Laboratory of Informatics of Grenoble Équipe Ingénierie de l'Interaction Humain-Machine

Équipe Ingénierie de l'Interaction
Humain-Machine

The not-so-masochist teapot

In Nineteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction. 2025.

Adrien Chaffangeon Caillet, Jasper Flügge, Eric Chaffangeon, Katrin Wolf

Abstract

The not-so-masochist teapot challenges the human capacity to go beyond the first impression. The not-so-masochist teapot appears as an unusable teapot at first with its spout above the handle. Yet, if participants go beyond this first impression and start to make tea, the spout rotate to a usable location, i.e. opposite of the handle, just in time for the tea to be ready. With the not-so-masochist teapot we are questioning the unusability of objects and the capacity to go beyond first impressions.