Geist is a family of connected objects for people living outside their native country. These everyday objects help expat families develop and maintain a sense of connectedness and belonging. This particular project was focussed on the radio which enables to tune between the radio channels of two different countries.
The assignment was to think of tuning the radio by focussing on the experiental qualities of the materials that will embody the design.

For the context of the expat living abroad the feeling of ‘sad-isfaction’ was introduced, being content with feeling a little sad. This was envisioned from the melancholy that occurs when being away from home for a long time, you linger for something that you know you will not be able to get. The project focussed on the feeling of ‘sad-isfaction’ being experienced through materials while tuning the radio.

Several material properties were linked to the desired feeling of 'sad-isfaction', and material experiments were conducted to explore the tactile experience. During these experiments the relation between form and material was also explored. Does the tactile experience change if the form changes while the material stays the same? The exploration resulted in three concepts of tuning the radio through materials, all embodying an explorative character that enables the expat to tune from one place to another.

This project was executed in collaboration with Niels Stamhuis. Commissioned by ir. Elvin Karana and dr. ir. Elisa Giacardi of the department of Design Engineering at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering at the Delft University of Technology. The findings of this project are published in a pictorial for the 2016 Designing Interactive Systems (DIS) conference in Brisbane, Australia, under The Tuning of Materials: A Designer’s Journey.