NDA

NDA is an edible confidentiality agreement that protects all information exchanged for 30 minutes after ingestion. Each capsule contains a powdered copy of a legal agreement printed on rice paper with food-safe ink. To execute the contract, you and the other parties consume it.

Distributed online and handed out at live events, NDA produces a strange social dynamic among participants. Swallowing the pill together forms an immediate bond—a shared transgression that establishes the very trust the legal document was designed to enforce.

At events, NDA operated as a station where participants could acquire capsules and initiate impromptu confidential conversations. The process mimics illicit substance purchase and legal rituals simultaneously—participants receive their pills in opaque black baggies, accompanied by the suggestion that they are entering into something both official and slightly illicit.

The design walks a line between serious legal instrument and obvious novelty. Most people laughed. Then they took them anyway. What started as a playful experiment in materializing legal fictions became a lens for examining comfort with disclosure, secrecy, and the social contracts that typically remain invisible.

I created the product and designed and built the website, which hosts the full text of the contract and sells the capsules by the bag. In 2023 Boing Boing covered the project under the headline “Consume confidentiality with the Edible NDA.” As for what people have used them for since, that is, of course, confidential.

I was responsible for all aspects of production for this project, including conception, product design, advertising, and designing and building the website.