What should studio culture look like?

What should studio culture look like?

The MFA Design Studio used to be the center of the program — loud, collaborative, always occupied. Now it sits mostly empty at 2 p.m. A site-specific installation that surfaces the studio’s own history and invites students to record what it should become.

The MFA Design Studio used to be the center of the program — loud, collaborative, always occupied. Now it sits mostly empty at 2 p.m. A site-specific installation that surfaces the studio’s own history and invites students to record what it should become.

ROLE

Research, interaction design, fabrication — solo

TIMELINE

Spring 2025 · 6 weeks

DISCIPLINE

UX research · physical computing

BUILT WITH

Alumni interviews, Arduino, sensors, video

AT A GLANCE

AT A GLANCE

06

06

WEEKS, SOLO

20 YR

20 YR

STUDIO HISTORY (2003–2021)

2

2

OUTREACH CHANNELS · EMAIL + LINKEDIN

100%

100%

PARTICIPANTS CONSENTED IN WRITING

PARTICIPANTS CONSENTED IN WRITING

01 — THE PROBLEM

01 — THE PROBLEM

A space that’s technically ours, and functionally abandoned.

A space that’s technically ours, and functionally abandoned.

The studio is empty. Not at midnight — at 2pm, in the middle of the week. The alumni I talked to describe it full: late nights, shared desks, work spilling across the tables. Covid and hybrid schedules pulled people out, and they never really came back.

It’s 2 p.m. on a weekday. The studio that was once full of collaboration is nearly empty.

The room is full of history and completely silent about it. The framing question became: what should studio culture actually look like — and can an intervention in the space itself pull people back into it?

02 — RESEARCH

02 — RESEARCH

I went to the people who remember the studio full.

I went to the people who remember the studio full.

Current students had no memory of the full studio, so my primary sources were the alumni who did. I ran generative research — cold and warm outreach across email and LinkedIn — to reach people who used the space when it was alive, then collected the photos and stories they still had.

GENERATIVE RESEARCH

Interviews and archival material to understand the studio before it faded.

SNOWBALL SAMPLING

One alum referred the next — the chain reached the richest archives.

PARTICIPANT CONSENT

Confirmed internal-use scope in writing before collecting any material.

RECRUITMENT → SAMPLING → ARCHIVE

A

Outreach

Email + LinkedIn to alumni

B

Responses

Multiple cohorts reply

C

Referral

Alum points to alum

D

Archive

Photos + desk stories

Photos + desk stories

RESEARCH NOTE — CONSENT

Before sharing, one alum asked me to confirm the photos would be used only for an internal school project. I confirmed the scope in writing and held to it — which is why no alumni photos or names appear in this public case study.

KEY INSIGHTS

What the alumni actually told me.

What the alumni actually told me.

INSIGHT 01

The studio was owned, not booked

Alumni described decorating and personalising their desks — objects, wood sticks, things that marked the space as theirs. Belonging came from leaving a mark, not from being assigned a seat.

Alumni described decorating and personalising their desks — objects, wood sticks, things that marked the space as theirs. Belonging came from leaving a mark, not from being assigned a seat.

INSIGHT 02

Learning happened socially, off-schedule

The best learning happened between classes

The studio ran on presence: people staying late, working alongside each other between classes. The most valuable learning was informal and unscheduled — it needed bodies in the room.

The studio ran on presence: people staying late, working alongside each other between classes. The most valuable learning was informal and unscheduled — it needed bodies in the room.

INSIGHT 03

Culture passed person to person

Each cohort inherited how to use the space by watching the one before it. Hybrid schedules broke that hand-off, so the knowledge stopped transmitting and no one noticed.

Each cohort inherited how to use the space by watching the one before it. Hybrid schedules broke that hand-off, so the knowledge stopped transmitting and no one noticed.

DRAFTED FROM WHAT WAS SHARED — VERIFY EACH AGAINST YOUR NOTES BEFORE PUBLISHING

03 — THE CONCEPT

03 — THE CONCEPT

Broadcast the past. Capture the present. In one gesture.

Broadcast the past. Capture the present. In one gesture.

A looping video tells the studio’s history, built from the archival research. A seat in front of it is instrumented: sit down, and the video pauses while a prompt asks you to reflect. Your spoken answer records into a growing archive. Stand up, and it releases — the history loops for the next person. Every interaction leaves a trace.

A looping video tells the studio’s history, built from the archival research. A seat in front of it is instrumented: sit down, and the video pauses while a prompt asks you to reflect. Your spoken answer records into a growing archive. Stand up, and it releases — the history loops for the next person. Every interaction leaves a trace.

FIG. — THE INSTALLATION SITED IN THE MFA DESIGN STUDIO

FIG. — THE PROMPT SCREEN IN THE INSTALLATION

01

What is studio culture to you?

02

What stood out about how alumni used the studio?

03

How could the space support creativity and collaboration today?

04

After watching, what’s one change you’d want to see?

04 — INTERACTION DESIGN

Presence is the only control.

Presence is the only control.

No buttons, no instructions — the chair is the interface. A sensor watches the seat, and the system only reacts when someone actually sits or stands, not while they're sitting still. So the feedback stays simple: sit down and it responds, get up and it resets.

00:00

Idle

History video loops

00:01

Sit

Sensor fires — video pauses

● REC 00:02

Record

Prompt shows, audio captured

00:03

Stand

Sensor clears — saved

THE BUILD — THREE SYSTEMS, ONE SIGNAL

The chair senses, the laptop decides, the OS records — three systems passing one signal.

INPUT · CHAIR

Light sensor

Blocked when someone sits

ARDUINO

Reads + sends

Streams the value over serial

ANALOG

SERIAL

macOS

Records audio

Triggered via AppleScript

TRIGGER

PROCESSING · LAPTOP

Loops video · decides

On “sit”: pause + record

Terminal

I first tried a proximity sensor; a light sensor under the seat proved more reliable for reading “is someone sitting.”

LightSensor_Chair.ino
void setup() {
Serial.begin(9600);
}
 
void loop() {
int sensorValue = analogRead(A0);
Serial.println(sensorValue); // ONLY the number!
delay(500);
}
 

The chair only senses — it reads the light value and sends the number. All the logic lives elsewhere.

Working_video.pde
import processing.serial.*;
import processing.video.*;
 
Serial myPort;
Movie video;
boolean recording = false;
 
void setup() {
fullScreen();
printArray(Serial.list());
// Change [6] to your actual Arduino port index
myPort = new Serial(this, Serial.list()[6], 9600);
video = new Movie(this, "final_final.mp4");
video.loop();
}
 
void draw() {
background(0);
if (video.available()) {
video.read();
}
image(video, 0, 0, width, height);
 
if (recording) {
fill(255, 0, 0);
ellipse(30, 30, 20, 20);
fill(255);
textSize(32);
text("Recording...", 60, 45);
}
}
 
void serialEvent(Serial myPort) {
String inString = myPort.readStringUntil('\n');
if (inString != null) {
inString = trim(inString);
println("Raw serial: [" + inString + "]");
try {
int ldrValue = int(inString);
println("LDR as int: " + ldrValue);
 
if (ldrValue == 0 && !recording) {
video.pause();
recording = true;
// Start recording using AppleScript
Runtime.getRuntime().exec("osascript /Users/YOUR_USERNAME/Desktop/start_audio_recording.scpt");
println("Started audio recording, paused video.");
} else if (ldrValue > 0 && recording) {
if (!video.isPlaying()) {
video.loop();
}
recording = false;
// Stop recording using AppleScript
Runtime.getRuntime().exec("osascript /Users/YOUR_USERNAME/Desktop/stop_audio_recording.scpt");
println("Stopped audio recording, resumed video.");
}
} catch (Exception e) {
println("Error processing serial data:");
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
}

The laptop owns the logic — on “sit,” it pauses the video and shells out to macOS to record.

05 — DEPLOYMENT

Someone sits · the system starts recording

Someone sits · the system starts recording

I built the piece and set it up in the MFA Design Studio — screen, sensor seat, and recording all running. Then I watched people use it: did they understand to sit and talk without being told, and what did they actually say?

FIG. 01 — THE INTERACTION, ACTIVATED BY A STUDENT

FIG. 02 — THE INSTRUMENTED SEAT

FIG. 03 — HISTORY VIDEO

What I observed

What I observed

Nobody approached the chair unprompted. Every participant needed a short nudge to sit down.

Once seated, the interaction explained itself. The sit-to-record mechanic needed no instruction — the gap was in the invitation, not the interface.

The design assumed curiosity would carry people to the seat. In a room people are already avoiding, that assumption doesn’t hold.

06 — WHAT I’D TEST NEXT

The invitation is the next thing to fix.

The invitation is the next thing to fix.

HYPOTHESIS

Nobody sat unprompted, so the next test isn't about the recording mechanic — it's about what makes someone walk over. I'd test whether a visible cue at the chair raises the share of passers-by who sit at all.

07 — OUTCOME & REFLECTION

Turning “the studio feels dead” into first-person student voices.

Turning “the studio feels dead” into first-person student voices.

A functioning, deployed installation that put the studio’s decline back into conversation among the people who use it.

A method for making an invisible cultural problem tangible — recordings convert a vague feeling into specific asks.

Once seated, the interaction needed no instruction — but people didn't approach on their own. The signal was legible; the invitation wasn't.

If this were a product

The next iteration is a service, not an object: the recording archive should live somewhere persistent and browsable, so the loop compounds instead of resetting. Discovery → reframe → prototype → field test is the same spine as designing a feature — the medium was an installation; the process was product design.

“I learned more from the person sitting next to me than from half my classes.”

ALUM, MFA DESIGN — CLEARED FOR ANONYMOUS USE

Created by

in

Framer

Created by

in

Framer

Created by

in

Framer

MJ

NOLLUTION

Home

01

Overview

02

The Problem

03

Insights

04

Concept

05

Product

06

Reflections

SPECULATIVE CONCEPT

2025 · Case 01/04

MJ

NOLLUTION

Home

01

Overview

02

The Problem

03

Insights

04

Concept

05

Product

06

Reflections

SPECULATIVE CONCEPT

2025 · Case 01/04

MJ

NOLLUTION

Home

01

Overview

02

The Problem

03

Insights

04

Concept

05

Product

06

Reflections

SPECULATIVE CONCEPT

2025 · Case 01/04