PEBBLE GARDEN gallery app

This experience design project had several parameters: we had to design an app which responded to an oppressive power structure between user and app, embraced machine learning, and included a tangible interaction with the phone as a physical object itself. We initially researched tensions in smartphone camera and gallery apps for a "snapshot-taker" user group. After a lengthy series of concept iterations, Adobe XD wireframes, and RunwayML models, we created PEBBLE GARDEN, a gallery app which invokes skeuomorphic design principles to make memory material by enabling you to interact with your digital photos (snapshots) as if they were tangible pebbles collected in a garden. The app's intuitive pebble-sharing function encourages you to stack cairns in the gardens of your friends, thereby memorializing your presence on their device in monumental form. Collaboration with Paul Tom. “Experience/Interaction Design,” OCAD U, October-December 2019.