Playful Home
“Wobbles” are a set of wireless tangible interfaces that transform physical gestures such as tilting, spinning, or moving into expressive digital data streams that allow the user to affect their surrounding ambient media by controlling generative soundscapes through VCV Rack and adjusting environmental lighting through Open Hue and Philips Hue bulbs. Designed as seemingly unassuming objects for domestic spaces, they utilize Wi-Fi and Open Sound Control (OSC) protocols to bridge the gap between physical input and the digital response.
“Wobbles” serve as the primary tool for developing the “Playful Home”, an ecosystem that utilizes domestic space as a site for creative engagement. Rather than replacing existing infrastructure, “Playful Home” acts as an interaction layer that leverages standard smart home systems. While contemporary smart homes focus on utility through automated thermostats and functional lighting, this project challenges the functionality paradigm by focusing instead on the playfulness of the interaction over the efficiency of the outcome.
The project follows a Research through Design (RtD) methodology, employing iterative prototyping through circuitry, code, 3D printed objects and systems design to refine the relationship between tactile input and environmental feedback. Drawing inspirations from the fields of Tangible User Interfaces (TUI), Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and creative Internet of Things (IoT) projects, the project moves away from the remote-control nature of standard IoT devices. The result is a playfully engaging environment where “Wobbles” co-exist within the home as expressive tools that encourage an open-ended, exploratory relationship with the space we inhabit.
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Joshua Jacob Pothen is an interdisciplinary designer with a background in industrial design, working at the intersection of interactive systems, sound, and spatial experience. His practice explores how physical and digital environments can be merged through playful constraints, participant agency, and emergent interaction. Drawing from industrial design methods, creative coding, and physical computing, his work takes the form of experimental installations that prioritize embodied experience and collective exploration.