Ankaboot

Every country has their own shoe culture, Ankaboot started out as a quest to find an innovative concept for shoe cabinets that fit the Malaysian culture, in which shoes are not allowed inside houses, but have to be left outdoors. This was a semester project during my study in Malaysia.

I started my research by going to dorm halls and prayer rooms and observing how Malaysians place their shoes. One major observation was a repetitive outdoor scene – of Muslim prayer rooms and dorm halls – flooded with shoes which surrounded a big empty shoe cabinet. This left people fishing for their shoes when a room was well occupied, spotting one shoe here and one shoe there. Though Malaysia can’t take full credit for this, the sight sparked identical scenes in other countries i lived in or visited, like Egypt, Kuwait, and Hong Kong. 

This shoe-rican is not a manifestation of a poor cabinet or shoe rack design, but rather of a bad behaviour. Humans have the tendency to be lazy whenever an opportunity presents itself, even one that involves a 10 second activity of picking up ones shoes and placing them in an open cabinet. 

This got me thinking, instead of pointing a finger and telling people, you are bad, please change your behaviour and place your shoes inside  (and how ineffective this is), can we design a shoe storage system that motivates people to use it?

Ankaboot is an Arabic word meaning spider. It's a DIY system in which the user –ankaboot- gets to design his own web using elastic bands to trap his/her shoes! It's made from pine wood panels that can be easily assembled and disassembled by any user.

It also offers the support needed when strapping on complex shoes, or tying shoelaces, by leaning on the slopped panel or by placing your foot on it. It has a flat compact design, and is wall mounted in order to save the space needed in narrow corridors. It comes in two different sizes for individual and public usage.

Ankaboot is a Design for Behavior Change. It makes a mundane object fun. Its unconventional design for a shoe storage system makes it visible. It sparks curiosity in users that drives them to challenge whether it works or not. It can be personalized in many ways by changing how the elastic bands are attached, creating new designs everytime.