finished date: 2021 May

material: Fabric, paper, and resin

dimensions: 18 x 18 in

UH is Ultimate Happiness

World of Burgers (WOB) is a board game in which players navigate forces of global labor and macroeconomics using the infamous Big Mac. Inspired by global minimum wage policies and burgernomics–which uses the Big Mac as a price benchmark to illustrate the concept of purchasing power parity–WOB takes cues from Monopoly and places restrictions on players based on real-world concepts like economic inflation and labor violations. A player can win the game by understanding different relationships between labor and time, as determined by the conditions created by globalization.

WOB (2021) is a sequel to Ultimate Happiness (2020) that focuses on fast food culture and its socioeconomic structure in the contemporary world. ⠀

Ultimate Happiness was founded in 2019, focuses on fast food topics with social awareness issues. ⠀

World of Burgers is featured on Wanted Design NYC and Whatnot Studio website.

Photo credits: Johnathan Allen

The World of Burgers by Rio Chen is an extended series of designed objects from the original UH collection 2020 and is part of Whatnot Studio 2021 from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.