Current Happenings

The diagram below is an attempt to define the areas I've been working in. What I am doing is creating interaction designs for communication, not necessarily "utility." With a field of design so attached to technology and functionality, it is hard to shed the restrictions and assumptions laid down by its history and see how the medium can be expressive. Media artists are doing it, but there aren't many inroads into the design world.

For the communication designer, there are so many rich variables to work with in interaction design. My last project made me aware how many choices I was making in so many different fields of study -- and also how unexplored many of these fields are let alone their combinations. While I started with form explorations and interaction possibilities, I realized there were issues of a whole new language (translating video to vibration), the form factor changing the meaning of the content as well as how one interacts with the object, the choice of behavior (programming), the delivery of the media... the list goes on.



I identified three fields: FORM, BEHAVIOR, and HUMAN INTERACTION. I think designers have to dabble in all of them in order to create a complete design. For my current projects, I am most interested in the relationships between object behavior and object form. What is the result of a formerly inanimate object taking on a media life?