Exit the Rat Race

Easton Nguyen

Industrial Design, 2024

In an attempt to break free from consumerism, Exit the Rat Race uses discursive design to question the habits of irrational spending in a modern life. By telling stories of capitalism gone wrong, can we reflect on our understanding of how design is used to make us open up our wallets, prompting a call for change in ourselves?

Exit the Rat Race comes to life as 8 projects paired with written content, each about a different topic surrounding money and spending at exit-the-race.com. Renderings and a promotional video were then disseminated through a Reddit advertisement campaign through Black Friday week of 2023. The Ohio State University's Industrial Design program was partnered with and funded by Huntington Bank for this senior capstone project. Using $120 to reach over 120,000 devices in an endeavor to use discursive design as a catalyst for educational awareness.

Easton Nguyen project image 2 — People predict to increase their online and social media spending even though they believe we are in a recession

Easton Nguyen project image 3 — Research participants spent 3.8 times more than they predicted they would spend

Easton Nguyen project image 4 — What if we were transparent about our finances?

Easton Nguyen project image 5 — Are children just little consumers?

Easton Nguyen project image 6 — Is retirement our reward?

Easton Nguyen project image 7 — Who mines for the material resources in our phones? What has the phone become?

Easton Nguyen project image 8 — What is the cost of life?

Easton Nguyen project image 9 — Are we being harvested?

Easton Nguyen project image 10 — Has convenience become harmful?

Easton Nguyen project image 11 — How does spending make us feel?

Easton Nguyen's expectations and assumptions about life after college change and get increasingly better every year. From just being happy to study in a creative industry, to falling in love with Design, Easton seeks the new quest of harnessing and possibly monetizing his cynicism through speculative design! Life is a trip!

See more of Easton’s work from his few years in the design program here

Filters: 2024, Undergraduate Studies, Industrial Design, Undergraduate Capstone Project