2023

Wenkai Mao

I consider myself as a mix between a designer and an engineer.

I love bringing knowledge from different fields to create unique designs, and I’m always curious about new technologies.

My main areas of expertise include 3D design, software and web design, hardware and product design, and relative engineering.

My design philosophy is to make technology more accessible to people through design.

Co-Walker

This is a project for data visualisation and product design.

Despite the many streetlights in the city, walking alone at night can still be unsettling. I want to change this and redesign people’s nighttime travel experience.

This project is called ‘Co-Walker’. It can scan the 3D environment in front of the user and the thermodynamic environment behind the user, informing the user which direction has obstacles and which direction has living beings. The interface for obtaining information is also very intuitive, with blue representing safety and red representing danger. The light strip above shows which direction is best for travel, while the light strip below shows which direction to be cautious of.

From now on, your night is yours.

Red’s Focus: Wolfless Woods

This is an interactive design project, and I want it to give people a visceral understanding of how attention economics affects them.

Many popular internet products are focused on capturing user attention. Under this influence, users are easily distracted and end up wasting time they could be spending on other things.

This project is a 3D pixel art game, controlled by three input devices: joystick, buttons, and the player’s attention. With an eye tracker, the player’s attention also becomes a part of the game. To complete tasks, players must ignore various distractions that pop up along the way, just like when trying to get things done online.

Through the gameplay, I hope users will feel how they get distracted by the attention economy products and waste their own time.

There is also a web preview of the game where you can use the ‘WASD’ key instead of the joystick, the spacebar instead of the buttons and the mouse instead of your point of attention. Website: https://w.maoo.io/attention/

Wenkai Mao

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