Month: September 2022

During my entire high school, I was extremely interested in illustration and design and had been searching for art school vlogs when I came across a software tech program in the Rhode Island School of Design. The specific Youtube video I was watching was of Tiffany Weng, an illustration major student in the school and had been developing a project dealing with baby heart monitors. I had always admired her work since her illustrations had her unique and cohesive style and she often incorporated product design into her illustrations. 

This was the first time I was exposed to computational aspects in the field of design. The prompt of the project was to design and make a project that had to deal with some sort of computer programming. Tiffany had programmed and built a baby heart monitor so that if a baby’s heart rate passes a certain frequency, the lights will light the monitor up. Even though it was created in an introductory course to software technology during wintersession and dealt mostly with basic programming, I was intrigued by the completion of the project and the final results. 

After the programming portion of the project was completed, she then moved on to designing the execution, which were first harnesses that later evolved into adjustable anklets for babies to wear. She designed several variations of the anklets in cute animal packaging and integrated the monitor in a way that allowed the animal ears to light up then the heart beat became a dangerous frequency. 

I think that overall, to high school me who knew nothing about computers and programming, this shifted my view of art and design from purely aesthetics and narrative to production and invention, and ultimately steered me into the path of architecture.