
FICTIONAL DREAMING II - LUXURY HAPTICS
2018 - 2025
CROSSFUNCTIONAL COLLABORATION w//Self, Memory, and Nature
Student exploration to build guidance on Research via Design, Drexel University Design Research - 2018
Guest Lecture "Scales of Aesthetics" @Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) Design - 2025
Development and preliminary user studies for luxury tech objective/subjective COLLAB - 2024 - 2025
Surveyed "aesthetics" in AR/VR haptics hardware SUPPLEMENTAL - 2023
There are two misconceptions about aesthetics, which limit creativity and opportunities for building intentional interactions. The first, is the habit of using a facade as a cover narrative, separate from its internal elements. Much like mammalian skin, there are functional ties between internal and surface effects, often simplifying complexity and demonstrating the beauty through organization of its utility. Second, is the notion that aesthetics are exclusively visual.
In recent examples, luxury tech struggles with this balance to engineer a product that is not physically altered with time or rather improves in quality and effects. However, heirlooms historically were customized, carefully crafted by material experts, and passed down through generations. Luxury tech product lifetimes are typically 2 - 5 years, with higher daily use, environmental encounters, and demanding technical requirements. From psychologist perspective and first written record of the word, aesthetics engage other senses including all that is “perceived”, being "the science of what is sensed and imagined" (Baumgarten, Meditationes §CXVI, pp. 86–7).
In practice, I workshopped with cross-functional teams to create potential pathways for future product development and extended art and design principles to future industry students-in-training as an extension of design thinking through guest lectures. Separately, I developed haptic swatches at material and application levels to provide user feedback, informing translational of physical (Developers), perceptual (Industrial Designers, Users) and property (Material Engineers) attributes.


Photos, materials, and sketch-ins by Amy Stoltzfus

Materials by hornets | Location: Philadelphia, PA | Photos by Amy Stoltzfus

Materials sourced globally | Architectures: warp knit, webbing, handmade, industrially manufactured, metal, synthetic, nature-derived, and found objects | Photos by Amy Stoltzfus
LECTURE - SCALES OF AESTHETICS
A few slides are presented from the lecture to design students on cross-functional development scales (atom -> object), how hierarchies of textiles offer a platter of design controls (passive and active), and art elements which are aesthetic carriers for information delivery e.g. line as a variable medium.


