Interfacing with Technology

Creator

Henry Spuria, Rhode Island School of DesignFollow
Graphic Design Department, Rhode Island School of DesignFollow
Industrial Design Department, Rhode Island School of DesignFollow
RISD Color Lab, Rhode Island School of DesignFollow
Graduate Studies, Rhode Island School of DesignFollow

Preview

Creation Date

Spring 5-25-2023

Description

This fifth-year double-major graduate project (Graphic Design, Industrial Design) investigates the distinctive way we interface with designed objects; a flashing amber light signifies a warning, an RGB blue implicates the web, and a green app icon represents technical information. These design decisions imbue a psychological and behavioral framework onto everyday objects and interfaces we surround ourselves with. But what would happen if we, as designers, enabled users to assume the role and generate their colors, shapes, typography, or other design assets? This project aims to allow users to understand generative design through different variables and tools within the exhibition space. It also features a reading corner that presents research, analysis, and frameworks around user interaction and experience design so that we might better understand the politics, analytics, and parameters implicit in every designed object. Color is such a vital tool in the expression of designed things and assets, it’s also a historically politically embroiled medium of design and art-making; by presenting color as a variable, both in print and digital form, users can unlock a perspective on how to interface with color and technology.The technology we interface with daily is diffuse and counter-intuitive. What would it look like to return to familiar, tactile, and tangible interfaces to evoke results? In this world, where a dial controls a color value, a button controls the blur, and slider pages through imagery, designed objects are meant to be interacted with, hacked, and broken. In this world, textual information is meant to be processed, re-configured, and recombined. These elements, which straddle the physical and digital, culminate in an experience founded in the innate nature of design; whether the design is textual, colorful, informational, or expressive, it is all meant to be made and remixed.