Domesticated
Role
Lead Researcher + Designer
Made with
Bill Flora
Timeline
22 weeks (Fabrication in 4 weeks)
Project
Project Overview
Domesticated is three working wooden interfaces that explore how a machine’s response rules shape human movement, adaptation, and perceived control. Drawing on Donna Haraway’s idea that humans and technology change each other, each object uses haptics, light, and resistance to make an ordinary interaction feel unfamiliar. I conceived, designed, fabricated, wired, and programmed all three myself, using research through design.
Challenge
How do machines teach us how to behave? Interfaces decide which actions count, how much effort they take, and when feedback arrives, and we rarely notice these rules. I wanted to make them noticeable instead of making control more efficient. Each object asks one question:
Switch: What must the body do to make the machine respond?
Knob: How precise is precise enough?
Panel: Who sets the pace of an interaction?
Results
The result is three working artifacts that give a broad question about machine influence a physical form, built in a shared material language so they can be compared. Across them, agency appears through effort, accuracy, and timing: force becomes adjustment, precision becomes confusion, and sensitive touch is rewarded while confidence is met with aggression. This is an interpretive reading, not a measured result. There was no participant study and no empirical validation is claimed. A future study could ask people how they discover an object’s response rules and how that changes what they do.
Working interfaces
Weeks from concept to finished objects