Design Research

I do prototype-driven design research. These days I have 4 major research directions:

The ‘Acrylic Computer’. A motivation for projects that recreate complex systems in visualizable ways, while having the gimmick of still being ‘real’ and ‘working’ versions of these systems.
Educational Tools. Largely around visualization or examination. Also see my explainers project.
Satire. Poking fun of software, with software
Speculative Design, mostly around Human-Computer Interaction. Building prototypes exploring how the world should or could be.

Numerous projects are built around visualization of complex systems by recreating those systems in ways that allow them to be visualized.

Speculative HCI Design

ASCII Slides - What could make presentation tools better?
Pinch - Latest of many efforts towards a procedural tool for 2D graphics. (Previously: Pinch (web), FiddlyNodes, sdf sprite graph, Visual Shapes, Vector Nodes. Separate code projects, but the same design project).
Scrub - A reversable programming language, created to consider ‘What does a programming language for students look like?’ if empowered by time-travel debugging. Abandonded.
64BOL - A WIP esolang for bit twiddling. A typeless language restricted to 64 bits of usable memory, built for students.

Mouse Car - A satirical response to “But everyone understands it!” as a defense of certain UX patterns.
Trashly Lang - Silly programming language. Among other amusingly terrible decisions, it uses ‘xX’ for ‘{’ and ‘Xx’ for ‘}’.

Slow Human Interpreter - Learn how computers/programming languages work by performing how computers work on a printed set of instructions, laboriously.
LilPuterSim - WIP Visual simulation of a computer, lets one keep ‘zooming in’ through the layers of abstraction, from code to NAND gates, of a fully simulated computer.
B- Lang - B- is an implementation of the B programming language, with an exposed interpreter encouraging examination and exploration. It runs locally in the browser.

See my 2025 talk, a crash course in designing for VR
Clayze - Grant-Funded project to lead students in design research in XR technologies.