New Thesis Blog

Please view my new thesis blog at: www.hypostulate.wordpress.com.

Future Wall Provides Me With Insight

sketch of the Future Wall

For my Interactive Objects and Spaces final, I will be designing a 12-foot long wall called the Future Wall. Future Wall is a blank wall containing soundbites of people’s opinions and forecasts of the future – both the general future and personal futures.

Why the future?
The Future Wall serves to capture ideas of what the future will be like. It is a space that contains recordings of people’s goals, people’s outlook on life and people’s messages for the future. Before starting this project, I did some research on notable walls (i.e. The Great Wall of China, Berlin Wall, etc…). Historically, walls have served as barriers, but they have also served as iconic points of discussion and adventure. Walls, in general, are meant to create separation, but how can I take the metaphor of a wall and use it as a space for collaboration, a space for conversation and memories?

The Interview Process
I have been interviewing a lot of people for this wall project in order to capture a variety of soundbites and opinions. The interview process has been a really valuable experience in that it has taught me about interview etiquette, about how to feed off people’s answers, about how to ask the right questions…

Interviewing people has also helped open me up, because it has given me the courage to talk to others in detail. It has also allowed me to become closer to people and learn about unfamiliar details about friends and strangers alike.

The interviews have all been very interesting and there are a variety of takes on the idea of “future.” Politics, the environment, personal aspirations, education, happiness, technology…these have been some of the topics raised in the interviews. What’s also interesting is how a lot of people have been eager to contribute their voice to the Future Wall.

I even feel that this project will be important as I explore my upcoming thesis idea (which is basically about sustainable communities, self customization, social networks and collective and self empowerment. – yes, it’s broad right now) because it will help me gain insight about what the public understands and what people’s desires are for their communities and for themselves.

Next week, on Super Thursday, the Future Wall will be on display in the alcove by the Media Design Program studio. I’m crossing my fingers that it will work!!! The wall will be embedded with light sensors that will trigger soundbites that will come out of several speakers in the wall. Wave your hand over a sensor (which is hidden – you have to find it by waving your hand over the wall), and you will be able to start hearing people’s soundbites. Crossing my fingers it all works out!!!

Symposium held on materials and research

This past Tuesday, Art Center held a symposium on materials, research and meaning. For many, materials is often an afterthought for products, but the presenters gave examples of how an initial study of materials often lead to better and more meaningful products.

One of the things I learned at this symposium was how perhaps we’re moving into an era that will start focusing more on self–assembly and perhaps less about the purchasing of whole mass produced products. Perhaps more towards an IKEA-esque world, but where customization becomes the emphasis.

MASS SELF-ASSEMBLY = MASS CUSTOMIZATION

With this understanding, how will designers change their understanding of product development?

In my opinion, the idea of self-assembly and customization are two key words that will be important for the sustainabilty movement. In our efforts to preserve our environment, how do these two words play into maintaining a quality of life that is conscious of our environment but also tolerant to change and our human desire to be unique as well as cultural? I know that sounds a little broad, but I think raising a question such as this will help guide designers who are part of the sustainability movement.

Meredith Davis Visit

sorry for the blurry photo. it’s dark in the LA Times Theatre!

Meredith Davis, Director of the Graduate Graphic Design Program at North Carolina State University, came to Art Center this evening to speak about Design Thinking. She gave us a presentation about design education and provided us with knowledge and insight about the importance of research for the design world. Davis provided us with both assumptions and trends of design research and design education both on the undergraduate and graduate level.

She raised the question of how we can build a research culture in the realm of design. How can design make a difference? What affordances can we provide to the research world? Her visit couldn’t have been at a more perfect time because this term has been a lot about research and thinking in the design arena.

As design research students, we not only have to focus on the making process, but we also have to strengthen our skills as researchers, collaborators and leaders. Graduate education isn’t just about refining visual skills and concepts. It’s also about discovering a new knowledge base that supports new practices within media design.

Davis said, “Students are great researchers.” I’d have to agree. We have energy, imagination, fresh minds and a lot of optimism. What more, we have a community of creative peers that we can share ideas amongst.

It’s encouraging to know that design is heading towards a more meaningful place.

Hans Rosling on Poverty and Life Around the World

Instructor Peter Cho recently shared this TED talk with us in our Communication Design 3 class. Hans Rosling, a professor of global health at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute spoke at the TED conference in 2007 about poverty around the world and what countries are doing to get themselves out of it. The entire talk was profound, but what was great was how Rosling demonstrated the visual data, using his own cheerful and humorous personality and visual graphic animations to contextualize poverty changes over the year.

You can listen or watch his talk at TED.com as well as read more about Rosling himself.

In general, TED.com is one of my most highly recommended sites to listen to just about anything intelligent and inspiring. If you want to know of a place where you can listen to bunch of smart people, look no further.

A Green Facade?

photo: A green skyscraper: The Antilla Building, Mumbai

The Antilla Building is being criticized for being nothing more than a green facade. It brags green and plush on the outside, but is still full of not-so sustainable parts. I don’t personally have a say in this debate, but looking and reading about this particular building sparked another issue for me: in the ever-growing hype around sustainability, what about the little people?

My concern isn’t so much about creating this extravagant building of flowing vines and falling flowers. Where my focus lies is in the more practical side of the world, and that world is the one I live in – the world where people seek to improve their quality of life without burning a hole in their pockets, the world where access to a better life isn’t about solar powered shoe shiners, but about community building and social empowerment.

In my personal quest to understand the beneficial relationships between nature and humans, how can we bring “sustainability” down from the rafters and into our backyards in a practical, realistic and affordable way? Sustainability (and I apologize for its overuse), isn’t meant just for the Hollywood stars to show off their eco-superpowers. It’s meant to be practiced by everyone. And if everyone doesn’t have access to it, things aren’t going to change. I realize that this is not an individualistic endeavor. Sustainability, I’ve observed, requires two things right now: 1) long–term investment and 2) community. These are two qualities I want to continue to explore this term.

San Francisco Center Directory goes Interactive!

I was home in San Francisco for part of my break and decided to go shopping at the recently rennovated San Francisco Center in Downtown San Francisco. I took the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) there 1) to be a better environmental citizen and 2) because the BART conveniently makes a stop right under the mall. How convenient is that?

On my way out, I saw one of the Directories and noticed it wasn’t your standard stagnant printed directory – it was the iDirectory. It came equipped with a sleek touch screen interface (think of a giant iPhone screen) that could help you find what you needed at the huge mall. What more, the BART train schedule and map was available for viewing.

Nice!

The Kusudama Experiment

Check out the details about my TDS: Beautiful Networks project based on the Kusudama, a traditional modular Japanese origami design. I wanted a way to visualize a complex system using origami to explorepaper with old map graphics printed on the blank side.

What Do You Notice? What Do You Care to Notice?

Yesterday, I presented my Communication Design 2 experiential space. The assignment was to translate one medium into another – I was asked to translate an interactive website (tenbyten.org) into an exhibit/experiential space. The twist was that I also had to convey my point of view as how this pertains to me as a Media Designer.

Getting to the presentation seemed like quite a journey. Sketches, exhibit space investigations, more sketches, mini mock-ups, writing and rewriting my process and ambitions, scanning, reading, searching, editing, designing, printing, cutting, wrapping…And through this all I rehearsed in my mind what this whole process meant to me, and I had to take note of the changes emerging in my understanding of the entire experience.

About the Exhibit
The exhibit was titled “What Do You Notice? What Do You Care to Notice?” I wanted people to see how the affordances of a 3-D space could allow people to feel more engaged about the news. I attempted to translate the flat space of the news (particularly in newsprint and web-based news) into an actual space. I also attempted to convey how the physical engagement with the news articles could assist in developing a closer, more personal experience with context that often seems so distant from many of our own lives. The exhibit was meant to also redefine the intentions of traditional headlines. If a headine’s purpose is to catch a reader’s attention, how can scale, context and tactility do the same, or better? The experiential space opened up opportunities to think about other ways to push this idea further. What if these cubes were digital? What if every side changed out every hour? What if you could sit on these cubes? E-paper? OLED screens perhaps? And where would a space such as this exist successfully? And can we, as designers, compel people to interact with them? How would such a space change conversations around current events, or change social interactions with one another and with objects in space? The questions are endless, but that only means there are more possibilities to push this further so it might one day (cross my fingers) exist in the real world.

How might one enable the viewer to continue to explore the message beyond the experiential space?…by giving away takeaway cards!

These were printed on newsprint and mounted on cardstock. The flipside said: “We are captured by the provocative. Our ambitions and interests allow us to delve deeper, beyond our curious first impressions. We seek to know how the world is evolving around us. But how do we seek for answers?”

This side of the box focused on significant words pulled from the headlines.

People were free to move the cubes around in order to configure and display their own point of view

Day 2: Y13 Seeds of Change Conference

Solar voltaic parking lots anyone? Check out LifePort for more information. Not only do they generate energy, but they also provide shade for your cars, and power for those of you who own electric vehicles.

Today was a well-rounded day of talks ranging from tips on how to make design businesses more sustainable to thinking about how we can adopt good design practices through observing and adopting techniques of the natural ecosystems around us (biomimicry).

Speakers included smashLAB’s Eric Karjaluoto, Janet Kubler, PhD Biologist representing the Biomimicry Institute, Robert Noble of Envision Solar and NOBLE/GROUP, Free Range Studios, and our very own Nik Hafermas.

For me, this conference has made me feel like a kid in a thesis candy store. Good ideas, great aphorisms, enlightening tips, great resources, internship possibilities and critical questions about where we’re going with this all. I’m exhausted because my brain just about soaked up all it could for one day’s worth of green goodies.

Again, the big emphasis was about how we need to think about moving away from “green” as a marketing pitch and moving towards making it a way of living. This is why I really liked smashLAB’s presentation because they don’t pitch their company as being sustainable – they just do it. What as great about them was their new campaign called Design Can Change. It’s a resource site that encourages sustainable practices for our design communities. Check it out.

We’re building a movement people! And it’s nice to see how the design community is part of a forefront that also includes communities in the fields of science, academia and city planning.

If you’re interested in checking out more about the people and resources gathered from the conference, check out the links on this page or go to my growing list of links.

One more day to go. See ya.