I am a multidisciplinary design strategist and researcher with seven years of experience in the built environment, turning research on climate, material circularity, and emerging technology into regenerative spaces for all living things that depend on them.
I am a multidisciplinary design strategist and researcher with seven years of experience in the built environment, turning research on climate, material circularity, and emerging technology into regenerative spaces for all living things that depend on them.
2025
4 Weeks
MIT Tangible Media Group
Rapid Prototyping
Physical Computing
Interaction Design
Will Allstetter
Kate Lucas
Diego Guzman
Fengyi Ye
Nicole Zhang
Search engines are trained to give us more of what we already want, which means the kind of discovery that happens by accident is being engineered out of how we find things.
We access information
We access information
We access information
What if we externalized relationships between information, readers, and ideas?
We reimagined a search experience that combines embedded sensing, ambient lighting, and AI-powered recommendations woven into the physical environment.
CatalogNET is an interactive tangible-digital library catalog for intuitive exploration
1
ASK
Visitor speaks a research interest into the kiosk powered by conversational AI
ASK
Visitor speaks a research interest into the kiosk powered by conversational AI
2RECEIVE
Kiosk returns a handful of call numbers, each paired with a poetic AI-generated description of the book.
The Navigator guides the reader physically through the stacks toward the shelf.
3SIGNAL
As the reader nears the shelf, the target book glows softly.
Pulling the book triggers surrounding books to light up at varying intensities, visualizing semantic proximity.
Turning the dial re-maps the illumination live, surfacing new related clusters for exploration and discovery.
Turning the dial re-maps the illumination live, surfacing new related clusters for exploration and discovery.
How might emerging technologies transform libraries into responsive environments that support embodied, social, and collaborative learning experiences?
Searching can become walking, discovery can become sensing, and the library itself can operate as a living knowledge environment that reveals connections not readily visible through screen-based interfaces.
TECHNICAL IMPLEMENTATION
TESTING & PROTOTYPING
Additional Search Mode Capabilities
Additional filters and search modes added, allowing users to query the archive in more specific and varied ways. For example, by authors, location, popularity, or date published.
Proximity Sensing Capabilities & Embodied Memory
Developing an algorithm that learns from previous searches quried by other users, buildling a kind of collective, embodied memory into how the catalog responds over time.
Experiential Prototyping
Small-scale prototypes that test how a more spatial version of the catalog might work, before scaling to a full installation.