Skip to content
Hamish Visser

University

Industrial design coursework from Victoria University of Wellington, 2018 to 2020, gone back through and documented properly: what each piece was, how it worked, and what it got wrong. The background the objects work and the computational work both came out of.

  1. 01

    GRAI

    Product DesignHaptic Interfaces 2020A fingertip-worn device that lets a blind or low-vision user feel terrain by touch: a light sensor reads the greyscale value of an elevation map under the fingertip and drives a vibration motor in proportion to it, so height becomes something felt rather than seen. Built with a project partner and shaped by feedback from Low Vision New Zealand.
  2. 02

    Invert Shade

    Computational DesignCNC Fabrication 2020A pendant shade pair cut as one flat piece and formed over a cylindrical frame, with a Grasshopper definition driving both the form and the organic cut-out pattern from a handful of sliders. Drawn for the Salone Satellite track at Milan's furniture fair.
  3. 03

    ARATAKI

    Brand StrategyAugmented Reality 2020A concept app that finds a nearby heritage site, then holds a phone up to it and shows what stood there through AR. Built for a 2020 brief on designing New Zealand's response to a collapse in tourism, using a real Wellington storytelling company as a brand reference point.
  4. 04

    Face Mask

    Product DesignInterface Design 2020A handlebar-mounted device with a folding clear shield, designed against a 2020 brief for a speculative human-health interface. The working title is a misnomer the project's own title page already admitted to: nothing about it goes near a face.
  5. 05

    Nocturnal Flowers

    Product DesignSoft Robotics 2020A 3D-printed flower that opens when a shadow falls across it: a light sensor triggers a peristaltic pump to inflate soft petal actuators, revealing the LED inside. The pump is the type used in medical infusion lines, so the bloom has a pulse rather than a sweep.
  6. 06

    UV-C Door Handle

    Product DesignVisualisation 2020A self-sanitising door handle concept: a hidden UV-C light triggers for 30 seconds after each use, detected by a tilt sensor, in a form designed to disappear into a modern interior rather than read as medical equipment. Never built: the brief marked on the visualisation.
  7. 07

    Bench

    Furniture DesignConstruction Detailing 2019A furniture module for the School of Architecture and Design atrium, built to a shared jointing and dimension standard so units from an entire cohort combine into one long bench. The interface was agreed before anyone designed anything.
  8. 08

    Chair Trap

    Furniture DesignMechanism Design 2019A plywood chair built as a mechanism rather than a fixed form: sitting down drives a linked set of pin-jointed ribs that spread and close around the sitter. Nothing in it is rigid, so it has no settled shape until someone sits down.
  9. 09

    Eclipse

    Product DesignLighting Design 2019A wall-mounted light built around its own switch: a black acrylic disc eclipses a ring of LEDs into a soft halo, and only a light touch on the plate reveals it is a switch at all. The light source is never visible, only what it throws.
  10. 10

    Forms

    Form StudiesMaterials Exploration 2018Two first-year form studies: a rhythmic sequence of rotated triangular planes, then a piece built from a Fijian Kauri cube, a copper wire ring and curved translucent plastic, working through density, transition and openness by hand. The earliest work on this site.