TIMELINE:
2 WEEKS
RESEARCH METHODS:
AEIOU, CREATIVE TOOLKIT
TEAM:
VIBHOOTI • AISHWARYA • OINDRILLA • REVATI • SAKSHI • YIFAN • YIHAN
brief.
"Design an embodied experience of radio waves."
week 1.
Secondary Research
We gained a better understanding of the brief and radio waves through individual research, as none of us had worked with radio waves and did not have a strong understanding. As we cannot see or perceive radio waves, the examples from research help illustrate radio waves in more familiar waves below:
Radio waves are the lowest frequency and their wavelength is about the diameter of a grain of rice.
The Star Link by Elon Musk make use of the Ku and Ka band waves.
A portion of the sky with visible and radio light, almost like a hidden universe.
Group Discussion
Through discussing the research and compiling it, we identified these themes:
Interference
Materials (vacuum, atmosphere)
What happens where? (reflection, refraction)
Making the invisible visible
Image of the group working on a large sheet of paper.
Field Visit - Tate Modern
We visited the Tate Modern to gain inspiration. The Tower of Incomprehension really stuck with us and how everything was incomprehensible from a distance, but clearer when you get closer to one radio. We felt like this was a material way of feeling technology, similar to how there’s an excess of everything.
The sounds were incomprehensible from a distance.
Close-up of stacked radios. Getting close provided a clear sound which could not be captured on our devices.
Ideas
Based on our research, we brainstormed and thought about taking these two ideas further:
Radio Wave Forecast
Visualising the intensity of “radio wave pollution” between our classroom and the underground tube just across the road. The two spaces show very different levels of signal activity, and want to observe behaviour shifts.
Faraday Cage
Michael Faraday was born in the same area as our school. His invention uses conductive materials to block electromagnetic fields. We record the level of “radio wave pollution” in his birthplace and how to shield us from it.
Feedback
The forecast felt binary, and there’s places in between them that can be explored as well.
Think about where you see lots of radio waves and where you find less or none of it.
The Tower of Incomprehension is an interesting source of inquiry you can look into.
week 2.
AEIOU
Based on the feedback, we conducted AEIOU to gain a better understanding of WiFi (a radio wave) in the class.
Data gathered from AEIOU.
Situating ourselves in the site we were researching.
Defining our project scope
We tried to visualise radiowaves in ways that feel the most tangible for us.
Much of our interactions with it go through radio waves and it requires a lot of our attention.
Our devices can interact and understand radio waves, and we can understand our devices, the most used for us was the mobile phone.
Phone notifications in particular demand a lot of our attention.
Creative Toolkit
By focusing our project on notifications, we used creative toolkit to understand the ways people use their phones and how they envisioned their notifications. Some examples are shown:
We also explored how people mentally categorised their notifications. Some groupings are shown:
Social notifications were the most important for this participant.
Things related to money required immediate attention for this participant.
Insights
We were able to identify notification categories, and which ones are the most and least important.
Commonly associated notification colours were red and blue.
People got a few hundred notifications a day, and even though they were overwhelming, people do not turn them off due to fear of missing out.
Prototype - Falling Notifications
Based on our insights, we tried to recreate that overwhelm through notifications. Participants were asked to find the 'call from mom'.
Notifications fall on the participant from above.
Close-up of notifications hung with thread.
Observations
The threads were tangling too easily.
As we were unable to hang hundreds of notifications, participants found the 'call from mom' quite easily.
It did not feel overwhelming enough, and sifting through the notifications looked rather gentle and elegant.
Prototype - Notification Dump
With a flipped table, participants had notifications dumped on them.
Notifications dumped on the participant.
Bucket of notifications.
Observations
Dumping notifications was more chaotic than hanging them.
Participants could use their whole body and hands to find the notification.
The addition of lights added to the overwhelm.
Final outcome - Notification Dump
Building on the previous insights:
More notifications added to match the average notifications received.
Sound accompanied the experience.
Intensity and flashing of lights was increased
Notifications dumped on the participant.
Participant rummaging through the notifications.
Feedback
The experience could be situated, like your phone when you come out of a tube station.
The experience could have been more dynamic instead of being in one place.
The radio waves felt a bit lost and could have been more explicit.
reflection.
Through this project, we prototyped and explored various sources for inspiration. If we could push it further, we would have tried to explore more ways of overload and perhaps make it closer to radio waves.
references.
AnandSystemEngineering on Youtube (2021) What Are Radio Waves?
Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYnlwiDaWKE&t=204s
Curtis, D. (2023) The radio spectrum: an imperceptible infrastructure?
He, H. et al. (2025) What radio waves tell us about sleep!
Meireles, C. (2001) Babel
Westbrook, T. (2025) Lethal empowerment and electronic crime: A focus on radio-frequency interference capabilities
Wikipedia (2025) Radio wave
Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_wave
