Living far from those closest to you can bring about strong feelings of loss, of longing, and of nostalgia. We want to reach out, to stay in touch with people we consider important.

Project Brief

“This project will encourage you to build creative, experimental interactions that link the digital and tangible worlds together. The prototypes that you create will bookmark your own journey in better understanding interaction design practice – with and beyond the screen.”

Dr. Chuan Khoo

Monash University, Lecturer in Department of Design

What We Interpreted

This brief came with very little additional information, meaning we were meant to come up with our own context, target audience, and outcome. The requirement laid out for us was to leverage the use of a microcontroller in order to generate light, and create an app which communicated with our final product. This meant it was largely going to be an exploration into the tangible link between physical interaction and the digital world.

The Problem

“As international students, we often find ourselves far from the ones we love. We sometimes feel lonely and left out.”

The Opportunity

We wanted to use this opportunity to create a product that could bring us closer to our loved ones. We are hoping to engage people with this item by giving them a reminder that friends or family members who are far away, are still thinking about them.”

The Challenge

We approached this project with the idea of providing a way to help extend our reach beyond our screens, and into the physical world. To help us stay connected with our people.

Creating the SAUDADE

We are hoping to engage people with this item by giving them a reminder that friends or family members who are far away, are still thinking about them.

What the Studio Instructor Said?

“Great linkage between developing this sense of connection, longing with a culturally-specific language of Saudade, but one that could also be expressed by many other cultures and I was hoping more of this could be teased out in your research to address a sense of inclusivity whilst still aligning to the seed notion of Saudade. The precedents are well-connected, in terms of a particular aesthetic where light is heavily used. It was good to see how some of these were drawing not solely off the visual aesthetic but pivoted more on the significance of the information being expressed.”