Biography

Mingke is an interaction designer who uses design as a tool to ask questions about human-tool relationships and emerging technologies. She loves to experiment with any sort of media to embody ideas and craft experiences. The world is her playground, where design is the magic that blends thinking and making.

Artist Summary

What if any object is as user-friendly as the innovative products we have today, whose usage is either suggested by innate affordance or shown by externalized instructions? In her MFA thesis, "Object Professionalism," Mingke talks about how artifacts become more and more knowledge-loaded with the dominance of user-centered design, and people only need to know the way to use them. With this particular scarf project at the lab, she wonders what if the primary meaning an object bears is the way to use it. How is it like if knowledge of using is embedded within objects, but not passed down through experience or imitation? Steps and gestures are mapped and woven into the patterns. An object as ancient as a scarf tells the usage itself.