This object was made for my father who experiences extreme anxiety in the workplace due to stress and times of change. My goal was to offer my father comfort and distraction through familial connection. After a series of interviews and research about anxiety-coping techniques, the object needed to be puzzle-like to offer a distraction, creatively stimulating, and be compact enough to fit on his desk. With an emphasis on nostalgia and comfort, translating personality into the object would be crucial.
After interviewing each family member (my father, mother, brother, and myself) to get a holistic view of each person, I developed a meaningful symbol system based on 18 defining characteristics. I then assigned a value of 1-5 (1 being a small amount and 5 being extremely present) to each characteristic for each family member and designed a “cog” based on each individual’s personality outcomes.
My final outcome is the Ponderosa Obscura. Named after our family’s road, the object’s natural, woodsy aesthetic, and its light-bringing mechanism—the Ponderosa Obscura is meant for multifunctional distraction, play, creativity, and transformative puzzle-solving in the workplace. The main barrel shape has 4 slits that hold the 4 cogs, one for each family member, and 2 slits in the back to bring light into the chamber. The back panel has a grid of filled-in engraved comfort words that have memory-related significance. By turning the cogs, endless overlapping patterns are created—revealing new words with each movement. To facilitate creativity, the rod can be removed and each cog can be taken out and traced to allow the user to create new narratives. The tracing function is inspired by a childhood activity my father and I did together where we would take French curves and create stories with the shapes we made together.