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Passing Cloud

Reimagining the experience of multiple residents living and working aboard a Catamaran.

Summer 2021

Client

Populus - the Future Institute

Industry

Smart Home, Interiors, Transportation

Services

Consumer research, Industrial Design, UX Design, Systems Design

Reimagining the experience of multiple residents living and working aboard a Catamaran.

This deeply connected interior consisting of both physical and digital components allows for a highly flexible living space that can be quickly converted to support work, play, and rest. This personalized environment allows for lifestyles and conveniences at sea that are comparable to or exceeds conventional life on land.

Vision

How might we enable healthier lifestyles among families or friends in these small water-borne environments? How do we take advantage of the unique opportunities that living on water provides? We base our design on the floor plan of an existing 38' Catamaran, and aim to demonstrate unique experiences made possible by responsive technologies, spanning space, light and furniture.

How It Works

The System

The Passing Cloud system fulfills the needs of multiple people living and working in a shared space on the water. The space is open, configurable and enhanced by responsive technologies. Our goal is to provide the best work experience possible in a small space, but also take advantage of the water-borne environment to make life more enjoyable. The product system consists of four major components: responsive lighting and adaptive blinds that facilitate people’s dynamic movement and work activities in small spaces, transformative furniture that provides a flexible layout for group and individual activities, and an application that supports mode customization with option for manual control.

Adaptive Blinds

Electrochromic glass panels allow users to adjust the opacity of windows automatically or manually, letting light in for brightness or keeping light out to study.

Responsive Lighting

Empowered by AI-driven motion sensors, the lighting system tracks movement and allows for personalized illumination based on context.

Transformative Furniture

Furniture throughout the common space supports for different layouts and interactive needs. A system of screens enables the partition of space from 1 to many.

Habitat

Habitat is the control hub of the Passing Cloud system, it allows users to control all aspects of the space. The app provides tools for quick manual edits to furniture, lighting, and window treatments. It then allows you to create combinations of furniture, lighting, and window treatments that can be switched on and off, transforming the space in seconds. Habit then learns from your behaviors in order to predict what layout they may need next.

"Our company was looking for a unique and thoughtful approach to simplifying the world through the eyes of a child. We are throughly impressed with the Nuri concept and look forward to introducing this new product to the world." -Jini Zopf

Problems Uncovered

From our research, we discovered a number of problems that exist in current Populous water dwellings. The small space can easily distress someone confined to it for long periods of time. This problem compounds when there are multiple people living in the same space. When one person is sleeping, the other may be awake. When one person needs a quiet space, the other may require to speak. Activity conflicts like these are what Passing Cloud and Habitat address.

Additional Considerations

More Than A Barrier

Projectors placed in the corners of the room project onto the screens when in their closed positions. This offers added utility in large screen space, or even reducing motion sickness through projected scenery.

A.I. in Habitat

Agentive A.I. within Habitat learns your patterns as to when particular Layouts are often used. It is then able to proactively suggest layout changes, or even create new Layouts when particular manual changes become frequent.

The Team

Karen Liu

Transportation Design

Mason Noboru

Interaction Design

Tony Cheng

Product Design

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