The Office - A Study of Hierachial Semantics

An academic project during the 3rd year of my studies at the Division of Industrial Design (Singapore).

How can we design to foster greater collaboration in an office?

'The Office' is a systematic study and reinterpretation of archetypal office elements that affords both focus and collaboration for the modern office. My team & I analysed troves of existing office furnishings and surveyed the users' perception of office archetypes. We dissected them into their bare components to extract the essential elements that attributed to each archetype, and recomposed them into contemporary formats that fosters a collaborative spirit amongst workers. The aim of the study was ultimately to explore the potential of new archetypes, or rather updating them to fit the requirements of a modern office, where walls and partitions have been tore down to encourage collaboration.

Design team - Seth Chiam & Poh Hui Qing

Analog - Closing Distances

A project done during my exchange semester in Germany; at the Folkwang University of the Arts.

Returning the intimacy to photo-sharing in the modern era.

How do you design to improve the 'relatedness' between a couple over distance?

Analog began as an exploration of communication over distance. I began to notice the way people share photographs nowadays and reminisced about the old days when we still had photo albums, and sessions sharing our experiences and memories with our loved ones. The excitement of shared experiences and story-tell has been eroded away by the convenience that technology has brought to our modern era. Analog is a reinterpretation of the photo-sharing experience with digital photographs, a redesign of the consumption and sharing via a digital medium that brings people closer again.

Video team - Gloria Ngiam, Karyn Lim & Akbar Yunos