Vertical Text on the Right
Circular Ruins
Personal Project
Product Design
OverviewThe Circular Ruins is a project that investigating Borges' short novel The Circular Ruins from multiple perspectives. This is a curated collection works across multiple media varied from VR, AR, app, website, animation, and archive/collection.
Using Borges' novel as the anchor point, this project also refers to other projects that share similar themes and attempt to curate them through multiple interactive mediums.
material
technology
dimension
timeline
smartphone, smartwatch, laptop
Figma, Adobe Creative Suites, AR
screen based
1.5 months
Technical Details
Clearing connects people's bodily movements and spatial relations in an abstracted visualization done by computation. By using p5Livemedia and ml5 poseNet, I have 2 computers set up in different locations of the room with cameras on tracking people's nose locations and their distance with each other on the flattened screen. Particpants’ nose data will be mapped to a particle system that is constantly affected by their bodily movements in space and time and will be transmitted between the 2 in a real-time site using sockets. Then a projection mapping of the site will be placed on to the water to show the visualization.
Problem
How do we create a system to integrate knowledge access across multiple platforms in order to enable better and more immediate research process?
Since the emergence of portable electronic devices, people has been individualized into their digital screens. The experience of pandemic has even accelerated such creation of “digital cell” to a greater level. Developed during the hit of COVID 19 when everyone is locked, I attempt to use cross-platform technology to carve out a new approach to epistemology, creating a collective space for people’s consciousness and unconscious where boundaries are blurred. The project aims to set up an unconventional digital dossier, an infinite library to access knowledge, curating found images, books, films that relates to dreams and the unconscious. By bridging physical experience with digital screens, the experience also aims to create a common ground that transcends preconditioned limits, liberating individuals from their encapsulations.
Research
10+user interviews
asking qualititative questions and indepth analysis50+in-depth studies
analyzing academic journals, research papers and professional studies 15+usability tests
verifying the clarity of user flows and users’ psychologyI conducted focus groups and group interviews on people interested in the fields of psychology and reading to gain insights on what specific interests and pursuits users would have when there is a chance to access an infinite library of different realms of knowledge. Through the research, I was recommended to Borges’ novel The Library of Babel. I was very surprised by this discovery for I have been a huge Borges fan for years. I thus did a review of his books and chose to, instead of going with the recommended one, use The Circular Ruin as the thread of my experience design. I mapped out the books’ major events as phases of the experience, and then created a journey map. Details are shown in the documentation
focus group & interview- gain insights for imageries that create resonance with people
- gather materials
plot map- visualize stages of the experience based on the book
journey map - map out the users’ experience
- document users’ feedback after testing
user tests feedbacks- much more simple and easier to understand
- love the wire sculptures and the organic features of both the physical and the projected segments
Experience 1: Phone
curation of textsprovide the general context.
Experience 2: Smart Watch
curation of visual arts and moving images
a digital stage play experience
Experience 3: Laptopcuration of the main thread's narrative
functions like a puzzle
Visual Identity