KATE OPRE

Information, Email





FIELDS OF INTELLIGENCE
I am currently researching and developing my master’s thesis at RISD. This project is interested in the space that AI has opened up for novel interaction paradigms. 
This project sees future devices and new platforms as necessary to explore novel interaction patterns. 
This project seeks to draw up experimental interfaces, scenarios and interaction patterns that provide alternatives to increasingly generalized experiences with AI technology. 



IDEAL OFFICE
Ideal Office is an ambient noise machine, a /productive/ twist on a white noise machine. A sort of tool to deal with the loss of productive space amongst domesticity. An ephemeral experience made into a physical user interaction. 



FLOORPLAN LIGHT
04-2024A wall-mounted lamp that utilizes UV-printing technology in order to transfer an unlikely floor plan drawing onto foam. The foam acts as a diffuser of light and is held in place by a steel frame. The light plugs directly into the wall and the design features a foam cable. 

SEDIA CHAIR KIT CARD 
04-2024A plastic model kit (sometimes called a kit card) is a consumer-grade product that rose to popularity in the latter half of the twentieth century. Made from plastic, kit cards contain the components necessary to assemble a model. Typical models were of  tanks, planes, automobiles. Plastic components that hold the components together are called sprues and are the result of injection molding as the manufacturing method for the production of model kit cards. This project re-envisions Enzo Mari’s Sedia I Chair, a chair the designer released drawings for as an act of open-access design, as a model kit card. 

BIT-0 WIRELESS CHARGING SYSTEM
The omnipresence of technology and the ubiquity of computing have transformed the landscape and the objects that occupy it. Chargers, cables and accessories are often overlooked constituents of this system yet they are points of entry that allow for our constant connection with technology. This project incorporates ritual into consumer electronic design in a way that seeks to dislodge the tendency to overlook charging.

 <<BIT-O knows that it is a tool but it wants to be more. >> 

ONE HUNDRED PERCENT
03-2024I am trying to bring attention back to charging by introducing an element of symbolic representation. For each 1% the phone is charged a dim light appears on the exterior of the charger. 
EVENT-DRIVEN PROGRAM 02-2024Event-driven program is a wall-mounted lamp fabricated from steel and detailed with a circular slot inlaid with white-dyed wood veneer. There is no straightforward switch that turns the light on, instead the piece is fitted with an electromagnetic component commonly used in industrial machinery. A small magnet rests upon the steel surface which may be moved atop the electromagnetic component to turn on the light. Operating off of conditions of secrecy and suggestion, the design places the user in charge of deciding whether or not this piece becomes a lamp or remains a sculptural form upon a wall. The three details that populate the metal surface are a lamp in it’s most abstract: a switch, an event that activates the switch and the illumination itself. 


MUJI 2 DOLLAR NOTEBOOK ANALYSIS 2-2024This is an investigative design project that explored anti-design and problematic attributes of a ubiquitous product. This project functioned as an exercise to delve very deeply into a singular feature of a designed product. 
CASEPIECES A & B
01-2024Beginning with the casepiece, I investigated the sense of touch and the gesture of opening. The means of interaction were distilled to: pull-to-open and overturn. These cases pieces serve to focus attention on the base interaction itself. Each explores these specific gestures, almost a portrait that isolates a highly specified way of experiencing the storage system. Using gesture and interaction, the design of these pieces pushes the user to toggle with physicality without knowing what will happen, for example- size of effect, how big is the inside of the piece? These pieces have no handles, buttons or pulls and through avoiding semantic design they allow a pause to be programmed at the level of immediate understanding. One might wonder if they are lock boxes, maquettes, stationary sculptures and therefore they function to disrupt typical use by making user interaction more important than communicating “usable” containment. 


WATER FEATURES
12-2023What if our water features and appliances allowed for more beautiful and special ways to experience water?This project culminated in four designed interactions for highly specific experiences with water: There is a bubbling fountain; A drain; A humidifier; Sink.
Think of these four water features as an exploration of custom hardware allowing for specialized, non-ubiquitous experiences. These objects were all hand-fabricated using techniques belonging to jewelry and metalsmithing. 




©KOall content is  my IP