Page under-development
Version showed in London, Feb 2015
Current version cannot be shown as work is still being done on this project.
Bear Blocks provides an intuitive toolkit that allows the user to build physically, using blocks: computer programs. A section of code is assigned to each block. As they are arranged physically, digital interactions are triggered. The physicality of data, information and code opens the door to a new realm of possibilities: dialogue, collaboration, emotions.
Not knowing how to code and program is something most of the young generation of today is suffering from. Bear Blocks is an invitation into the world of programming. The core of the project is to retrieve a sensory experience in the act of interacting with computers, one that goes further than typing on a keyboard, or clicking on a mouse. The objective beyond learning to program is to create a new language, a new tool, a new way of interacting through the computer: one that is more physical, more emotional, more natural.
Exhibitions:
Royal College of Art - WIP Show 2015
Young International Designer - Milan Design Week 2015 - Invited by China - Italy Design and Innovation Center at Fabbrica del Vapore in Milan, Italy
Work in Progress - Project with Dan Garrett - Tokyo, 2014
Tasteworks developed from a study of dementia patients’ communication difficulties. With gradually deteriorating recognition capabilities, activities like eating can become stressful and unenjoyable. Different ways of stimulating flavour are needed to maintain an appetite and a healthy relationship with food.
We turned to Virtual Reality to investigate the potential of dynamic gestures, colours and sounds to artificially augment and stimulate taste. The level of immersion in the VR experience - spatial mapping, realistic rendering of existing environments - affects the strength of the simulated sensations. Using an Oculus Rift and Leap Motion, Tasteworks places subjects in a hyper realistic Virtual World where food takes on surreal and unexpected qualities, shifting our perceptions of taste. We’ve conducted more than 100 tests and five iterations - including a workshop with IDEO Tokyo - in order to refine and improve the experience.
Tasteworks has the ability to emphasise and generate flavour. This can be used to augment a culinary experience, introducing temporal and spatial qualities in food, that have yet to be explored by even the most creative molecular gastronomists. Tasteworks allows for a new language and vocabulary of flavour, engaging fundamental sensory experiences to augment taste or assist those with recognition difficulties.
Tasteworks won the Judges award in the Student Design Competition at the Augmented Human ’15 in Singapore at the Marina Bay Sands hotel in March 2015.
Awards & Exhibitions:
1st Prize - Student Design Competition of Augmented Human ’15 at Marina Bay Sands Hotel in Singapore in March 2015- Judges were experts in the field
Augmented Human ’15 - Exhibition Marina Bay Sands Hotel in Singapore in March 2015
Young International Designers - Milan Design Week 2015 - Invited by the China - Italy Design and Innovation Center. Exhibition at Fabbrica del Vapore in Milan, Italy
Project with Sheana Yu - Tokyo, 2014
Hamon is an interactive flexible table surface that connects its users by sharing each other's desk arrangement. It explores a new form of communication based on people’s relationship with everyday objects. Hamon tracks and highlights the outline of products placed on top of its surface, allowing the users to experience their loved ones or family member's presence by observing the journey of their objects and interacting with them. Creating a more personal, deep and interesting language to connect with others through digital physical movement (rather than spoken or written words). Graphics by Sheana Yu.
Awards and exhibtion:
Gold Prize - Huawei "Closer to your heart" Competion in August 2014
Best Intelligent Design - LotusPrize 2014
Hunan University exhibition - October 2014
Milan Design Week 2015 at Fabbrica del Vapore - invited by China - Italy Design and Innovation Center
Press:
International of Societies of Industrial Design / Royal College of Art / Imperial College London / Chinese TV
Project with Chema Pastrana & Pae Natwilai - Tokyo, 2014
The brief for this project was: Tokyo Olympics 2020 and Omotenashi.
Omotenashi means Hospitality in Japanese. Once in Japan we realised that the first step towards a stranger was quite difficult. So being aware of Japan’s cultural strength and the objective of the Olympics which is about showcasing the cultural features of a country, we decided to explore the world of Anime. We propose an icebreaker to promote meaningful interactions between locals and foreigners. We developed TOMO: a personal avatar and Olympic mascot. The users meet TOMO in hubs. TOMO initially mimics the person in front of the screen but then slowly becomes more indepentent and starts intereacting with the other TOMOs on the screen. Digital interactions to promote real physical interactions!
The installation was tested using kinect in Tokyo.
Exhibition:
KMD at Roppongi Hills - Tokyo Design Week - Tokyo, Japan - November 2014
Used to build the working prototype of the TOMO project
Project with Allison Rowe & Setareh Shamdani - London 2013
This project plays with our desire to look at ourselves might it be a quick look at the storefront window, in a restroom mirror or in a car window. The mirror acts as an invitation for people to approach, but as they do it breaks up and opens up, distorting the image more and more the closer they get. As the viewer walks back, the mirror reassembles itself. The viewer therefore plays with the mirror and thus its own reflection walking back and forth to "trick it": creating an amusing "danse" between himself and his reflection.
Sonna - Project with Allison Rowe & Setareh Shamdani - London, 2015
Sonna was feature on Sky News in June 2016. The article can be found here and the facebook live here.
Sonna, a project in collaboration with Allison Rowe and Setareh Shamdani, enhances environmental perception through data sonification. It is a tool to experience things that are usually beyond our realm of perception, whether that means they’re just outside our field of vision or that the signals exist on a scale that we cannot currently process. It is augmented audio reality - or an Oculus Rift for sound.
Sonna is made of three components: a sensory network, a translation system, and a headset. The sensory network is the connected “ears and eyes” of other Sonna users, broadcasted via a sensory “radio” - a platform to transmit various information streams. The translation system converts this data into rhythmic tones and positions the sources in the headset, projecting a three dimensional soundscape directly into the head.
We see applications across three main categories. Enhanced mobility: imagine an instinctive navigation aid for the visually impaired. Enhanced performance: Imagine replacing the car dashboard with an intuitive sense of your speed and the location and movement of other vehicles. And enhanced everyday: this might be an immersive addition to video games.
With Sonna we “hacked” our sensorial system by creating a new sense: a 7th sense.
China’s rapid economic expansion has meant an entire demographic, Parents, have migrated from the country side to work in large factories close to cities. The money parents earn is sent back to their families who stay in their hometown and they only visit once a year, on Chinese New Years.
This means that grand-parents are left to look after the kids and being tired and working in the fields, kids are often left on their own. So it is very common to see kids playing very late on a shared smartphone and not really knowing how to play together.
With Lin and Shui, two very talented design students from Hunan University, we started building nets and interactive targets to introduce the kids of the local villages to …. Football!!! The kids really enjoyed it... over 1000 goals were scored on our opening event!
We used tilt sensors linked to an Arduino at the base of the targets to make a noise each time the kids would touch them. The base of the targets were made by cutting a basket ball in half and pouring concrete in it: very stable.
Project with Luke Foreman, Mark Robins, Hilary Andrew, Oladapo Ogunbiyi
The objective of this project was to design and manufacture a quality set of bodywork for the Imperial College TTx electric motorcycle, for entry into the Isle of Man TT zero race. The team went about this by carefully designing using conceptual sketches prior to generating a CAD model. The emphasis was placed on design for manufacture and the manufacture process itself, with the aim of producing industry standard parts.
Exhibition:
Isle of Man TTx - Race 2013
The Institution of Engineering and Technology - Savoy Place, London 2012
Project with Doina Neagu, Duck-Soo Choi & Yue Jiang
The brief set by Rio Tinto was to create an innovative product or sport associated with the Winter Paralympic Games.
We decided to work on ski jumping for double bellow knee amputees. Our ambition is to enable people who are constantly reminded of their disability by gravity to experience the weightless sensation and the adrenaline rush of Ski jumping. Our solution is Ballista. Ballista is a prosthetic leg that would take advantage of the knee joint, the hamstring muscles and the weight of the skier to compensate for the lack of ankle joint and lower leg muscles. Ballista allows for Double below knee amputees to take part in Ski jumping. It is the first project ever to even raise the possibility of Ski jumping being part of the Paralympics but even further: Ballista would make it a reality. All feasability calculations were done and validated the concept.
At over 90 km/h at the Take off position, success is governed by timing and explosivity. The Take off point is the most important moment of the ski jump as the athlete needs to jump high enough as well as reach flight angle position almost immediately after Take off. The lack of ankle joint and lower leg muscles renders this impossible. Ballista is about energy storing and releasing. This is achieved through a complex architecture of materials with complementary properties. Ballista stores the energy added from the weight of the skier and the flexing of the hamstring muscles in the in-run stage and releases it when the skier initiates the jumping motion to allow him to jump higher and get his body and skies in the right flight position. The landing happens naturally as the skier touches the slope with the back of his skies thus reversing the prosthetic to ski angle back to the in-run position.
Ballista recieved £5000 of follow up funding by Rio Tinto to be built and tested. Video
Exhibition:
RIo Tinto Exhibition - Imperial College London Exhibition Space - February 2014
DX International Sportswear Exhibition - Toronto, Canada - July 2015
New York, 2013
I have always been fascinated by dematerialization, minimalism, homogeneous surfaces and monochromes. Throughout my semester at Pratt in New York, I have been developing simple projects.
From a rope to a rack, from a stick to a bowl; from lines to space. For each project the focus is on the user’s experience and its interesting and playful interaction with the designed product. The idea behind each concept is to put forward the user it was designed for by letting him adapt the objects to himself, his personality. Transformations occur as new possibilities and ambitions are created.
People are becoming more autonomous and need to customize. Their taste is more acute and refined.Changeable, modifiable, adaptable, amusing ideas; simplicity to develop ones creativity.
The brief for the class was to design something to hold fruits and something to hold books.
