Cabinets of Wonder - Story in A Diorama

200 Years Through a Peephole | A Concept

For the mid semester exercise, our Cabinets of Wonder class was challenged to design and construct a diorama based on what we have learned about exhibition design and written in our Experience Design Manifesto.

This diorama is a conceptual model that showcases a story of life and design by traveling through time and inviting the viewer to experience scenes of a familiar place - a dining table - through a small peephole.

My Design Manifesto

Prior to creating this diorama, we were tasked to establish our own design manifestos to serve as our design compass as we continue to work through the assignments this semester. 

There were a few points from the design manifesto that served me well in this creative process:

• Intuitive interaction: the interaction methods are to be straightforward and the user should not be hesitant to engage with the piece
• Allowing full autonomy: the viewer should have control over their level of engagement with the diorama. They should be able to choose the speed in which conditions change, which peepholes to look through, etc...
• Invited to linger: the visual elements in the diorama should be easy to follow and not overwhelming for the user to stay and explore

Inspiration

As soon as I knew my concept was going to be about passage of time, I began researching methods of "scene changing" and thought about turntables in theatre set design. 

During this research process, I came across some images of mirror illusions and decided to experiment with the effect to create a more wondrous visual experience for the viewer.

The idea of this project started off as the prompt:
"A century of ___________" and it needed to be something that the audience may already be familiar with. Considering this is a 2 week assignment, the subject matter needed to be familiar to me as well. So I landed on the theme of furniture, which I can also draw from my previous undergraduate work. 

​The glass optical illusion is achieved by placing an object within the mirror range and by the angle reflection, it completes a full 360 degree rotation.

Progress

After testing an early stage prototypes for initial in class feedback, I began exploring scale and landed on an 8" x 8" x 8" cube which works with the door peephole that I already had from a previous project. 

The next step was to establish the "turntable" size which informs the size of the furniture pieces.

Unfortunately, after this process, it was crunch time to get everything put together before class, so there are little to no progress shots so instead, below are a selection of detail shots.

Final Diorama | A Study of Optical Illusions

Construction of the elements of the diorama

View of the diorama from the top

Close up of the turntable

View of the turntable through hole without the lens