As a designer, my passion for technology is both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, it is an interesting and familiar topic where I can focus and hone my skills, on the other hand my obsession with small technicalities has always been a burden on my role as designer to truly see the role of technology; that is to serve people. Inspired by design literature such as The Language of Things by Deyan Sudjic and The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman, I have decided to reevaluate design in technology through a more human centred perspective. This initial study lead me to explore different gestures and materiality as ways we can interact with technology in a more meaningful way.
Not long into my research I discovered many of these gestures (pull, turn, squeeze, twist…) can all be found in the recent past. Being a bit of a history buff I visited the Edinburgh Flea Market and The Edinburgh Antiques Centre for inspiration. From there I explored and iterated through making simple prototypes that replicate these gestures.
However, what I quickly realised was that I was more interested in the evidence of gestures rather than the gestures themselves. Such as the warping on this comb.
Theses signs of wear are physicalised data of human-environmental interaction. They represent history, memories and events.
From here I will be exploring how objects change through our interactions or lack of interactions, and how I can apply what I have learnt to rethink our interactions which technology.