SUMMER 2008

Jackson Wang PEACE OF MIND™
Peace Of Mind™ is a line of lifestyle products that allow American citizens to be prepared for the worst wherever they may be. A hypothetical lifestyle initiative between Target Brands and Homeland Security the, peace of mind™ products and vending machine demonstrate how design can be a form of social commentary and provocation to ignite debate. peace of mind™ uses the power of design to explore the relationship between consumption and fear.

SPRING 2008

Jean Ku MEME.NET
Meme is an online system that helps designers navigate the language that is unique to individual design communities. It uses the affordances of online social networks to allow members to share and discuss meaning and ideas amongst members of their own local community and with others. It is designed to encourage collaboration in building design knowledge within academic programs, large corporations, or peer groups.

Maria Moon NEUROGRAPHICA
Neurographica investigates the ways in which design can be used to explore and analyze neurological data. Traditionally, the role of design in the scientific process has been to visually encapsulate, model, or evidence a particular argument or conclusion. But Maria Moon used her skills as a visual communicator to work with scientists during the discovery phase, developing visualizations that were integral to the process of analysis and assessment. Neurographica is the culmination of a series of studies that demonstrate how, in collaboration with scientists, the meaningful, interesting, and unforeseen can be discovered and revealed.

FALL 2007

Laura Janisse MEDICATION SAFTEY
Medication Safety aims to improve medication safety and patient's quality of care in post-operative surgical units. Using human-centered design research methodologies to analyze communication patterns, Janisse developed design concepts that include an interactive medication board for nurses, a revamped unit patient board, a bedside patient communication center, and a family-patient-care team communication system.

Qusai Kathawala VISCERAL INTERACTION: OUR BREATH CONCRETE
Our Breath Concrete is an ongoing project that examines breathing as a means of intimate communication. Our Breathe takes the form of a coffee table across which two participants converse via patterns of light and color. This is among the projects that helped define Visceral Interaction—a tactical approach to interface design that aims at developing sensitivity and self-awareness.

Charles Lu SHUFFLE SPACE: Social Exchange through Inspirational Design
Shuffle Space is a set of projects that investigate how media design can be used in support of locally-based social exchanges. Alternative forms of sensing, harvesting, and interpreting are used to discover people’s voices, imagination, and meaning within a small, contained community. By using Art Center’s student body as a case study, Shuffle Space serves as a social reflector, dialectical platform, and collaborative inspiration within this community.

Miya Zane Osaki RETELLINGS: Interplay of documentation and narrative histories
Retellings is an investigation into the ways in which we collect, save and share our experiences. An outcome of the research, here/there is an interactive exhibition of two family's stories of forced displacement in the United States and offers personal entry points into the larger, often challenging, subject matter through audio, light, and the visitor's movement. The project demonstrates how individual experience can contribute to the building of public knowledge.

Hannah Regier SWITCH CRITTERS
Switch Critters are quirky, animated organic forms that can be persuaded to perform everyday tasks such as turning on lights or starting the car. Their behaviors are controlled by data flows that are embodied as mood, designed and imagined into personality. Imagination and provocation were built into the design process which included developing several short films in collaboration with writers who lived with the critters.

Peter Shultz WOMEN WHO PLAY: A design research case study
Women Who Play is a study of women in their twenties who play video games. It looks at ideas of personal history, accomplishment and use of media. The study, which asked, “Who are these women?” and “Why do they play?”, is a design research case study. The project extends the Media Design Program's "Super Studio" methodology to include ideas from journalism, photography, and documentary film.

Jiyeon Song ONE DAY POEM PAVILLION: Experiential Typography with light and shadow
The One Day Poem Pavilion demonstrates the poetic, transitory, and situational nature of light and shadow. Using a complex array of perforations, light passing through the pavilion’s surface produces shifting patterns that transform into the legible text of a poem at certain times of the year. Without the use of any power other than the sun, this technique uses light, shadow, and architecture to push the boundaries of communication and experiential delight.

SUMMER 2007

Theo Alexopoulos CINEPHONIC: First Words
Cinephonic is the name for a collaborative approach to music-based filmic narratives that challenges the music video and reinvents the musical. First Words is a short film that uses the cinephonic approach: the vision of director/designer Theo Alexopoulos was developed in tandem with the words and beats of hip-hop artist Matre and producer Jericho-J.

Sebastian Bettencourt FUTURE ECOTONES: Blending tangible and digital worlds
Future Ecotones is a body of work that explores Metagestures–new gestural languages in interface design–to address the relationship between digital and physical worlds. The work employs cultural metaphors, human experiences, and rituals to explore blended interfaces (characterized as "ecotones"), creating a rich opportunity for innovative design. This approach is demonstrated in a range of examples from augmented reality systems to new ways of manipulating information.

Angel Lin INTERFACIAL DIALECTIC: Open Interface
Interfacial Dialectic is an exhibit of interactive objects that pose the question: how can we turn fashion and architecture into interfaces that address the problem of dual citizenship in the physical and digital world? The objects are designed as "Open Interfaces" (interfaces designed without an explicit function) to provoke thinking around interaction.

Linda Yoon REFLEXIVE INTERACTION: ARON
ARON: Music Lives in the Cloud is a music sharing system that enables ambient, non-task oriented listening experiences through networked biomorphic light forms and a presence interface. ARON was created with a methodology called Reflexive Interactions which positions interaction designers as social agents.

SPRING 2007

Amy Sheppard DESIGN ARCHEOLOGY: Graphic Reconstructions of Kreuzberg, Berlin
Design Archeology combines communication design with archeological methods for evaluating material culture to produce new forms of graphic identity. It is a research methodology for examining cultural practices and activities of the moment in order to create a "snapshot" of a community's identity from its material culture. The project examines the language of transactions and advertising and its impact on community identity.

FALL 2006

Jed Berk TRANSITIONAL SPECIES: ALAVS 2.0
Transitional Species: Autonomous Light Air Vessels (ALAVs) 2.0 are networked objects that communicate the concept of connectivity among people, objects, and the environment. Through the use of mobile technologies people can influence the behavior of the ALAVs by starting conversations and building closer relationships with them. ALAVs 2.0 reflects upon the current state of connectivity in our everyday lives.

Susan Lee OPEN WEAVE
Open Weave is an exhibit that demonstrates a process-led methodology using the elements of craft and surface to explore the unpredictable nature of creativity. The exhibit documents a rigorous poetic process that used familiar materials (paper and fabric) in unfamiliar ways as a method of discovery.

Nikhil Mitter SPECULATIVE OBJECTS: Creative Possibilities and Critical Reflection
Speculative design is an emerging practice-based research methodology that promotes designed objects as tools for critical reflection. It serves as an alternative to existing research strategies by channeling findings through symbolic material objects. An emergent aggregation of blogs and music is determined by physical construction and interactive play with the object.

SUMMER 2006

Ludmil Trenkov YOUGUIDE
youGuide present a novel way of photographic cartography and locative media employed within the youGuide system to encourage intercultural exchange. It challenges us to get aquatinted with the world a block away. youGuide is a platform to peek into one another's neighborhoods - to wonder and interact.

SPRING 2006

Jai Dandekar UC DAVISVILLE
UC Davisville uses interdependent systems designed to utilize narrative as an integrative tool to create connections to build more successful communications. It connects University of California, Davis students with local Davis community.

Tina Park EMOB
EMOB, or emotive objects, is an interactive system based on an accumulation of experiences catalogued and organized to create novel inspirational atmospheres. Given that many of our objects have a deeper meaning, anexperience or a story, what kind of relationship would our object develop if we "introduced" them to each other?

FALL 2005

Laura Crawford Onedog
Onedog: Companions for Life is a service-based system for human/canine matchmaking and the maintenance of that relationship. This system repositions the commodity-driven pet industry. The fundamental ideology behind this system is quality of life - quality of life for the animal and for the owner. There are three components to the Onedog system. There are the physical retail space installations, the online community and the interactive collar system. Onedog is a service-based system driven by the user. It is networking with a purpose.

Jennifer Darmour EXPERIENTAL PROTOTYPING
Experiential Prototyping consists of a collection of projects that explore new ways of using interaction and physical computing to invent and prototype the experiences of new interactive technology-driven products and services. The final project is an innovative personal mobile music device that uses gesture-based movements to mix, share, customize, and sync music.

Matthew McBride TELEPATH: Wayfinding in the New urban Ecology
“Telepath: Way-finding in the New Urban Ecology” examines the intersection of digital collective memory, locative technology and urbanism as it transforms the Human Computer Interface into a Human Environmental Interface. A Telepath augments the act of looking through computing and gesture through processing, enabling individuals to engage in practical, cultural and emotional mapping as they excavate the specificity and sensibility of their environment.

Syuzi Pakhchyan SPARKLAB: Craft + Tech + Culture
Sparklab investigates the intersection of culture, technology, and craft. It is a design investigation that not only considers whether technologies might take on new forms, but looks within a specific culture to create a new platform that reflects and supports diverse attitudes and experiences.

Sara Schmidt SALVAGE: I Fancy the Abandoned
Salvage explores the creative potential of the items that we find and that others discard. It is a system that connects businesses looking for a place to donate discontinued samples or over-stocked materials with artists who have a desire to use these items as their raw material.

Kelvin Young CAHOOTS
Cahoots is a transmedia project management system that provides dynamic ways of looking at information and the orchestration of team management. It creates a metaphorical representation of the data to inspire production and a quick analasis of project workflow. With a large interactive display and mobile displays, Cahoots promotes team collaboration.

SUMMER 2005

Aunali Khimji ETHERSCAPE
ETHERSCAPE embraces modernity, while being respectful of the cultural specificities of the Arabian Peninsula. It uses media design to bridge the gaps between inherited visual traditions and the technologized realms of commercial interaction. Souniafidubai works specifically with motion, scale and interaction to turn the city’s environment into a communications spectacle that presents and enhances many aspects of reality for the population.

SPRING 2005

David Keady BLINDSPOT
Blindspot is an audio information system for the automobile. It provides sound cues that address safety, car status, navigation, and other location based information. Sonification is the use of nonverbal audio to convey information. The Geiger Counter is an good example where the rate of clicks indicated particular levels of radiation.

Prarthana Panchal MISHMASH: Families Crossing Cultures
MishMash is about cross-cultural families finding their own rituals for life's celebrations. This trans-media system would help people generate rituals appropriate to their own situations, whether recalled from childhood, found from previous generations, combined or newly created.

Shawn Randall ON THE MAP
On the Map is a trans-media system that utilizes location tagging to give military teens a voice and tool to help them make the social connections they need when they move. It utilizes the entire population of military teens as a resource for information, empathy and social connection.

FALL 2004

Eric Boisvert NAVIGATING L.A.
With an area of over 450 sq. miles and more than 6000 miles of roadways, LA is a hard city to wrap your head around. Eric Boisvert designed Relay and the Metropologue in response to the question "How can media designers inform, relate, and contextualize an environment that is so out of human scale?" Relay is a unique cell phone based application that spontaneously matches drivers with potential riders going to the same location.

Nikolai Cornell LIFE- SIZE
A series of interactive media design installations that explore human-scale interaction, environmental interface and display systems. The research, experiments and projects that comprise "Life-Size" embed media into environments, enhance interior spaces and facades and make them respond to the movements of people through the space.

Chul-hoJang SOUNDPORT: A local | Global Music Network
SOUNDPORT confronts the realities of the music sales environment. Through a highly designed promotional video mixing live video, animation, and motion graphics, he has proposed an innovative, transmedia model for enlivening point of sale purchasing of music. SOUNDPORT confronts the advantages of online purchasing head on by deploying new display and communications technologies in the retail environment. SOUNDPORT rejuvenates physical retail spaces where music is sold by bringing back a young, dance-oriented entertainment-savvy community.

Yoonsun Joo ASOTYPE Animated System of Typographic Picture Education
ASOTYPE is an innovation in graphics, images, and text in motion that communicates vital information in a compelling and involving way. ASOTYPE does not try to replace the existing sign system, but improves it and gives users the power to create their own unique, individual ASOTYPE. ASOTYPE is not symbolic but readable, its animated characteristics rendering it both more intuitive and more communicative.

Claire Myoung-Jung Kwon THE SCARLET LETTER: A Trans-media Commentary on Type, Identity and Culture
The Scarlet Letter is a trans-media commentary on type, identity and culture. It discusses the birth of the Chopsuey typeface as a pseudo-nationality of Far East Asians and its application to Asian Americans for over 100 years in the U.S. The Scarlet Letter is an exploration about the relationship between typography and identity in the U.S. It identifies how society imposes distinctive generalizations and/or stereotypes using a typeface through a mixture of history, fact and fiction.

Yael Maayani WOMEN WHO VOTE©: The Politics of Love
Women Who Vote(C) is a case study in design research that explores the relationship between the designer, the client and the community, as a strategic approach to design. By taking advantage of the dynamic intersection between media and culture, Women Who Vote(C) uses media design intervention with common social practices to address challenges that go beyond traditional branding. At its core the Women Who Vote(C) campaign uses entertainment and information to market the act of voting to women.

Matt McKissick ALTERACT - "the training tool for actors"
alteract is the first really new system for training actors to emerge in more than a generation. For one thing, it's the Actor's Studio in a Box: an interactive, networked, affordable, accessible tool for the novice and the professional alike to hone the crafts that actors have used for millenia.

D. Scott Nazarian STRANGE DESIGN + The eidolon Interface Environment
Strange Design describes a tension between the speculative and the practical within design practice. It is also a phrase to describe the visual anomalies, or 'datanomaly', of future human-computer interface. The methodology of Strange Design, enlisting the visual and ideological potentialities of the Science Fiction genre in both literature and film, is an appeal for a more Situationist approach to interface design, a way to untether computer users from the object of the computer and engender a more direct relationship with the space of computing.

Carina Ngai YOU ARE HERE: A Trans-media System for Travelers
With "You Are Here", Carina Ngai created a physical environment, a branding concept, and a sonic experience. These elements combine to enhance travelers? experiences in a foreign city enabling them to emotionally connect to a place. Tourists come to the "You Are Here" store and become explorers. Drawn in by the ambiance of the retail environment and a series of video attract loops, they select an Audio Walking Tour narrated by a local resident reflecting personal points of view.

Christopher Milan Raykovich THE HISTORY OF VS : This is not an ad.
VS is an attempt to analyze and document a history of branding using humor, irony, ambiguity, and parody. It's a way to come to terms with the weight of the past in a branded world gone mad. VS is a fictional brand, which has been inserted into historical contexts in order to talk about this history and what it means. Through this process, VS demonstrates both the hollowness and extraordinary power that branding has come to represent.

David Schwarz REVISION: Design Cinema Defined
David Schwarz designed "ReVision", which is a visually astonishing, innovative narrative short. The project is proof that compelling stories can be told in the budding genre of Design Cinema – a hybrid form of moving image that is wedged between filmmaking and motion graphics.

Jen Tarara 2DEGREES: Advice That's True to You™
A new mobile information system and interface that allows users to save and share advice and information with members of a personally defined network. 2degrees can keep track of personal details, connect with permission to the databases of friends, and access the kind of things friends would know when they aren't available.

Cybil Weigel EMBEDDED
Cybil Weigel is interested in communities, music, and video. She decided to document a school and the surrounding community in a low income neighborhood. Responding to our culture's shortened attention spans, Cybil looked at popular, bi-coastal music trends, grafitti, comics and MTV for something sleeker, slimmer, fast and more potent to infuse into our routines. Cybil reinvented the cartoon bubble, breaking it apart and having it react with each person being filmed. By innovating and responding to the community, the film and the production process, Cybil viewed her role as "an embedded designer".