Thesis Project I / Thesis Project II

Throughout my life I have changed the tools I use for drawing, starting at a young age with markers, crayons, and pencil, eventually learning to paint with oils and watercolors. Painting is a process which I still consider drawing, only with a brush. In my undergraduate studies I learned to printmaking. And then it happened... about eight years ago I started using the computer as a drawing tool. Now I use it almost exclusively. It wasn’t until the last year of my graduate program that I asked myself, “Why?”  read more »

We now have the tools and technology to create just about any interactive system imaginable. But how can we ensure that our designs are engaging? Dynamic Systems of Engagement illuminates how dynamic, interactive, computationally based systems offer new opportunities for engagement with participants and third-party observers. Through numerous case studies, I explore three core themes: data visualization, dynamic systems, and engagement.  read more »

“Narrative serves to inform, educate, and entertain. It provides meaning, background, and context, and it incites interest in what is next.”  read more »

This thesis focuses on light as a tool to recreate the perception of space.

I created a series of experimental case studies to observe the interaction between light, physical filters and space. The experimentation was based on a three-layer projection system with light sources, physical filters and spatial surfaces including balloons, paper waves, and foam core triangular structure, among others. For each layer of the system, I used a manifold projection of image, motion and sound content, as well as various materials, textures and shapes, to test multiple variables and possibilities.  read more »

My thesis research focuses on exploring the possibilities of dynamic media design to facilitate more human and multi-sensory, and therefore, a more natural way to access information and to communicate.

In my thesis, I researched the historical, theoretical and psychological aspects of communication and technology and developed six case studies to determine how dynamic media design can incorporate the human senses in modern communication.

Major Thesis Project: "Drawing by Emotion"  read more »

Learning to program is difficult, and of particular challenge to an audience of artists, designers and educators. These learners may have a limited background in mathematics and programming logic and also vastly different motivations from a student majoring in computer science. Yet the pedagogy we use to teach them programming is the same as for everyone.  read more »

In my thesis, I explore the power of body language and nonverbal communication with respect to social learning and interaction. I create physical and online spaces with the tools that encourage people to interact freely and spontaneously. An essential part of my thesis is to provide ways and means for people to be active, move their bodies to be more natural, and possibly, to have fun.  read more »

How do you define creativity?
Creativity is not defined by the best looking poster or slickest packaging. Creativity is the capacity to identify a problem and then move quickly to deliver a solution. I believe many people have this creative capacity within them, but not everyone is in a place to express it. My role as designer is to create conditions that invite people to explore this creative aspect of themselves.  read more »

New technologies should not overwhelm us. They should open up new levels of comfort without compensating the intuitive essence of life. Activities within the digital world should mirror seamless qualities of the activities in nature. Appropriate metaphors need to be imbued within a system of interactions to occur fluidly.  read more »

This thesis investigates interactive media's capacity to communicate the poetic. "Poetic" meaning the ability of language to communicate abstract and conceptual messages, as opposed to informational language that focuses on objects and their relationships to physical space.  read more »

My philosophical and visual research is based on a holistic approach towards new Media. Holistic thinking means to consider parts which interact and create a whole. Holistic thinking in regards to communication also means to consider man and his senses. Our senses define the edge of consciousness. The senses feed shards of information to the brain like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. As J.Z. Young describes: "it may be a great part of the secret of the brain's powers is the enormous opportunity provided for interaction between the effects of stimulating each part of the receiving fields. It is this provision of interacting-places or mixing-places that allows us to react to the world as a whole to much greater degree than others animals can do”.  read more »

My thesis investigates the vocabulary and role of dynamic illusion in the interactive environment. I am particularly interested in utilizing visual illusion to create an immersive, exploratory, unpredictable, poetic, and meaningful experience that activates both physical and mental participation by an audience.  read more »

As time has gone by and people have asked me what it’s about — I’ve been able to boil it down to one sentence: My thesis is about creating a sense of place through photography and sound.  read more »

My thesis research investigates how one can use metaphors of natural form and behavior for information to support a better understanding of data systems.  read more »

Leaving my home, my country, a comfortable womb, I start a new communication journey. I’m the person who loves to express myself well. I love to build up relationships with people by talking to them. Having intimate relationships with good friends makes me feel comfortable and happy. As a foreign student in United States, communicating in second language and keeping in touch with friends in Taiwan brought challenges to me in building up and maintaining relationships.  read more »

The functional analog objects of our lives: the clock, coffee maker, telephone, and many countless other devices have seen the benefits of infusing technology into their daily functions. This has allowed us to create an interactive life where we coexist with intelligent objects.  read more »

In order for design to communicate, it must relate content through the senses. By interacting with design — being able to handle, hear, see and change it — we arrive at our own understanding of it. In this way design leads to a form of knowledge that is affective, immediate, and visceral.  read more »

The Articulation of Visual Experiences Through Algorithm explores the concepts and possibilities computation presents as a creative medium for design.  read more »

Computer-mediated communication systems today focus too much on convenience, such as speed and efficiency, and filter out the important elements of human communication, such as physical space, gestures, emotions, and individual uniqueness. Using dynamic mapping as a methodology, my thesis investigates how we can inject richer nuances of human communication into online communication systems.  read more »

The goal of Data Shadow: Remixing our Public and Private Selves in the Age of New Media is to design work that explicitly communicates the negative effects new technology has on our privacy, and further, on our public and private identities.  read more »

In November 2002 i spent a day in one of the molecular biology labs at the Boston University observing researchers working at their computers. I was surprised to see that the programs they were using to present their findings were standard graphic design applications: Illustrator, Photoshop and QuarkXpress. They explained that just about every published piece of scientific findings involved the creation of graphs using these design tools. No graphics software tailored to their specific needs — focusing on data instead of on visual formatting — existed.  read more »

Proximity Lab is a participatory installation to investigate the role of physical proximity in interpersonal communication and interfaces that promote self-directed exploration. The exhibit is an experimental interface platform designed to visualize relationships between users and mediated spaces.  read more »

This thesis explores how handheld mobile devices expand and augment the informal learning opportunities present inside museum spaces. By using constructivist-learning pedagogy as the guiding principle for fostering high level thinking dispositions, my work brings together characteristics of museum environments, wireless technology and learning theory to create user centered learning tools, which are participatory, experiential and interactive.  read more »

My interest in the field of new media, and the subject of my thesis
investigation, is to attempt to synthesize tactile, material objects and electronic technology into discrete new media objects using sound, light, video, and the human form as mediating tools.  read more »

My thesis research investigates how play can influence learning a foreign language and how the interactive medium can serve as a bridge between the actions of learning and playing.  read more »

For centuries, the tarot has been an interactive narrative system employing such new media principles as nonlinearity, randomness, modularity, and algorithm.  read more »

To become literate and articulate in the domain of images, to be competent in understanding the nature and structure of visual messages, is to be keenly aware of one’s vision. It also means mastering a common set of terms attached to what one sees and creates. Attaining this comprehensive understanding of visual form is the task of a design student.  read more »