This five-level hierarchy structures the project’s narrative, breaking down the process from the core message to areas for improvement.
WHAT IS THE MESSAGE?
Amplifying and visualizing human emotions through immersive, multisensory design.
The project explores how interactive design and audiovisual experiences can translate emotions into tangible data visualizations. The goal is to create an experience that the reader not only reads but feels and engages with through play and sensory interaction.
CONTEXT OF RESEARCH
In a world saturated with data, how do we visualize emotions in ways that are both personal and universally engaging? This research sits at the intersection of design, data visualization, and immersive art, drawing inspiration from emerging trends in sensory design and interactive experiences. The project builds upon fabrication techniques like 3D printing and laser cutting, while referencing designers and artists exploring emotional landscapes through non-linear narratives.
PROJECT & PROCESS
The project will take the form of a labyrinth-like publication, where readers are invited to navigate emotions freely, choosing their own path and shaping unique journeys depending on what captures their attention. Inspired by the feedback from Design Dialogues, the experience will avoid overly structured guides or QR-based instructions. Instead, the pictorial will function as an open, interactive space where readers uncover emotional stories by moving through the content at their own pace, creating personal narratives through discovery and exploration.
The design process will focus on:
Non-linear structure: Readers can start anywhere, leading to different interpretations and emotional responses.
Visual cues and affordances: Incorporating tactile markers, foldouts, and layered graphics that invite touch and curiosity, encouraging exploration.
Emotion-driven navigation: Rather than instructing the user directly, the design will evoke emotions through visual and textual elements, allowing each participant to reflect their own emotional state in the journey.
KEY FINDINGS
Feedback from Design Dialogues & references:
Not everyone prefers to express emotions through drawing. Some participants gravitated towards movement, conversation, or sound as alternative forms of emotional representation. This highlights the need to offer multiple avenues of engagement within the publication.
Over-structuring limits exploration. The feedback suggested that clear step-by-step guides could hinder personal interpretation, reinforcing the importance of open-ended formats.
Participants engage more when they feel part of the narrative. Creating tactile and visual entry points increases emotional connection and prolongs interaction time.
Improving the pictorial:
The pictorial will document these findings by embedding references and participant feedback directly into the design process.
The narrative structure will reflect this feedback by adopting a more fragmented and exploratory layout, influenced by escape room mechanics, allowing readers to "unlock" different parts of the publication through nonlinear engagement.
SPACE FOR IMPROVEMENT
Refining documentation & pictorial design:
The pictorial could benefit from more immersive documentation techniques, such as including annotated sketches, iterative process photos, and personal reflections that mirror the emotional nature of the project.
Future iterations could explore layered visual storytelling, where different parts of the publication reveal themselves through the reader’s interaction with the material, allowing for evolving narratives across multiple readings.
By embracing a non-guided format, the publication will foster deeper personal exploration and align more closely with the project’s core theme of emotional interpretation through design.
HOW DOES IT ALL CONNECT?
This project invites us to rethink the visualization of emotions not just as a data exercise, but as a bridge between the physical, digital, and emotional realms. The hybrid format, blending printed and digital media, mirrors the non-linear nature of our emotions, closing the loop by offering the reader an active experience, closer to a sensory escape room than a traditional publication.
