Washing machine/stand up video game

Lee Wei Chen, a Masters student in design at Kingston University, created this hybrid washing-machine/arcade game that only washes your clothes if you're winning:

‘I realised that the skills I had developed in the virtual world were useless in the real world. I wanted to make them useful,’ says the 27-year-old.

The machine looks like an arcade style video console – but the bottom half of the unit is a washing machine, with the components’ circuitry linked together. Therefore, the washing cycle is dependent on the success of the person playing the game, meaning that if they struggle, extra coins are needed to make sure the washing cycle is completed.

Chen’s course leader, Colin Holden, says, ‘He’s chosen two instantly recognisable objects – a washing machine and an arcade game – to illustrate this idea. Together the two objects produce a striking new electronic device. It’s an extremely well-executed design concept.’

(via Neatorama)


  1. “I wanted to make them useful”

    Adding the ability to fail at washing your clothes is not “useful”.

    1. lol.  I was about to say almost the same thing.  Contriving a scenario that makes your existing skills into an added prerequisite for doing a useful task is the exact opposite of a solution to the problem of only having useless skills.

      The closest I’ve seen to something that actually addresses the divergence between fun & useful is the chorequest/chorewars concept, where you get in game rewards for real world work.

      Oh, and scrabble, I guess.  You can’t get good at scrabble without real world spelling / vocabulary skills.

      Wait, tetris too.  People from my generation who’ve had to pack a moving van will often talk about how it feels like playing tetris.

      Actually, I suspect that a lot of games teach useful skills (and I’m not just talking hand-eye coordination), but we often don’t think about it.  Star Craft teaches one to balance short term vs long term advantages.  Street fighter, at a certain level, is all about reading and anticipating your opponent.  I won’t say every game teaches skills, and some of them obviously do it a lot better than others.  But I think the artist here is selling games short.

    1. That’s pretty neat. I especially like that is has Pac Man on it. Can you make one with Rampage or Xenophobe on it? And have it dispense beer? :3

      1. You can Photoshop the game in! And you might joke about a beer vending machine, but I just saw Lottery vending machines during my trip to Seattle. Alcohol and bullets can’t be far behind.

  2. This is a little bit like those TVs or racing games hooked up to an exercise bike, so the game works or tv powers up only if you exercise.  Except I get the point of those, and I don’t really get the point of this.  After a few times, I’m sure I’d hate having to spend the time to play the game, and I’d just wash my clothes by hand.

    Why not just “gameify” the process of washing your clothes by hand and save on the electricity?

    1. Why not just “gameify” the process of washing your clothes by hand and save on the electricity?

      Exactly right. This has the vague idea of “gamifying” washing clothes, almost as if the person had over-heard the concept of gamification, and never quite understood it.

      When I first saw that image I thought maybe turning the big wheel at the top provides the power for washing the clothes, and the game was created to encourage the turning of the wheel. That would have been gamification, because it would have used a game to encourage you to do something useful — wash your clothes without electricity.

      This just uses a game to obstruct the process of washing clothes.

      1. I’m surprised that no one else has brought up that it would use more energy if it took longer to wash your clothes as well as run the game cabinet. I’m sure the laundromat owner would love the extra quarters though.

  3. We need a ‘randomiser’ to pair up different appliances and generate some other brilliant ideas…
    Er,second thoughts maybe not.

  4. Oh, come now, people, where is your spirit?! Practicality? Energy efficiency? It’s a Maytag welded to Drivin’ USA- in what world would you search for utility in this combination? Have TED talks so colored your perceptions that every game mechanic must be bent to folding proteins and replacing the drudgery of the daily wage,  and every invention must preserve the vanishing sea ice? We are nerds, my fellows, nerds! Utility is what we must stoop to when the rent comes due, before we return to building robots that get lost in the bushes and figuring out if we can make it through the day without vowels. They both take time and suck quarters, except one is awesome- in what world wouldn’t we weld these together- and if one didn’t run the other, they’d just be in the same box, and that’d defeat the bloody point, now wouldn’t it? :-P

    1. Did you read what the guy wrote about it, though? I think we on BB can all agree with your point, but that’s not what this is about.

      If it were just a crazy art piece, that would be fine – in fact, it would be great. But he apparently thinks this is a useful addition to the process of washing your clothes, that it will stop if you’re not good at the game. And his teacher apparently agrees that it’s “an extremely well-executed design concept” – so keep in mind, also, that it’s a concept and a mock-up, not a real device.

      A real device, melding these two things together, would be pretty cool actually… but the idea that the washing will stop if you stop playing is not a good one.

      A close friend is a design student, and we often discuss assignments – her concepts, other students’ concepts, the professor’s ideas, etc… and stuff like this gets put out there all the time. Again, I have no problem with it as art… but when design students are encouraged to do wholly impractical things like this, are they really learning design, or simply art?

      1. Legitimate points all. I’ve just been on the spot a couple times with something artistic in front of a reporter or an instructor and watched myself conjure a regular font of crowdpleasing, significance-granting weasel words and presume that design students, asked to drum up startling new iterations on rather well settled bits of modernity on a regular basis are prone to running their mouths with the same ease.

  5. I’m not too sure my boss would be symathetic to me showinf up to work in grubby clothes and try to claim it’s because I kept getting killed on level 23….

  6. Now that I think more about it, this is the exact oposite of what is normally considered “gamification” of an activity.

    Gamification: I have to do something useful in order to score points.

    This: I have to score point in order to do something useful.

  7. Inverse gamification! Lets call it complification.
    Like To open an automatic door, you have to first pretend to open it like it wasn’t automatic. To turn on your  car in the morning you have to first run the total distance you would have traveled in the car with a GPS tracker. 
    Though of cause this one takes the price because you have absolutely no gain from the combination, and only possible added complexity. I struggle to find an example equally stupid.Maybe just adding video game requirements to everything. To open the fridge you have to first finish a level of tetris, or to even, to keep it cooling your food, you have a farm that has to be kept in condition, if you forget to water the tomatoes, you come home from work to a fridge full of lukewarm and spoiled food.  

  8. I get the distinct sense this student didn’t actually “create” so much as “envision” this machine. “Concepts” from design students are a dime a dozen, and like so many bicycle design concepts I’ve seen (many stripped of silly frills like the drivetrain), somehow I get the sense this one isn’t much farther along than my carefully thought out robotic Jessica Alba, er, “household chore assistant.” Yeah, I know, ideas are cool and all, I just think it’s important to point out whether these things have been through far more impressive process of practical engineering and implementation.

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