Cross-disciplinary seminar at the intersection of design, physical computing, and psychophysiology.

This course examines how designers can create environments and objects that sense and respond to bodies, context, and ambient conditions. As ubiquitous sensing (biosignals, environmental data, spatial tracking) becomes embedded across scales, from wearables to materials to rooms, how can designers meaningfully integrate and interpret these signals, and how should they critique their use? In this course, students will learn the technical foundations of sensing, instrumentation, signal processing, and system integration, while pursuing design experiments that probe the limits, ambiguities, and ethical stakes of affective artifacts.

With guest lectures from faculty and researchers in psychology, neuroscience, and computational design, the course will introduce principles of physical computing from both technical and experimental design perspectives. Students will learn how to structure, conduct, and analyze small-scale studies that connect physiological and behavioral data to questions of perception, emotion, and experience, bridging hands-on prototyping with research methodology.

Over the semester, students will move through a scaffolded sequence of projects. Students will first engage data as input through sensing and representation [Project 1A: Latent Signals], then develop experimental framings that explore how these signals participate in broader human-spatial, human-environment, or human-machine relationships [Project 1B: Relational Fields]. This sequence will culminate in a final design intervention [Project 2: Affective Assemblies*] that synthesizes sensing, interpretation, and feedback into a responsive artifact, material system, or spatial condition. Projects may operate across multiple scales, from objects to spatial environments.

*Students may integrate the final project into their studio work, provided it is approved by their studio instructor and discussed with Prof. Richter-Lunn.

Students with experience and an invested interest in digital design, digital fabrication, electronics, or coding will find these skills particularly valuable in the course, though they are not required. Students from all backgrounds and disciplines are welcome.