Blackbox

A stranger comes up to you, and shares an honest, personal moment from their day. They walk away. Their exchange is an isolated fragment that you are left to process.

Or: you have a lingering thought. You are not sure of the full context, or exactly how to articulate it. Alone, you start to delve into it, and explain it loud. A stranger is listening, silently, and nodding. After you stop speaking, the stranger is gone - carrying a small piece of your consciousness.

Blackbox is a mobile app that was conceived with these imagined interactions in mind. The project facilitates a new communication pattern: one that deviates from the curated, narrative-based conversation that we typically engage with. In Blackbox, a user records themselves speaking. Their recording is shared with a single stranger, and can be played just once. Directly afterward, they receive a recording from a different stranger.

Blackbox was built in React Native connected to an AWS RDS database.