abel Lenz
Product designer
Left unfulfilled by a career designing cutting-edge, high-quality, user-friendly digital products for millions of users, I now use technology to create cutting-edge products that are low-quality, confusing, disgusting, and dangerous. These interactive “prototypes” are developed with similar processes as my past professional work, to different ends. Practices like qualitative and quantitative user research, user centered design, agile engineering, and user acceptance testing are employed in a “lean startup” model to achieve objectives that are typically the inverse of the objectives of my professional projects.
These products enable a new way of buying and owning that activates less expected emotions. Loathing in place of envy, trepidation in place of anticipation, and disappointment in place of satisfaction. By embracing emotionalism in place of consumerism, it becomes possible to experience and collect emotions rather than objects. The products I make produce counter-intuitive and unexpected experiences that support the emotionalist. With respect to design process, production, and their physicality they resemble traditional products, but instead I strive to achieve undesirable objectives.