Peek

Future Device Concept

We dived into compact form factors for devices that could succeed the smartphone in the near future. Peek uses an electronic viewfinder that favours in-and-out interactions over the distractions of a large screen. Its extremely small size (comparable to a USB stick) brings interesting interface design challenges.

Canopy

Speaker+Mixer Concept

A speaker and two-track rotary mixer combined in one unit, for good-enough DJ transitions when the sound system has been turned off but nobody wants to go to sleep.

InSight

Camera (Red Dot "Best of the Best" Design Award Winner)

Despite a century of technical upgrades, camera design has changed surprisingly little since Oskar Barnack's 1924 Leica I. With InSight, we wanted to jump into the future and challenge one of its core principles: our camera does not need to be looked at (or through). A spatially augmented interface and viewfinder allows for maintaining a direct line of sight with the subject while reaching new creative angles.

Music Deck

Furniture

Like many people who make music, I don't have a dedicated room for it. Yet, when inspiration strikes, the last thing I need is to have to set up my machines and instruments. That's why I designed this standing desk extension, which sits on an IKEA Kallax shelving unit. It provides plenty of space to hide a large extension lead, a USB hub, and dozens of cables. While the top can be entirely removed for the initial wiring, day-to-day access is facilitated by a large front hatch.

Drone Spot

Desktop Application

We designed and developed a tool for scientists and NGOs to count turtles, analyse their patterns, and create reports from drone survey footage, using a system where information can be augmented directly within the video.

Show Focus Mk II

Camera Focusing Tool (iF Design Award Winner)

Since the first version of Show Focus (2013), I have been keeping an eye out for technologies that would make focusing a camera on set even easier. When Apple released the first iPad equipped with LiDAR (a depth sensor), we created a new version that uses the tablet to display a visualisation of the shot, where a spatially augmented focal plane can be seen passing through whatever is in front of the lens.

The Worst Crit of Your Life

Web Application (iF Design Award Winner)

Serra, who joined our studio during lockdown, produced a great piece of work on designing for long-term happiness (vs. short-term satisfaction). However, there are already enough moralising design manifestos, so we chose a more humorous route to share our findings. TWCOYL allows anyone to submit an idea to an online critique (a classic design school exercise where students present their work to their tutors for feedback). With ours, the results can be shared, making it a great, if slightly passive-aggressive, way to air your discontentment with a project under the pretence of having fun.

Teenage Firefighters

Museum Installation (iF Design Award Winner and Core77 Design Award Notable)

We collaborated with another studio to create this firefighting game for a museum in Italy. Intended for a young audience, our art direction blends 3D realism and watercolour abstraction to avoid distressing images. Using custom-designed, fire-nozzle-shaped controllers, players are tasked with saving precious artefacts across seven rooms, all modelled on famous real-world museums and collections. The 136 watercolours were hand-drawn and painted by us.

Traits

iPad Application (iF Design Gold Award Winner)

One of the techniques I came up with for Fables (2014) was a way to make “augmented films” — that is, adding 3D elements onto live-action footage that can be modified in real time (at the same time as they are being visualised). Hence, the resulting video is effectively interactive. With Traits, we applied this idea to sketching: the user plays a video (e.g. footage from a drone) and can sketch directly within it. Typically, if they press "pause" and sketch a house in a field, as the drone moves, the house sticks to the ground, giving the magical illusion that it is part of the scene.

Atlantis

Desktop Application and VR Application (iF Design Award Winner)

Atlantis was the studio's breakthrough in using techniques we had mastered to help solve real-world problems. We built a turtle swim visualiser and simulator, allowing scientists at Queen Mary University of London to better make sense of the large quantity of data they had been collecting by sticking sensors on the backs of the turtles. We followed up with a VR experience used by partner NGOs in Cape Verde to raise public awareness in local communities.

Intentional Interactions

Design Module (Core77 Design Award Winner)

We created a month-long module in interaction design for the Global Innovation Design joint programme at the Royal College of Art and Imperial College London. Students started by building a robot arm, before branching out into their own project ideas. The module culminated in the design and assembly of a small kinetic installation. 

Stethoscope

Spatial Audio Installation

Our studio partnered with two agencies specialising in public consultations to find innovative solutions for placemaking (when local communities collaborate to define how public spaces are shaped). Stethoscope allows people to record ideas and position them spatially on a physical map of an area (e.g. a park). Using the same mechanism, they can listen to the ideas of others.

Mind Pilot

Museum Installation

We partnered with another studio to build an installation where Design Museum visitors control a floating balloon with their minds while visualising the flight through a VR headset.

Passage

Museum Installation Concept

Having designed a number of VR installations, I’ve had time to observe the bizarre spectacle of someone wearing a headset and interacting with things that others can't see. Passage uses this idea to create an exchange between audience members both in and out of virtual reality. The person inside explores a digital replica of a physical scale model where all interactions are mirrored. Typically, switching lights on and off or opening doors triggers the same events on the physical model, giving the impression that a shrunken and invisible version of the headset wearer is present within the real-world setup.

A Symphony of Noise

Art Installation

We were commissioned to build a VR experience made up of several scenes,  based on the work of British artist Matthew Herbert. The biggest challenge was the sheer number of scenes and assets to put together. We came up with an art direction concept that used gradients mapped onto 3D depth, allowing us to create striking visual combinations from almost anything. To achieve this, I had to learn how to make custom shaders, but that led to some exciting features — such as having scene elements deform and glow in sync with the music and soundscapes.

Pilsner Urquell Brewery Tour

VR Installation

We built a virtual tour of the Pilsner Urquell Brewery in the Czech Republic that premiered at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Seoul. The tour combines interactive 3D and live-action scenes shot at the brewery and in the fields where the hops are harvested. We had to come up with our own techniques, including projection mapping stereoscopic video clips onto 3D geometry. I learned a lot about art direction and gained my first experience as a film director on a commercial shoot.

Floating Photographs

Spatial Application Concept

I had been thinking about the ways in which photography would evolve with the use of AR glasses and spatial computing. One concept I found particularly interesting was how a digital photograph could be visualised in the exact position it was taken, and how that might change the way we understand the stories of a place. On the very day Apple released the first beta of ARKit, we prototyped a version of that vision where the iPad acts as both the camera and the device used to spatially visualise the photographs.

Fly A Kite

VR Application

Having spent a good portion of my childhood flying kites, I was keen to see if we could replicate some of those sensations, so we built this simulator as a studio demo for prospective clients. I am still amazed that the behaviour of a kite — from handle interactions to flying dynamics — can be simplified to a fairly basic mathematical model. We even added details, such as increased vibration in the controllers to feel the friction build-up when the lines twist.

Glenfiddich Virtual Infinity

VR Installation

An airport installation for Glenfiddich aimed at whisky enthusiasts, allowing them to write their tasting notes spatially. The biggest challenge was reconstructing the Glenfiddich warehouse for people to explore in VR: it had to look as real as possible — and we had to do that within the constraints of a game engine. I learned a lot about realistic texturing and lighting in the process.

Komanda

Interactive Filmmaking Tool

As we began collaborating with bands to bring interactive visuals to live shows, we came up with a set of tools to create and run shared VR experiences where everyone in the audience sees the exact same visuals, together and in sync with the music. Allegorithmic (now part of Adobe) generously helped fund some of the development and tour of the first interactive VR music show across Europe.

Augmented Films

Interactive Filmmaking Tool

Following on from my RCA graduation project (Fables, 2014), I experimented with ways to combine live-action footage with virtual elements composited on top. I was interested in being able to retain the visual qualities of real footage (with actual people shot through physical lenses) while offering a degree of interactivity — for instance, making the visuals react to music. I designed my own tools to create “augmented films”, which formed the basis for multiple subsequent projects, including a tool to sketch inside videos (Traits, 2020).

Magic Hour

iOS Application and VR Application

For some time, I had been interested in the idea of teaching real-life skills through a virtual environment. Magic Hour was our first Wolf in Motion project: an application intended to help learn photography, where the trainee, an International Geographic photographer, is given missions to accomplish. We built an accurate camera simulator and a AI-ish tutor who could analyse the shots and provide tailored feedback on framing, speed, aperture, and exposure management. I learned how to design, model, and animate loud seagulls sideways-running crabs and 3D environments.

Pirate Eye

VR Application

If you hear less in one ear, you can adjust the left/right balance on your music player to make the sound balanced again. The premise of Pirate Eye was to do the same for people who suffer from amblyopia (where the brain "takes in more information" from one eye over the other, resulting in reduced stereoscopic vision). My hypothesis was that by adjusting the light levels between the eyes, we could improve stereoscopic vision. We tested it with a simple application where subjects had to estimate the distances of floating balloons of varying sizes. While the results appeared to validate the hypothesis (performance improved with our correction), we did not take it any further due to a lack of medical supervision.

Speech Trainer

VR Application

I had been wondering how convincing a public speaking simulation would be in a VR headset. Very much so, as it turned out. Two features people found particularly effective: (1) the unsettling head movements of the audience, randomly making eye contact with the speaker or looking at the screen, and (2) the ability to load a real PDF to train with an actual presentation, navigable with a laser pointer.

The Great Cheese Heist

Interactive Film

Tobii, the company behind the eye-tracking device I had used for Fables (2014), commissioned an interactive animation to demonstrate the capabilities of their technology. The result is a simple scene where a team of mice tries to steal a piece of cheese from a kitchen — when the viewer is not looking. When they do look, the mouse they are focusing on hides and the heist stops — only to resume when the viewer blinks or moves their gaze. It was the first time I modelled and animated characters in 3D, and I actually ended up reusing these mice over the years.

Lego X

Product Concept

A way to create digital 3D models without a computer, simply by using the beloved plastic bricks.

2014.

Fables

Interactive Filmmaking Tool

I wanted to propose a vision for the future of filmmaking where interactivity does not mean letting the audience control the story and turning films into video games. Instead, I designed a system where the edit adapts to the audience — without changing the core narrative — much like how we tell one same story in different ways in real life. One of the biggest challenges was figuring out how to let viewers know they had an effect on the film without asking them to click a button or turn a knob. I achieved this by coming up with a novel way to refocus the scene based on the viewer's eye movements, which worked better than I had anticipated (in fact, it was often what people took away from the whole concept).

Knock Knock

Interactive Video Installation

A fashion designer was looking for RCA students to design an interactive installation for a collection launch at Somerset House in London. We made a short film that lets the audience explore the story by walking towards different parts of the screen (this triggered camera moves that I had pre-baked using projection mapping in Cinema 4D). We can probably say it now: the sensor meant to detect people's movements failed miserably minutes before the opening. Nobody noticed because Joe spent the whole show with a concealed keyboard, pressing the keys we had been using for testing the previous week.

Ooho!

Edible Packaging

Rodrigo had been playing with spherification (a culinary technique popularised by Spanish chef Ferran Adrià) to make bubbles of water meant to replace plastic bottles. Pierre and I joined him on his mission to offer low-impact alternatives to single-use plastic and it became a startup (Skipping Rocks Labs, now Notpla).

Gravity Sketch

Spatial Creation Tool

My time in Berlin had given me a glimpse of what was possible when 3D modelling is combined with interaction design. When I returned to London, Pierre, Seyi, Daniela and I started looking at what the future of 3D design could be. We came up with a hardware and software solution utilising immersive technologies to make 3D design a truly spatial experience. Gravity Sketch became a start-up, and the product grew into a tool known today by most designers.

Polar

Kinetic Sculpture

I spent the summer of 2013 in Berlin, partly for the clubs and partly for Art+Com, who had invited me to work for them. Like many, I was mesmerised by their Kinetic Rain and wanted nothing more than to work on the next big sculpture. Once I got the hang of parametric modelling, I started experimenting with my own ideas and came up with a sculpture concept made of individual discs, each suspended by two cables, allowing them to be moved in 2D (instead of just up or down, as was the case with Kinetic Rain). This offered many more creative possibilities for animating sculptures (and, apparently, a welcome extra layer of security). To date, my design has been used for three large scale kinetic sculptures around the world.

Ford Magic Taxi

Car & Service Concept

While autonomous cars are now a common concept, back in 2013, we had to bring up examples of plane autopilot to warm the client up to the idea of doing away with a driver in the front seat. Yet, our idea was more elegant than replacing human drivers with robots: we designed a taxi meant to be operated remotely. The list of benefits was endless: no more queuing at airports for drivers, reduced harassment risk for women, drivers of all abilities welcome, flexible working hours (a driver in Mexico in the afternoon could drive cars in London at night), fleet stacking (one driver for a train of vehicles), and more interior space that could be split remotely for any ride-sharing scenario (alone, with an armchair, with friends, with strangers, etc.).

Show Focus Mk I

Camera Focusing Tool

Having met a few directors of photography (DoPs), I became interested in the complexity of focusing in cinema (in a nutshell, the camera operator needs to guess where the focus is, which, when done wrong, leads to blurry footage that is impossible to fix in post). I designed and built a tool that could overlay the focus plane on a depth camera feed — visualised on a monitor or inside AR glasses. It worked, and made it much easier to anticipate focus changes. It has since become a common tool on cinema sets.

Pelicam

Autonomous Kite Concept

As part of a collaboration with UTS in Australia, we spent a month working on future beach life-saving solutions. Pelicam harvests wind power to maintain a helium-filled kite above swimmers and surfers. If it detects someone waving in trouble, it drops a Lifeseed (an inflatable buoy that flies like seeds falling from trees). We demonstrated the viability of the concept through a series of working prototypes.

Mantis

Interactive Lamp

This was my first project in interaction design. I liked the idea of a real-life Pixar lamp that would playfully distract the user from their task. Thanks to a camera sitting next to the bulb, Mantis tracks the user's hand and translates it into motion through a “rubber-band puppet drive”. The inherent elasticity of the bands gives its movement a loose, marionette-like life.

Rolex Lemon Stirrer

Product Concept

We were given a product category (lemon squeezers) and a brand (Rolex). If someone had made a Venn diagram of how we approached the brief, it would have shown luxury watches intersecting with yellow citrus fruits at branded sporting events. Hence, we designed and manufactured nine stirrers that let you spike innocent lemons to turn the most average tap water into a citrusy delight. For the record, it is surprisingly satisfying to squeeze a lemon as if it were a hand pump.

Kinetic Chair

Furniture

Inspired by kinetic sculptures from studios like Art+Com in Berlin, I started playing with different motions on small models and came up with the idea of a triple-pivot rotation that allows the chair to take shape when someone sits in it. The delicate balance between the elements forming the backrest and those shaping the seat is key to enabling a smooth transition.

3D Painter

Product Concept

In this short project, we imagined the future of the home printer. We were excited by the idea that the 3D printing revolution would create new needs, such as turning monochrome objects into colourful ones. While we didn’t have time to build a physical prototype, many assumed we had, thanks to a 10-second video showing our design in action (in fact, a 3D animation composited into live footage of a real person). This was the first time (of many) I used this technique to showcase a design concept.

L'Oréal

Beauty Products

While marketing teams led L'Oréal’s visual product styling, crucial ergonomic and structural design fell to New Product Development. As part of this cross-functional team, I was responsible for all design decisions related to usability and manufacturing. My modest contribution enabled millions of face cream jars, shampoo bottles, and foundation dispensers to successfully reach supermarket shelves for brands such as Garnier, L'Oréal Paris, and Maybelline.

Aeolus

Wind Turbine

Ignoring the various wooden models I built as a child, this wind turbine is probably the first physical object for which I can claim some authorship. The design was entirely informed by function, and most of the work was good old mechanical engineering, including stress calculations (by hand), technical draughting and aluminium milling. When finished, we mounted it on a car for a reality check and got briefly arrested by the police for it. No bird was harmed in the process, even if the noise did make me wonder whether we were actually going to take off.