Swaplets
Socializing in the swimming pool

In November 2003, we were invited to Aquafan, Riccione, to design projects for their visitors for the summer of 2004. Aquafan is the biggest water amusement park in Italy with 500000 visitors per year. 90 % of the visitors of Aquafan are young people between 15 and 25. Our goal was to identify and describe the needs of this young user group and design concepts around their needs and likes.
My team worked on wearables for this young visitors, who come there to socialize. Aquafan is a big socialization space for young people and since they are wearing nothing but swimsuits in the park, they don't have their mobile phones or a piece of paper to write on, to take each other's contact information. If one doesn't have a good memory, the possible summer girl/boyfriend might just drift away with no means to contact her/him. We designed bracelets equipped with RFID tags, which we called Swaplets. Every visitor is given an ID bracelet and a set of swaplets when buying the ticket at the entrance of Aquafan, and the unique RFID code is registered under the visitor's name which also gives access to a personal webpage hosted by Aquafan. When the visitor is inside, he can exchange his swaplets with people he meets and wants to keep in touch with later on. At the exit he swipes his ID bracelet on the RFID reader along with the swaplets he got from others, which will later on allow them to contact him through Aquafan personal webpage.

a) Francesca meets Mario at Aquafan slides b) Francesca at home, chatting online with Mario