Projects, thoughts and opinions.
life is full of distractions. To reduce the cognitive noise in my life, I disabled my phone's browser years ago. But it turns out it's not that easy: scanning a QR code, quickly look up something on the web, check out a link that a friend send you... sometimes, you need a browser. But then again, browsers are attention sinks – distraction magnets. So I decided to make a browser myself – one that…
This book is a travel guide. A travel guide to the edge of what humans can think. We'll cover different ways of how humans approach this edge, from different disciplines, and also develop some helpful mental imagery to make navigating this particular area of thinking easier.
of children and families is complex and often shaped by uncertainty. Depressive moods are not uncommon and can make these situations even more difficult. This is where STARK wants to help. It creates spaces where emotions are welcome and where self-efficacy, confidence, and joy can be felt. STARK is a reliable companion for children in challenging situations. Dealing with thoughts and feelings is…
Wouldn't it be great if we could maintain the connectedness with our loved ones through game nights? In this project, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), our consortium investigates how playfulness can be made accessible over a distance. Through innovative sensor technology, novel interfaces and an agile, user-centered design process, we're shaping a new way of…
many people shy away from: they fear being wrong about the meaning behind a piece. It really shouldn't be that way, which is why I started Krickelkrackel. This art project emphasizes the complete freedom of the beholder to decide what a piece of art means to them. Every painting in the series is irrevocably marked with a stamped, signed declaration: “Bei diesem Bild habe ich mir nichts gedacht.”…
for everyone. Unfortunately, visitor numbers and demographics increasingly indicate that especially people of younger ages feel excluded and not adequately addressed by current museum culture. In this project, our students conduced a participatory design research project conducted together with the Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany. They set out to create new ways of…
our students set out to design new ways of preparing for one’s own death, of remembering loved ones and of joining others in grief. For example, Jana Horst's project, “Memo,” is a pillow with the support of which one can play the voices of loved ones. Tom Sion's project, “Human Remains,” is an hourglass with human ashes. Alexander Görts developed “Shards”, an additive memorial for collective…
But that shouldn’t have to mean becoming lonely. In this project, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), our consortium investigated how virtual memories – such as family photo albums or 3D data of former holiday destinations – can be made accessible to people living in retirement homes, remotely connecting them with their relatives. Through innovative sensor…
what makes us human. But aren’t we putting our creative potential at risk when we lose ourselves in often meaningless mobile communication? With this project, we decided to turn things around and create a chatbot that functions as a personal trainer for the user’s creativity. Creactivities includes a variety of workouts, challenges and programs, designed to exercise the different areas of the…
when it comes to local initiatives? For this project, we developed a public installation featuring a window-drawing robot that marks votes next to hashtags representing local issues. Every social media post using one of the multilingual hashtags casts a vote. In the background, a 3D map projection visualizes the initiatives on a styrofoam miniature of the neighborhood.
While studying complex systems is often daunting, discovering them via a game is something else entirely, encouraging role play, exploration and even changing points of view. Games foster collaboration, as well as a competitive spirit. With this project, funded by the German Federal Foreign Office, the Industrial Design students at the University of Wuppertal developed a series of board games –…
surround us are equipped with increasing computational power, a capacity increasingly described as »artificial intelligence.« What if such an intelligence could also entail the ability to anticipate future situations – and fear them? In this project, our students Gina-Vanessa Lohkamp, Gürkan Orak and Alexander Salice took on this question and designed speculative devices that visualize such a…
Catholic rituals provide interesting approaches for making the intangible tangible. For this project, our students redesigned the most fundamental of these rituals – fasting, confession and prayer, amongst others – for the 21st century. Without altering the underlying belief system, the results provide a fresh take on how reflection and mindfulness can be designed.
of our Industrial Design students at the University of Wuppertal — Piet Becker, Alexander Görts, David Hrlic, David von Netzer and Christopher J. Weld — designed a fictional, dystopian future society in which courtrooms and parliaments have been replaced by computers. They created a silent film, aicracy , featuring a series of everyday objects from this society, and portrayed the lives of two of…
and having a good time with friends don't have to be at odds. Escape Team is a project I'm developing with Sarah, my wife: a printable escape game. The accompanying app creates the atmosphere (via audio narration and a thrilling soundtrack) and also serves as the game master, checking the entered codes while keeping the clock ticking. It's great to see how the game is received and critically…
be transformed into an experience? There is often a chasm between thinking and feeling. To feel, we need different stimuli. In this project, our Industrial Design students at the University of Wuppertal — Linda von Faber, Felix Fastenrath, Friedrich Kegel, Julia Lakemeinen, Eva Licht and Yannik Wendt — took on this topic and developed new possibilities for interacting with data in physical or…
artificial intelligence change the creative process? Five of our Industrial Design students at the University of Wuppertal – Elizabeth Bradford, Erik Caetano, Friedrich Kegel, Eva Licht and Marco Höwer – reimagined what creative work might look like in a future where artificial intelligence is omnipresent. The end result was prototypes of objects that could be part of a creative laboratory of the…
a new approach to delivering presentations: no clicker, no slides. Instead, the presenter wears a pair of smart, NFC-enabled rings that gives them intuitive, physical control of their presentation. By moving across a sensor-equipped stage, the DataTouch wearer goes through each presentation topic step by step – literally. A tracker maps their position on stage to different points within each…
investigated the concept of embodiment in the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) via the concept of Research Through Design (RTD). The notion of embodiment has many meanings in HCI. With my thesis, titled Encountering the Digital: Representational and Experiential Embodiment in Tangible User Interfaces , my aim was to contribute to the clarification of the term. I proposed a distinction…
interact with technology that can communicate body language? This project explored a future vision of shape-changing devices that actively use body language to express relational aspects of the interaction. The devices react to different users, spaces and situations, with behavior ranging from shy to curious. For example, imagine your phone could demonstrate excitement to see you. Or annoyance…
use eating-related metaphors for information consumption: information diet, eye candy, news feed. Our body simply understands the parallel between consuming information and consuming food. The fast food explosion of the 1990s changed our relationship to food: Cheap, mass-produced and widely available, we stuffed it down without a second thought. The way I see it, we’re currently in the fast-food…
can be a great way to produce haptic output from mobile phones. This project investigated the use of gyroscopic flywheels, or spinning tops, to do just that. We investigated several application scenarios, including gaming and VR navigation. As haptic displays based on the gyroscopic effect tend to be dependent on user action, these application scenarios appeared to be the most fitting.
phone calls for one of two reasons. The first is for information exchange, and speech, as mobile phones in their current form enable it, is well-suited for that. The second reason, however, is the need for nearness – to be in touch with someone. In this sense, speech alone has clear limitations. We developed three prototypes that investigate future visions of physically being in touch through a…
with touch screens, yet feel so little. This project investigated a new way to create feedback for touch screen users: a stylus that provides frictional actuation. This stylus, or pen, has a ball on its tip which is connected to an electromagnetic coil. The coil serves as a kind of brake, enabling fine-tuned control of the force required to move the pen. This opens up the possibility of creating…
are very good at feeling the shape of the things they hold. This project investigated ways for a device with a dynamically adjustable shape to display digital content in a tactile way. For example, when reading an e-book, the amount of pages remaining can be indicated by increasing or decreasing the device’s thickness on the respective side. Or imagine a phone that shifts to »point« the way during…
augments digital content with the physical sensation of a responsive, tactile display. Thanks to a moving weight inside the prototype, the device can reposition its mass, shifting its center of gravity in response to a variety of cues. For example, dragging and dropping can be accompanied by the physical sensation of following the dragged object via synchronized movement of the device’s center of…
explored the possibilities of giving mobile phones lifelike qualities: breathing and pulsating, for example. They notify users not only upon messages and phone calls but are continuously responsive with physical movements, responding to signals such as their user’s touch. Check out my talk at TEDxBerlin to learn more about this project.
phone call is alike. What if there was a way to flag certain calls as important, and others as less so? Tactful Calling denotes a call’s level of urgency using a force-sensitive dial button. Placing an important call requires pushing the button with more force, while a more hesitant call needs only a gentle touch. On the receiving end, the user can set up a filter for incoming calls, such as…
sound surprising, but new perspectives can be gained through closed eyes. In my master’s thesis at Potsdam University of Applied Sciences , I investigated the potential for eye closure to enrich the experience of visual media. I developed various applications to test my hypothesis, such as the issuing of commands by closing one or both eyes (e.g. activating the sniper scope in a first-person…
should feel different than taking a picture, even if we press the same button on our phone to do both. With a force sensor and a force-exerting motor on the inside of a mobile phone, we could create phone buttons capable of so much more – almost as much as our fingers can do. Enter the Dynamic Knob. This button can be used as a shape-based display, a pressure-sensitive input source or various…