Decommissioned ATMs become works of wonder in Nedbank Design Indaba competition

The winner, Kath Farrell, a Johannesburg based product manager, came up with the idea to dispense hotel perks, such as mini shampoo bottles and breakfast muffins which often go unused. Her idea gives her a two week experience at the state of the art Google Creative Lab in Sydney, Australia.

“An ATM is a great way to transfer resources from those who have them in abundance to those who have very little through a very simple transaction,” explains the creative, who was moved after spending a day with township entrepreneurs in Khayelitsha where she realised that a lack of resources didn’t have to be an impediment to innovation.

Head of group advertising at Nedbank, Buli Mbha, said Farrell’s idea, which creatively makes a difference through the sustainable use of resources while reducing waste, captured the bank’s ethos of ‘making things that really matter happen’. “The wonder of creativity is in its extraordinary power to heal, inspire and change the world. Kath’s application answers that call by designing a three-fold solution, which reduces waste, solves a social problem and helps us repurpose decommissioned ATMs.”

A key theme of the 2016 Design Indaba, known the world over for assembling the world’s top creative minds across disciplines, was how the wonder of creativity can bring change to society. Nedbank took its cue from this and introduced the Nedbank Wonderland Project, a concept that challenged a team of engineers, programmers and designers to repurpose a decommissioned Nedbank ATM in real time. Over the course of the three-day conference, held at Cape Town’s Artscape complex, the team repurposed the ATM into a community movie projector, a game arcade and finally, a fully functioning breathalyser, which gauges intoxication levels and dispenses a taxi voucher for people who are over the legal limit.

“As a bank that is highly involved in communities and the environment, we remain committed to finding innovative and sustainable solutions designed to assist in the socio-economic transformation of our country,” concludes Mbha.