The Samsung Designnovation project was a request to envision the mobile phone of the future, five years out. Our team took a unique approach to understanding the problem: We decided to quit using modern-day technology for a stretch of time, known as the Caveman Week, in order to examine our connection and behavior towards digital/networked devices in general.

Our digital-diet was challenging but led to insightful findings that helped our team develop solutions for behavioral needs such as solitude, contextual awareness, and over-accessibility rather than a traditional product design brief, albeit to Samsung's chagrin.

Although billed as a Co-Op, the experience with SonicRim became so much more. Having been part of a small team consisting of designers, researchers, and HCI professionals, I played multiple roles which accelerated my skills within participatory and ethnographic research methods.

I travelled across the country for research assignments all-the-while prototyping interview techniques, body language cues, and problem finding/framing methodologies.

A personal skunkworks initiative, the Citizen Consumer project is an attempt to find, categorize, and synthesize the wealth of data, news, and articles around the concepts of citizens leveraging their purchasing powers towards consumer action.

Once synthesized, this research will be used to create a online platform that will provide inspiration, resources and organization towards uniting consumer communities in social, political, and/or economic action.