Ilyas Watters
(He/They)
I believe design at its core is about creating social connection. As a designer I am fascinated by the way our culture, experiences and stories shape our connection to others, our environment and ourselves. Im interested in how we communicate with others, I build my projects with the question of: How do we strive for better communication and connection with our surroundings? Designing both alternatives to communication aswell as designing the space around communication so to allow better accessibility. My design my practice lies between social design, designing for communication and interactive story telling. Using ethnographic research I allow my projects to challenge societal norms. Im passionate about using design as a facilitator for change compared to a solutionary tool and make sure to use this viewpoint to connect to stakeholders, applying various research methods and engaging through co-design sessions. Using insights from these to create projects that feel alive, intentional and nurture empathy, ensuring that stakeholders are listened to. With my projects I aim to allow individuals to better experience the world around them by reshaping how we connect and communicate with each other and our environments.
Capture Us
Capture us is ritualised toolkit that allows improved communication for couples. Built through insights from real couples counsellors and couples, data indicates that 64 percent of couples indicated poor communication as their biggest issue in their relationship. Capture Us circumvents this through allowing non spoken low pressure language to come through, allowing couples to ‘mark’ their feelings first and create an invite to conversation, giving an alternative inititating conversation through spoken word. Aiming to build more emotionally intelligent couples by giving them space to co-facilitate and learn what their patterns are physically on paper and through emotional routine. The ritual was designed to allow partners who may be avoidant or conflict adverse to still feel comfortable communicating issues with their partner. Keeping the conversation activity based and low pressure so to mediate breakdown and allow trickier conversations to have an element of play to them.
Built from an understanding of couples and their own uniqueness Capture Us was designed so to include 3 different main components allowing couples to adapt to their needs and making sure that Capture Us can fit into couples communication patterns in a preventative, reactive and reflective manner.
Processing a moment through craft- Creating an invitation to conversation
Conversing through shared activity
Handing over folder of artifacts
Speak Your City
Speak your city is a city-wide visual language that allows you to see your areas health and respond to it in real time to have a two way conversation. Using speculative design to project increasing trends in our current world of extreme censorship and data filtration. Speak your city is facilitated as a preventative measure by allowing localised points of true data to be shown in the context in near/real time to allow equitable collective civic change. Speak Your City gives your city a voice that you can learn and converse with in hopes of fostering long term equitable care for all human and non human residents of your city, building a two way dialogue that can be accessed through an app. An app that translates the city and feeds it to the user through an abstract ‘feeling’ visual language, making sure that residents are seamlessly able to access their city’s voice.
Accessing your city via visual language
Notified about your areas health in real time