Industrial and Product Design Commons^™

Accessibility To Possibilities : Discover The Unknown Unknown Worlds, Yutong Shen

Masters Theses

The digital revolution has transformed the world, and today we are drowning in information. We use search engines as an efficient way to access information, and when we search, by connecting, relating, or random recommending, our knowledge network expands from the keyword we put in. With this search engine model, it’s easy for us to find what we know we don’t know. But it’s hard to access things we don’t know we don’t know. In other words, our past limits our accessibility to information.

In this essay, I attempt to find an alternative way of approaching information in the design …

Sol, John Beck

Masters Theses

Sol. Spirituality for the digital age. A move towards a more cosmic future. A hopeful call to arms for a more inclusive, liberated culture where the impermanence of life can wash over us in a wave of ambient sonic splendor. Using solar energy to create shifting ambient soundscape Sol is an immersive, interactive civic space for all lifeforms of all persuasions. A reintrepretation of the Shinto shrine for the digital age. An alliance between codified physical computing, emerging interactive technology and the ancient spiritual traditions of the East. Non denominational, non religious wholly universal. Where all beings can remember their …

Repairer's Recipe : Volume 0, Joyce Chang

Masters Theses

Why?

Technology is accelerating; so is the amount of e-waste. Proliferating new purchases is a shortcut to economic gain, yet proliferation sacrifices social and ecological well being. Activating repair benefits systems— by decelerating the waste stream, and serving as a regenerative module for ethical material collection. Repair literacy encourages an individual’s engagement with materials while challenging corporations to acknowledge repair in the design process. Therefore, electronics users should have the opportunity to learn about repair before the need arises. A sustainable product ecosystem asks for the collaborative effort of public and private sectors and most importantly, the repair practices of …

Designed Body, Jingwei Deng

Masters Theses

Designed Body is a project about gendered design and identities. It is an investigation into the relationship between the persona analyzation process and the social identity categorization. It is a criticism towards capital driven planned obsolescence and binary determinism based design. It is a discussion around the future of our subjective and objective self under the circumstance of technological development. It is a material exploration of body, extended body and transformative body.

Invisible: A Guide To Understanding & Designing For Introverts, Ashesh Gohil

Masters Theses

The Extrovert Ideal has been an unspoken pillar of society: a vocal, go-getting person with a Carpe Diem mindset has become a requirement that most are told to strive for in order to be successful. Fundamental institutions like schools and workspaces are designed for extroverts and their need for stimulation, which becomes a hurdle for introverts since it obstructs them from being their dispositionally quiet and thoughtful selves. Such spaces need to be inclusive to allow introverts to be present in the way they prefer. One way to make space for introverts in settings otherwise designed for extroverts is through …

Voran Test Lab : An Exploration Of Teaching Collaborative Problem Solving And Critical Thinking Through Emergent Gameplay, Taber Gifford

Masters Theses

This book explores emergent gameplay as a methodology for teaching collaborative problem solving and critical thinking. These are both key 21st Century Skills and are important in educating and building future professionals and leaders. I explored the precedent analysis of game design in this category before conducting my own design research activities and experiments. Ultimately, my work culminated in the design and development of a game called Voran Test Lab. The game is designed to engage early middle school students and ask them to critically evaluate problems and collaboratively solve them.

Through The Labyrinth, Rebeca Gonzalez Morales

Masters Theses

After many turns, I made my way through. Making connections between different paths, paths I thought I had forgotten, abandoned, discarded. My goal is to understand how the environment around us affects our emotional state, our behaviour, our mental health. I seek a destigmatized idea of mental health, a way to show that it is a factor of everybody’s health meant to be prioritized as much as physical health, to expose the burden of frivolousness that it carries. I seek ways to burst the bubble that mental health lives in the world of design, to show that mental health should …

Fifty Fifty: Redefining Domesticity, Ziying Qiao

Masters Theses

I want to redefine domesticity and challenge traditional gender roles by rethinking the division of domestic chores.

In this project, I discussed gender roles, especially for how the house design impacts gender inequality and the perfect female figure in traditional context— good mother, good wife. In the experiment part, I explored the possibility of collaborative housework and designed different objects related to daily life to remind people of the importance of collaboration.

For the final design part, I applied surveillance camera and machine learning technology to a private space, designed a radical service about chores, and also discussed how people …

Totem: An Embodiment Of Human Character And Personality In Footwear Design, Sushant Shivaram

Masters Theses

This thesis is an attempt at drawing parallels between human character traits and footwear design as an evocative means to communicate character. The idea here is to translate qualitative elements of personality traits and communicate expressions through the embodiment of meaning within form in the context of footwear design. I am making an attempt at equating the meaning in form and footwear gestures that serve an emotional or functional purpose in footwear to break down the sculpture into a combination of different attributes so as to create a character taxonomy. This character taxonomy serves the purpose of assisting me in …

Applying Generative Systems To Product Design, Alex Lobos

Articles

Generative Design provides multiple benefits to the development of new products. First is the creation of intricate patterns that resemble natural systems, moving away from geometric shapes typical of mechanical design. Second is the automation of processes where computers perform complex and repetitive tasks that would be too hard or tedious for humans to do. The opportunities that automation provides is frequently considered the main benefit of generative design in the creation of new products, buildings and systems. In both of these approaches, the output that computers generate is driven primarily by a designer’s vision that already has a general …

Bitter Son, Adam Chuong

Masters Theses

This thesis concerns itself with centering the experiences of Asian Americans in order to better understand the complexities of the Asian American diasporic experience. The title of this thesis, 苦儿, roughly translates into English as “bitter son,” and is phonetically pronounced in Mandarin as “queer.” It lives directly at the intersection of these identities — Asian, American, Queer. This body of work is an act of making space and taking up space in an institution and discipline that has not largely been concerned with minority identities, or when it has, it has been misguided and prone to tokenism. It is …

Pekka : Social Software To Improve In-Game Dynamics, Yu Mo

Masters Theses

Video games are like virtual cities. Similar to towns in the real world, virtual cities contain facilities and communities represented by game elements and players. There is a question for us: Can a game be a better city?

To answer the question, we need to understand what a good city looks like. Generally, a good city needs sound facilities and harmonious communities. Similar to a real city, we need to build more advanced game elements and peaceful game communities to make the game to be a better city. Games like Paragon have failed because they lacked game communities, even though …

Biomatters : Future Of Biology As Material Source, Tareq Alzawawi

Masters Theses

Through the history of human evolution, we evolved dependent on many different biological species, which led us to understand the significance of biomatters cultivation. Biomatters are materials derived from living or once-living organisms which are or were subject to biological growth. The biomatters we use, need, and waste were and continue to be a major resource. Wheat, wood, and wool are all examples of a biomatter, yet each serves a different need. Given the range of current threatening environmental concerns, all rooted in our species treating nature as never-ending material resource, we need reactions and solutions that are urgent. Biomatters …

Mindful Interactions, Shreyans Bhandari

Masters Theses

Mindful Interactions illustrates how we’ve become addicted to our smart-phones, and how its use in our everyday life affects our physical, social, emotional health and wellbeing. This design study proposes four product designs that make us aware of using apps, and compel us to reconsider their use during bedtime, mealtime, on-the-go and at home. As our pocket sized devices continue to evolve, the outcome of this thesis becomes a case study for rediscovering and applying the “human” in human centered design.

Unimproved : Land Observation At The Edge Of Progress, Adam Somers Bowen

Masters Theses

As residents of the United States, all of us have benefited from the resources that this land provides. Some of these resources are responsibly managed, like some logging operations and grazing land. Some are much more harmful, like hydroelectric dams that have drowned Indigenous lands, and block natural habitat. Whether through development or extraction, we as humans have the special ability to drastically change the world around us in a very short amount of time. In a time of rapid environmental change, we need to find ways to better connect, observe, and assess the landscape so that as a society, …

Manufactured By Nature: Growing Generatively Designed Products, Mohammad Jawad

Theses and Dissertations

Mass production and assembly lines are yesterday’s manufacturing methods. They have exhausted Earth’s resources and limited the possibilities of design in terms of both form and material, prompting designers to search for new processes. A new generation of making includes biomimicry-inspired technologies such as 3D printing and parametric simulation, which have transformed the production paradigm. Utilizing nature as industry, this thesis explores the possibility of “growing” designed objects by employing nature’s own processes and resources. It integrates bio materials, generative design and additive manufacturing to produce objects for a post-industrial world. The project outcomes employ natural minerals, crystallization and 3D …

Finding Balance In Generative Product Design, Alex Lobos

Presentations and other scholarship

Generative design develops complex forms and structures similar to those found in nature, taking advantage of automated tasks and high-scale computing power. This approach benefits designers in the creation systems that are efficient, resilient and visually engaging. These systems follow specific rules for form generation and meet clear design goals in terms of shape, strength, mass, and other physical attributes.

There is a large number of methods for creating generative systems, based on establishing desired outcomes and behaviors for how components relate to each other. Examples of methods include L-Systems, Shape Grammars, Swarm Intelligence, Form Optimization, Lattice Design, and many …

Home Ex Data, The Natural Of The Artificial

SIGNED: The Magazine of The Hong Kong Design Institute

Technology has become second nature to humankind. The Homo Ex Data exhibition at HKDI Gallery explored how we can no longer survive without it

Memory.Zip, Yu-Hsing Wu

Masters Theses

I want to turn the unintentional “digital traces” we leave on the Internet into a tangible format so that we can be more aware of the traces we are making. To do this, I have created a series of physical objects that capture those digital traces. My hope is that this series will eventually reflect our relationship with these traces and how we feel connected to the people we care for today.

Talking To Computers, Jen Spatz

Masters Theses

A popular belief amongst UX designers is that the more voice user interfaces (i.e. Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant) speak and behave like people, the more functional they will be. But, conversational mimicry is not the only way a screenless computer can communicate information. The scope of sounds humans can interpret, manipulate, and make is broad. This project seeks to identify ways designers can mine this domain for interaction cues that promote a deeper understanding of digital content and the systems that deliver it.

Harmless Studio, David Thomas Pittman

Masters Theses

This thesis project is oriented around a vegan concept brand called “Harmless Studio.” The project recognizes that industrial design causes and supports the harm of animals through the use of animal materials. This book presents the historical, social, and scientific background of the human-animal relationship as it exists today, and it challenges the common acceptance of that relationship as it is— ultimately suggesting that industrial design need not harm animals to serve human needs. This vegan approach to design is presented through a selection of sustainable, non-animal materials and objects made from those materials. The objects are presented as part …

Radically Normal : The Menstruation Issue, Kathryn Smiley

Masters Theses

Hey readers, Periods are normal. But you’d never know that by checking out the average bathroom. The only menstruation-related public restroom fixture considered remotely standard is the trash, the one used to hide the evidence. A tampon dispenser is a rare sighting –a functioning, stocked dispenser, even rarer still.

Dispensers’ exclusion from public space reveals the ways that menstruation is not treated like other natural body functions. Instead, it has long been considered a sign of imbalance and weakness, discussed mainly in hushed tones and sly euphemisms. Historically, the medical profession has greatly contributed to cultural anxieties about women and …

Different Paths

SIGNED: The Magazine of The Hong Kong Design Institute

HKDI Alumi Gary Lee and Chak Yun Hei have both been quick to carve out promising careers in design, but each has had to discover their own path to success

Good Times, Tim Stoelting

Masters Theses

In this body of work, I set out to show an exaggerated display of the manipulation consumers face everyday Attaching stories to objects drastically increases their value. In benign settings, this might elevate a simple trinket into a family heirloom or drive a bidding war for a piece of gum chewed by a celebrity. On the adverse side, a story can play with our emotions to turn a desire into a need.

In this way, fear-based stories are a particularly powerful motivator; they can drive people to the most extreme actions. When used as a tool, fear can persuade even …

The Emotional Intelligence Of Machines, Lokesh Zope

Masters Theses

Technologies today claim to be capable of detecting human emotion. When such technologies appear on our everyday objects, how will our interactions be like? Can these objects know when we are frustrated with them? Wouldn’t that radically change the field of user experience design? However, would people be scared of such capability?

Born from this curiosity, this thesis project is a speculative and an experimental approach that explores the overlap of the fields of User Experience Design, Affective Technologies, and Artificial Intelligence. This exploration is aimed at investigating its need and illustrating a newly designed adaptive nature of domestic appliances. …

Love View, Wudi Hong

Masters Theses

There are many kinds of love, but for some people, romantic relationships are the most meaningful element of life, providing a source of deep fulfillment. I am designing a new service to track, rethink, and improve relationships with people who move to a new environment and are separated from loved ones or for those who are in unsatisfactory relationships. People in long distance relationships lack physical interaction and the ability to share feelings daily. I am working towards designing a digital service and accompanying physical tools which aim to strengthen and maintain close personal relationships across distance for people.

Jettison All Stories : Experimenting With Our Relationship To The Physical, Alyssa R. Mayo

Masters Theses

At the start of this project I set out to explore the concept of ownership, if and how it is changing and what that meant for the work I would do in the future. In the field of industrial design, matters of ownership are important considerations we must grapple with. Things, the products of our design process, are 1. Subject to new (or maybe not so new) models of ownership, responsibility and maintenance, and 2. No longer limited to forms that are owned in a traditional, physical sense that is easily understood.

The matter of form – physical vs. digital …

Body (Less) Fitness, Dan Gioia

Masters Theses

It’s too cold outside. You stubbed your toe. You had too much Chipotle. You didn’t have enough Chipotle. There’s no shortage of reasons to abstain from exercise on any given day.

Designing a product or system to get someone to exercise is almost anti-design. So much of design is making things seamless and easy for whomever your user may be. You want to make it easy for people to accomplish things they want to do. But designing to get someone to exercise? You’re trying to get someone to do something unpleasant. You’re asking your user to sweat, strain, exert, and …

Embracing Traditional Chinese Culture Through Design, Jiaxuan Li

Masters Theses

As a designer from China I am constantly focused on my passion for design of China, This interest comes from both my commitment to deep-rooted Chinese traditions, and my concern with regards to the gradual loss of traditional cultural values within contemporary society.

As a product designer, I really like designing daily object, through exploring the relationship between consciousness and behavior. I consider this connection in order to make objects more meaningful to users.

This project discusses the current situations of Chinese traditions and cultural values, and the challenges they face to survive in the contemporary world. My mission is …

Bodypart + Object, Creama Wong

Masters Theses

This thesis is about exploring the possibilities of combining objects with physically realistic body parts. This book is just the beginning of a whole new fantasy.