Further reading and relevant rituals
Watch this TED Talk by Wade Davis (19:08), from the Ritual Design Lab about how rituals are a universal aspect of human civilization, and learn about some traditional rituals from the analog era.
Somebody App by Miranda July and Miu Miu in 2015, this experimental app let users send messages to people by way of a third party — resulting in a stranger finding you in real life and reciting a message to you. By creating unexpected and surreal social experiences (watch the video) and complicating our normally instant communication with "missions," uncertainty, and a fun blobby user interface, the app designed a magical real world experience facilitated by an app.
While this project focuses on designing an experience, you will be creating a basic user interface, so it will be helpful to look at real world interfaces for inspiration. The apps and websites you visit everyday are full of visual designs and conventions that you can borrow from, but one important designer to look at is Susan Kare, creator of early icons for the Mac operating system. This article about Susan Kare's early work at Apple, reveals some of her inspiration and sketches for the early icons. Her focus on creating a "friendly and humane" experience is a reminder that technology can support our natural emotions and experiences rather than dominate them.
Margaret Hagen asks Can we design rituals to improve orgs’ culture? in this great article on Medium. She gives props to employees and asks them to design a ritual in five minutes, resulting in "rubber duck head-drops, the knighting of each other with thick black glasses, bear-paw growls, and pinecone tosses." Hagen helpfully defines rituals as the "magic and meaning of special actions," which should remind you that rituals are supposed to be different from normal behavior and can be very strange indeed!
Finally, Kursat Ozenc writes about The 3 most unconventional designers of 21st century — starting with Design shaman. The other two design approaches he mentions are also based on traditional spiritual roles and their rituals. Are there other worldviews that can be applied to design beyond the typical ones?
Previous student work
"Signly" by Daniel Bershefsky, 2017: Download (10MB)