Project Update
November 11, 2022
Painting prototypes
What could the "Apple" future of Virtual/Augmented Reality look like?
Project Dates: September 2022 - November 2022
Built with: Oil on Canvas, Procreate
Painting of a MacBook Pro (late 2021), oil on canvas.
Throughout the course of GenEd1114: Painting’s Doubt, I had the chance to gain experience in painting and explore a new way to bring some of my design ideas to life. For my final project, I needed to create a complex portait. I wanted do something bridging my interests in industrial design, user interface design and technology. But, for my complex portrait, I didn’t want to delve into existing products; I had done that already.
Left: monochrome value tool study of iPhone 14 Pro packaging, oil on canvas. Right: observational journal sketch of Apple Boylston Street Store, direct observation sketch on Procreate.
I decided to explore something forward facing: imagine what an Apple VR/AR experience could be. Not simply a device, but the entirety of the user experience: in a sense, a complex portrait of the device that integrates the user experience in it.
Prototyping the hardware
I started with a lot of sketching: what would the device look and feel like, and how could I transfer that on a canvas? I created a Freeform board to bring together existing designs and understand the current solution space and product constraints. There was a common design language that aimed to immerse users into the UI experience.
I also wanted to ensure that any design I made would match the design language and material choices of the current lineup. I looked into existing products to find inspiration for solving design challenges that I expected would come up with any AR/VR headset design. For example, I integrated a similar design of a strap to that of an Apple Watch thinking that silicone would bring down the product's weight. I added cushions at the back of the strap, similar to ear cushions of AirPods Max to support the head and increase user comfort.
I used a Freeform board to document design language from existing AR/VR products and materials and design language from existing Apple products, trying to ensure that my prototype matched the look and feel of the current lineup.
Prototyping the user interface
Once I had a viable design idea, I started sketching my idea in Procreate and used it to think of restraints and design goals for the user interface. After working through Apple's Human Interface Design Guidelines, I started with the baseline of the iPad experience. It felt like the most fluid experience out of all current platforms, combining the interactiveness of touch and the precision of input devices like the Magic Keyboard.
I incorporated notions of Stage Manager and floating windows to visualize how windows management and opening apps could look like. I used many drawings to bring together a potential scene that could demonstrate enough of the user experience in a single static painting.
Left: working on digital sketches of the imagined hardware prototype on Procreate. Right: drawing components of the prototyped user interface and compositing them in the final canvas design.
Painting the prototype
Then, it was time for details: I started painting on a big canvas so I had space to illustrate the user visual experience through the headset. The final result depicted a scene of a user wearing the headset and having a few app windows open while sitting in front of a table, along with a Stage Manager-like interface and menu bar to assist in navigation.
The final prototype UI painting, oil on canvas.
Reflections
In his short essay Eye and Mind, Merleau-Ponty insists that the body is the center of the painting experience. I experienced this grounding throughout the semester. Vision was the starting point for any line or brush stroke, but it ended up being an extension of my arm and hand, which executed the perceived and planned depiction I came up with. In short, with no coordination and cooperation of the body, vision alone is unable to put observation and imagination to paper.
This project challenged me in that sense. Initially, I could see and imagine “perfect” lines in my mind, or even draw them in a quick pre-sketch, but when I got a brush in my hand, I felt stuck. I couldn’t simply copy what my mind or pencil were doing. Throughout the semester, I had to come up with clever ways to trick my body: paint around lines to create crisp lines through inversion, mask the surrounding area and paint the line directly, use tiny brushes.
Left: view of the sunny Cambridge sky, oil on canvas. Right: detail of monument in Cambridge Common, oil on canvas.
At the end, however, I realized that my body was “tricking” me all along: my hand and arm were guiding all my painting decisions and gave form to my perception and observation focus. The physical limitations of my body and my tools defined the limitations and perception of what I was or could be painting. The objective world observation wasn’t single-handedly guiding my painting. There was a constant pull and push between the physicality of the paintings I was creating and the objects I was observing.
Left: life drawing from model, first charcoal, then oil on canvas. Right: self-portait, oil on canvas.
Finally, even existentially, the idea of what space is, was guided by my painting experiences and readings throughout the semester. What I came to understand was that there is no real border between the body and the environment that it sits in. Lines distinguishing objects from their background do not clearly exist in real life; instead, they are formed by us to aid in the visualization of space and objects. In real life, everything blends together and “comes to life” based on our perspective and focus. Consider, for example, a tree and a building positioned behind it. Many painting permutations can come out of this set: one focused on the tree, one focused on the building in the background, or one focusing on both objects. The lines are all there; the objects do not shift or alter in any way. It is our perception and body (through its brush strokes) that define the focus of the painting, which is also experienced through the perception and body of the viewer.
The epitome of all these reflections and tens of paintings later: painting is the subjective experience of the objective world by the painter and the viewer.