Slides

Motivation

These days, design activities mostly start from and end up in the computer screen, especially in the phase of developing forms and shapes of designs. In this situation, the  keyboard and mouse are the main tools of designing; sliding and clicking a mouse are the only interactions which are allowed to us. However, if we look back on our childhood, our designs were developed through physical interactions;  we played with clay or Lego blocks with our hands, having physical sensations. I believe this physical sense of interaction is very important in designing because it provides us with a good way of exploring design ambiguity. Even when we do not know what is the next step in our design process, we can be inspired by physically touching, moving, and distorting our design objects, and this physical process sometimes leads the way to unexpected design possibilities. Here, the question was how to restore this physical sense of designing/crafting in today’s digital environment.

Project Descriptions

In this assignment, a new design environment is proposed in order to restore the physical sense of designing/crafting. This design environment detects users’ gestures with a motion sensing device and responds to them by manipulating digital objects in the large screen. This environment will enable users to have the physical sense of designing/crafting and actively explore ambiguities in the design process. In addition, by mapping users’ diverse motion vocabularies to design vocabularies, this design environment could also provides creative ways to explore new design modes. For example, if the environment is set to interpret dancing gestures, users could explorer new ways of designing by dancing.

Concept Demo