Date of Award
Spring 5-31-2025
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Industrial Design
Department
Industrial Design
First Advisor
Ayako Takase
Second Advisor
Kevin Tucker Houlihan
Third Advisor
Jian Li
Abstract
In today’s involution culture or “internal competition”, epitomized by China’s 996 work schedule, time is tracked like a quota rather than lived. Drawing on Camus’ call to make one’s very existence a quiet act of rebellion, this thesis answers alienated time with multisensory design.
Four interventions, the Thermochromic Table, Blinds Light, Dappled Shadows Light, and a haptic Squeeze Timer, using temperature, light, shadow, and touch to stage brief “moments of awareness.”
Instead of urging users to optimize every second, these objects invite them to pause, feel, and enjoy time. Each prototype softens the clock’s rigid tick into a gentle cue, helping people reclaim personal rhythms and restore presence. To inhabit such moments, even briefly, is to practice the freedom Camus envisioned: living authentically enough that being itself becomes resistance.
Recommended Citation
Hu, Yuming, "Time Reclamation" (2025). Masters Theses. 1485.
https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/masterstheses/1485
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