Tag Archives: interaction

Na Kim Workshop: The Manual of Curiosities

Anyone would collect something, some moment, either consciously or unconsciously, and this collection explains the particles of oneself—a substantial body of personality, his/her interests, and histories. For many years I have initiated workshops based on participants’ personal collections to explore the conceptual relationship with personal objects and (re) contextualizing stories behind them in the design […]

Project: Berg. Graphic Sublayer Transfer System (GSTS) Workshop

A collective poster and book making workshop designed by Berg. and hosted at The California Academy of Science, The Institute of advancing Uncertainty, SF Art Book Fair, and California College of the Arts. The workshop invites the public create a poster using graphite rubbings over curated images from our research. The rubbing technique pulls the […]

Exhibition: ⌘P

Opening Reception: Thursday, March 8, 5:30-7:30 PM CCA Hubble St. Gallery 151  Hubble St . . . . . . . . . . Work by: Kennis Chow Max DeVore Yangyifan Dong Winston Struye Zheyuan Zhang Mo Zhou Qi Zhou . . . . . . . . . . . Faculty: Catherine Leigh Schmidt […]

NOTI / MFA Thesis 2017

NOTI is an internet-connected notification device. The idea of the work is to filter messages based on the user’s focus level. Three balls made of different materials (wood, glass, and metal) are metaphors of mental heaviness, which is intuitive and innovative. View Video

Personal Carbon Economy / MFA Thesis 2017

A future scenario of personal-scale carbon cap and trade, and products resulting from it, to promote a carbon responsible future. The current Carbon Cap and Trade is reducing industrial carbon emissions, but even if we fully implement the Paris Climate Agreement proposals by 2100, humanity is still far away from sustainable life, as shown by […]

Drawing Machine Exhibition / CCA Hubble Street Gallery

The Exhibition Drawing Machines, is a result of a course taught by Colin Owen and Martin Venezky and features the work of MFA Design Students: Ashley Adams, Sophie Feller, Yisha Dai, Buge Jiang, Kate Moore, Bo Peng, Rob   Exhibition Synopsis   This exhibition investigates assistive and autonomous tools for art making. These “drawing machines,” created by MFA […]

Course: Public Interactives / Year One Topic Studio

Future Grocery Store Sponsored Studio by Intel In recent years, a lot of shopping has moved to on-line situations. This is great for some purposes. However, being in a well-designed physical space and holding tangible items on your hand could be a unique and unforgettable experience with the help of latest technologies. This project is to imagine […]

Course: Wild Hybrids / Year One Topic Studio

Jacket project  The Jacket project is a wearable interaction design in which people can play with their body temperatures. This artwork started from research I did on a mountain rescuer’s life where I viewed the high awareness they have for temperature and equipment related to it. Jacket 1- 10 Pocket Jacket When I researched peoples’ interactions […]

Course: IxD Studio / Year Zero

LED Collar   This collar takes a distinctive and unique voice and translates it into a digital display, exploring how things that make us uniquely human can be transformed by technology.  Each wearer has their own color scheme and pattern, exploring new ways of displaying our senses.   See Video  

Course: Wild Hybrids / Year One Topic Studio

This project began by choosing a specific “explorer” and deeply understanding one daily routine in the explorer’s life. The final project was to design a tool that related to a routine of that explorer. I picked Onnagata as my explorer and tried to understand their makeup. The Onnagata is a special Kabuki actor that only […]

Course: Form Studio / Year One

A Tool for Making _____________ This project challenges you to create a design tool you’ve all probably used before but most likely taken for granted, the Template. This investigation aims to explore and complicate a conventional tool of the design trade in both a physical and conceptual sense. By creating a physical mark-making tool, you […]

Course: Year One / Form Studio

Form Studio offers students a strong foundation in the making, assessing, and critiquing of visual materials and begins a discussion that will reverberate through the rest of their studies. Students learn the use and structure of materials and media, and the development of a rigorous and disciplined process through which they can create and analyze […]

MFA Design Lecture: Valkyrie Savage

Presentation Synopsis: As 3D printers increase in quality and in accessibility, we see them moving out of industrial design labs and into maker spaces, libraries, museums, and homes. Even those without physical access to 3D printers can order custom 3D prints from services like Shapeways to be mailed to their homes. But what can people […]

Course: Year One Topic Studio

Visual Braille Type – Senses, Sound Experience When individuals lose their sight, they unconsciously develop their touch and hearing senses in order to replace the missed abilities. However, for one who has five sense completeness, how does audition and touch differ from vision? The “Visual Braille” is designed by combining two senses, sight and touch. All […]

Mission

MFA Design is an open site for the investigation of contemporary design practice. Built on a firm foundation of technical skills, pushing the limits of cutting-edge tools and technologies alongside traditional craft-based techniques, MFA Design students work to reimagine the methods, modes, and meanings of design in contemporary culture. Whether intended to be commercial, civically […]

Current Thesis Students

Negash Asegde Annika Bastacky Yuhan Chen Yiming Cui Lingyin Du Cynthia Escalante Mitch Greer Rebecca Hanson Jiahao He Linya Huang Jenn Jiang Xinheng Jiang Yuan Jiang Anqi LI Chengru Li Chang Liu Yaqin Liu Yang Liu Pei-Chi Lu Jinghan Luo Andrea Murchie Pushan Panda Dan Qian Zeng Qian Juan Pablo Rahal Kelly Rouser Xinyue Song […]

Faculty

Rafi Ajl Mary Banas Cory Barr Matthew Boyko Mark Brest Van Kempen Sara Dean Donald Fortescue Guillermo Galindo Cristina Gaitan Christopher Hamamoto Eric Heiman Jonn Herschend David Kasprzak Mathew Kneebone Barry Katz Stuart Kendall The Letterform Archive Ana Llorente Brett MacFadden Marty Marfin Emily McVarish Scott Minneman Paul Montgomery Randy Nakamura James Pierce Calvin Rocchio […]

Recent Visiting Designers/Critics

Amy Balkin Julia Born Emmet Byrne Julian Bleecker Keetra Dixon Dinamo typefoundry James Edmondson Experimental Jetset Frank Grießhammer Jason Groves Na Kim Mike Kuniavsky Maryam Omar /Turquoise Mountain Jenny Odell Jonathan Olivares Monica Martinez Tim Parsons Megan Prelinger Leon Ransmeier Valkyrie Savage Sarah Teasley Bruce Tharp Etienne Turpin Marco Walser Allan Wexler

A Range of Indeterminate Results: MFA Thesis Show 2015

The Graduate Program in Design is proud to present the 2015 MFA Thesis Exhibition: A Range of Indeterminate Results. The exhibition will feature individual and collaborative works of graphic, interaction, and industrial design from more than 40 degree candidates who have completed CCA’s prestigious transdisciplinary graduate curriculum. Curatorial StatementWe are shaped by the spaces and […]

Ecological Imagination / MFA Thesis, 2015

Cristina Gaitán’s thesis focuses on enabling a sense of ecological imagination in the urban population of San Francisco. She examines water systems as a typology of natural systems, seeking to make massive scales and systems legible at human scale. The body of work is a collection of discrete performative objects, deployed as interventions into public […]

Understanding Our Relationship With Water / MFA Thesis 2015

  With California facing a severe drought, the way we consume and waste our water is becoming an increasingly important issue that must be addressed both individually and collectively. Yet, information regarding such environmental concerns tends to be presented in forms that are abstract, overwhelming, and easily dismissed as ‘someone else’s problem.’ The goal for […]

Hear Here / MFA Design Thesis 2015

Hear Here is about the use of sound as an effective medium of communication to improve intimacy and longevity of long-distance relationships.Initial field research determined that the use of environmental sound as an alternative means of communicating, in real time, what is occurring in the respective lives of each person in a relationship enables a […]

Instruments of Harmony / MFA Thesis, 2015

The Instruments of Harmony are digital instruments, constrained by specific parameters and a specific intent. The parameters: (1)The instrument should be for two or more people to play together. (2)The instrument should be controlled by gesture only, without traditional digital music controls like knobs and buttons. (3)The instrument should play digital sounds. The intent: To […]

MFA Design Lecture: Keetra Dixon

Biography: Keetra Dean Dixon is a designer and artist who relocated from NYC to rural Alaska in April of 2014. She and her partner, JK Keller, test the claim “We can work from anywhere” by building a new studio practice with a remote home base. Dixon traded in her team leading role as an Experiential […]

MFA Design Lecture: Julian Bleecker / Near Future Laboratory

Lecture Synopsis: TBD Catalog — the near future’s normal, ordinary everyday product catalog. It’s a glimpse at your future as hinted at through 166 products, advertisements and classifieds. It’s your future, only not the future you may have imagined. It is, though, the quite likely future if the titans of Silicon Valley and their earnest […]

Notable Alumni

Nazgol Ansarinia (2003) Edward Blake (2013) Maggie Fost (2004) Zach Gibson (2011) Matt Johnson & Chris Yamane (2014) Wioleta Kaminska (2014) Kristin Neidlinger (2010) Melissa Martin (2009) Heidi Meredith & Renee Walker (2011) Nazanin Oveisi (2011) Jennifer Sonderby (2002) Joel Stillman (2009) Rosanna Yau (2010)

MFA Design Lecture: Luna Maurer (Moniker)

Biography: Luna Maurer cofounded Moniker studio with Jonathan Puckey and Roel Wouters in 2012. Moniker works on commissioned designs as well as projects of an autonomous and experimental nature. The studio works across various media for a wide range of clients in the cultural and commercial sectors. Maurer, Puckey, and Wouters’s work explores the social […]