A speculative design concept pitched in spring 2022 for VIS 161 — a class dedicated to imagining things that don't exist yet. This one didn't keep me up at night, which is ironic. The premise started simply enough: what if you didn't have to waste your sleep? Not in the grim productivity-hack sense — not a supplement stack or a sleep tracker or another optimization protocol for the already over-optimized. Something stranger and more interesting than that. The concept was this

The second of three speculative design concepts from VIS 161, spring 2022. The term "synthetic sensing" is mine. The ideas came first; the rationale followed, as it often does. The premise was straightforward enough to sketch in a few sentences, which is usually a sign that the idea is either very simple or very large. This one turned out to be the latter. Synthetic sensing, as I conceived it, is the use of AR and VR technology to extend human perception beyond its current ph

I sat in bed yesterday, phone plugged into an illuminated power socket. Layers of blankets covered my legs, cocooning them in a soon-to-be prison that would cause half my body to embrace sleep. A pillow rested on my lap, fluffed up with feathers that sometimes escaped and rooted in my hair. The bright screen flashed with language and story while my mind numbed out the reality of monotony. The warm night air crept in around me as I left my box behind to march into a story on m