Designing for Serendipity in the Digital Space
AUTHORS - Oliver Luo, Allen Sayegh
ABSTRACT - The mass transition to remote work and study due to the COVID pandemic has led to loss of space for informal interpersonal encounters. Beyond contributing to a sense of community, these serendipitous encounters can positively shape our life paths. In this research, we consider how designers of digital spaces and experiences can examine, approach, and design with serendipity. We begin with previous literature on the subject of serendipity and collaborate the findings to create a user journey map of a serendipitous encounter. From this journey map, we examine and discuss challenges of working with serendipity, as well as opportunities for designers to approach fundamental mechanics behind these fortuitous chance encounters, examine biases and assumptions in defined and determined systems, and design with engagement with key aspects of serendipitous experiences.
KEYWORDS - Digital serendipity, fortuitous chance encounters, design challenges and opportunities.
PUBLICATION - Unpublished manuscript at the Harvard Graduate School of Design 2020 summer research grant archive.
CITATION - Luo, O. & Sayegh, A. (2020). Designing for Serendipity in the Digital Space [Unpublished manuscript]. Responsive Environments and Artifacts Lab (REAL), Harvard University Graduate School of Design.
Attributes of Aliveness: A Case Study of Two Interactive Public Art Installations
AUTHORS - Humbi Song, Oliver Luo, Allen Sayegh
ABSTRACT - What elements make people think that an interactive public art installation seems “alive”? To answer this question, the paper examines the design and the reception of two public artworks by the INVIVIA studio: MIMMI and PULSUS. Both are responsive installations that aggregate collective data and interpret it through elements such as vibrations, lighting, and/or mists, but differences in design decisions have led to different perceptions of their aliveness. Through the case study, paper identifies key attributes in an installation that contribute to the sense of aliveness and discusses the importance of considering aliveness in design. While these attributes are distilled from public art examples, they can generally apply to designed objects that are, through technological augmentation, physically interactive at the human scale.
KEYWORDS - Aliveness, perception, human-technology interaction, technological augmentation, public art installation.
PUBLICATION - Design and Semantics of Form and Movement (DeSForM) 2019: Beyond Intelligence, MIT, conference proceedings.
CITATION - Song, H., Luo, O., & Sayegh, A. (2019). Attributes of Aliveness: A Case Study of Two Interactive Public Art Installations. Proceedings of the Design and Semantics of Form and Movement 2019: Beyond Intelligence, 254-257. https://desform19.org/DeSForM_2019_Proceedings.pdf.