Metamorphosis — joeyhou.design

Metamorphosis

Graudate Thesis | Generative Platform | AI Driven | AR/VR | 3D Print

Metamorphosis is a system of becoming. This thesis reimagines design as a living, evolving organism—shaped not by fixed outcomes, but by continuous transformation. Using the egg as a generative metaphor, the project unfolds across multiple mediums: theory, code, space, and collective interaction. Each module—whether digital, physical, or conceptual—participates in a shared ecology of growth, rupture, and renewal. Rather than presenting a single narrative, this work offers an open framework: one that embraces ambiguity, invites co-creation, and resists finality.

Concept

The visual concept centers around a sense of cyclical transformation, represented through a soft radial gradient that evokes organic growth, diffusion, and continuity. The fluid, morphing typography reflects the project’s emphasis on flux, emergence, and the destabilization of fixed identities. The term “Metamorphosis” itself functions both as a title and a process—referencing design as an ever-unfolding act of becoming. This aligns with the thesis’s core inquiry: how meaning, identity, and authorship are renegotiated through co-creation and evolving systems.

Evolution Chain

The Evolution Chain visualizes a conceptual journey across four stages—Origin, Life, Place, and Time—mapped onto an egg-like topological form. Each stage symbolizes a phase in the design process: emergence, vitality, contextualization, and temporal layering. Together, they act as a metaphor for iterative transformation, mirroring the design system’s transition from static authorship to dynamic co-creation.

Design As a Life(Website)

https://eggss-94382.web.app/homepage.html

Homepage

The homepage serves as the conceptual entry point to the system. A large, slowly breathing white egg sits at the center—symbolizing dormant potential and inviting interaction. Upon clicking “Create,” the user is prompted to enter the egg, initiating a metaphorical journey into the interior of the system. This moment marks the transition from passive observation to active participation, aligning with the thesis’s emphasis on incubation and co-creation.

Canvas & Collabration

Inside the egg, users are brought into a collaborative canvas space where drawing becomes a shared act of authorship. The interface supports real-time, multi-user interaction, allowing participants to leave visual traces that dynamically evolve. This system exemplifies decentralized authorship, where the meaning of the work emerges through collective gestures rather than singular control. The canvas serves as both a symbolic and practical space of emergence, echoing the thesis’s ecological and participatory design philosophy.

Incubation & Generation System

Following the collaborative drawing phase, users can trigger the incubation function, where the visual and textual data are processed into evolving design outputs. GPT is used to generate narrative interpretations of the canvas content, creating speculative prompts rooted in user-drawn input. These prompts are then passed to Tripo AI, which transforms them into interactive 3D models—visualizing the conceptual “hatching” of new ideas. This closed-loop process, from input to generative emergence, embodies the thesis’s core belief in design as an ever-adaptive, co-constructed, and non-linear system of meaning-making.

Variability & Emergent Forms

The incubation process is designed to be non-deterministic: a single egg may generate multiple distinct outcomes, while visually similar eggs can yield vastly different results. This variability highlights the system’s core emphasis on emergence, unpredictability, and co-constructed meaning. By showcasing how different creatures or terrains can evolve from the same or similar input, the project foregrounds design not as a fixed output but as a living, interpretive negotiation—one that continuously evolves through user input, contextual interpretation, and machine response.

Design As a Place
(Installation)

Eggshell Terrain Generator

This module translates microscopic observations of eggshell textures into intricate digital terrains. By photographing and analyzing real egg surfaces under magnification, the visual data is computationally transformed into complex topographies that simulate geological evolution. This process reflects the thesis’s core emphasis on emergence and transformation, demonstrating how tangible biological materials can serve as generative inputs for speculative digital environments.

Microstructural Mapping

Microscopic fragments of eggshells were analyzed, segmented, and processed to generate high-resolution texture maps. These microstructural patterns were computationally enhanced and color-coded, transforming fragile biological traces into interpretable visual data. This process bridges material observation with digital abstraction, laying the groundwork for terrain generation.

3D Geological Uplift Simulation

The extracted data was algorithmically translated into three-dimensional topographic forms. Peaks and valleys were computationally modeled to simulate a process of geological uplift, embedding temporal evolution into the physical geometry. This transformation turns biological texture into a symbolic landscape of emergence and time—ready for further fabrication and interaction.

Design As Time(3D Print)

Temporal Layering & Geomorphological Transformation

This section visualizes the egg as a generative seed, progressively layered through computational mapping into complex topographies. By extracting surface patterns and remapping them into geological terrains, the egg transitions from a symbolic origin into a new environmental epoch. Each transformation echoes a speculative vision of time’s passage—where matter accumulates, mutates, and gives rise to unfamiliar landscapes. This digital stratification metaphorically marks the migration from a primal unit toward a new chronotope of design.

Fossilized Records

This series of 3D-printed forms captures frozen moments from the generative process, turning ephemeral interactions into lasting artifacts. Each egg or terrain becomes a fossil-like imprint, embodying layers of transformation over time. These physical traces resemble geological or biological remains, emphasizing design as both a living process and a material archive. By translating digital evolution into tangible objects, the work anchors fleeting creation within a lasting, sculptural memory.

Documentation(Digest and Thesis Book)

Digest

The digest was created in the first semester as a reflective compilation of inspirations, methods, and early conceptual explorations. It blends collage, typography, and narrative layering to echo the central themes of emergence and transformation. As an early material experiment, it laid the foundation for the project’s visual language and philosophical direction, grounding later developments in an evolving design ethos.

Thesis Book

The 274-page thesis book serves as the central documentation of my experimental process. Designed as a visual journey, it uses color shifts, gradient-coded page edges, and fluid typography to reflect ongoing transformation. Dividing pages feature organic egg-toned forms, acting as visual thresholds between conceptual chapters. The book captures the evolution of my system-based design experiments—blurring the boundary between archive and living organism.

Make It Real!(End)

Collaborative Simulation

In this stage, I invited my cohort to co-create directly on my generative platform. Through screen-sharing and real-time editing, we explored how individual expressions could merge into a shared visual terrain. The integration of AR and VR added an immersive layer, transforming abstract ideas into interactive spatial experiences. This session wasn’t just about final outcomes, but about capturing the spontaneity and negotiation of collaborative creation. It marked a playful yet critical inquiry into authorship, control, and shared imagination.

Final Collective Hatch

For the final presentation, I invited 25 classmates to co-create a moment of shared memory. Each participant contributed to the generative platform, leaving behind traces that shaped the final interactive “egg.” Standing at the podium, I guided the session while their creations—visual fragments of our collective presence—hatched behind me in real time. It was chaotic, playful, and deeply human—an ending that, in spirit, refused to end. Because every ending, like every egg, is just the start of another becoming.

Thesis Summary

This thesis investigates the evolving dynamics of authorship, meaning-making, and co-creation within contemporary design practice, particularly emphasizing how emerging technologies and evolving paradigms of user participation challenge and reshape traditional design methodologies and roles. Historically, design operated as a hierarchical process wherein designers held authoritative control over the construction of meaning, meticulously orchestrating visual and material arrangements that positioned users as passive recipients. However, with the proliferation of contemporary digital platforms and technologies, this hierarchical dynamic has significantly shifted. Real-time collaborative interactions, emergent organizational structures, and collective user contributions have effectively blurred conventional distinctions between designers and users, ushering in a more inclusive and participatory design paradigm. This thesis critically evaluates the limitations of fixed conceptions of meaning and proposes an alternative view of design as an open-ended, fluid, and continually evolving interactive system.

To ground this theoretical repositioning, the thesis draws upon existentialist philosophy, primarily Heidegger’s concept of “being-in-the-world,” and Deleuze’s notions of assemblages and becoming. Heidegger’s philosophical framework situates meaning firmly within lived experiences, inherently emergent and context-dependent. In parallel, Deleuze’s theories of assemblages highlight the dynamic and relational nature of entities continuously shaped through interactions. Integrating these philosophical frameworks, the research reframes design practice as fundamentally dynamic, emergent, and interaction-driven, transcending traditional authorial constraints.

Collage—a method characterized by layering, fragmentation, and recombination—is strategically employed as both a practical technique and metaphorical analogy to represent the decentralized, nonlinear, and evolving characteristics inherent in contemporary creative processes.

By positioning design as an ecological system of collective engagement and continual negotiation of meaning, this thesis champions a speculative and experimental methodology.

Initial phases of research involved exploration through physical, print-based media. Early experiments included collaborative collage books, postcard-based interaction systems, and pass-through calendars that sequentially gathered diverse participant contributions. These projects illuminated possibilities for collective and distributed authorship but also exposed inherent constraints in print media, specifically their static and inflexible nature. The print medium limited opportunities for real-time, iterative collaboration and spontaneous user engagement, clearly indicating the necessity for more dynamic media capable of fostering fluid interactions. Recognizing these limitations prompted a critical methodological shift toward digital technologies.

Transitioning to digital methodologies allowed for significant exploration of the transformative potentials embedded within interactive and technology-mediated environments. Central to this methodological evolution was the egg metaphor, chosen explicitly for its symbolic associations with potentiality, incubation, emergence, and transformation. The metaphor served as both a theoretical anchor and practical guide, reinforcing the thesis’s assertion that optimal design operates as a constantly evolving system. Extensive microscopic examinations of eggshell textures were digitally translated into intricate topographical data, subsequently transformed into interactive virtual landscapes. This process vividly demonstrated the integrated potential of physical observation and digital transformation, aligning closely with the thesis’s core principles of emergence and interactive dynamics.

Building upon these digital explorations, the research developed an interactive web-based platform explicitly designed to operationalize and test these theoretical constructs practically. Within this digital environment, users engaged in real-time collaborative visual editing on a shared canvas, contributing to evolving visual narratives informed by the egg metaphor. Additionally, the platform incorporated sophisticated AI-driven incubation models, employing GPT-generated textual narratives based on user input. These textual scenarios were subsequently visualized via the Tripo AI API, generating dynamic, interactive 3D models. This approach underscored the potential of collaborative, AI-driven methodologies to facilitate emergent meaning-making processes, reinforcing the inherently adaptive, responsive, and participatory nature of contemporary design.

Simultaneously, physical experimentation remained essential to concretely grounding theoretical ideas. Microscopic observations initially intended for digital applications were further leveraged to sculpt actual eggs into geological, fossil-like structures. This intricate process involved layering, fragmentation, iterative manipulation, and additive techniques, effectively encapsulating narratives of biological and geological evolution—from organic life to fossilization and finally to landscapes resembling lush, grassy terrains. These layered physical creations symbolically mirrored temporal transformations, vividly representing continuous cycles of life, death, renewal, and rebirth.

Further extending the physical exploration, the research incorporated advanced fabrication techniques, particularly sophisticated 3D printing technologies, to convert digital landscapes and fossil-like forms into tangible artifacts.
These physical outputs were conceived not merely as static visual objects but as active, interactive elements within a broader participatory design ecology. To further enhance interactional possibilities, augmented reality (AR) technologies were integrated. By scanning these physical artifacts, users could activate digitally generated lifeforms and dynamic interactive scenarios, seamlessly bridging physical and digital realms, providing users with coherent and immersive interaction experiences.

Reflectively, the thesis synthesizes rigorous theoretical inquiry with extensive practical experimentation, effectively incorporating Heidegger’s perspective on meaning as contextually and experientially grounded and Deleuze’s conceptualization of assemblages as dynamic, relational networks. The egg metaphor remains pivotal, embodying the thesis’s central assertion that design should create conditions enabling emergence, transformation, and participatory co-creation, rather than deliver fixed and predetermined outcomes. The synthesis of collaborative methodologies, AI-generated processes, and integrated physical-digital interactions signifies a profound shift in the designer’s role—from an authoritative creator to a facilitator of open-ended, participatory, and continuously evolving interactive systems.

Crucially, this thesis offers audiences a revised conceptualization of design as an ongoing, participatory dialogue rather than a static or completed artifact. Audience members gain practical insights into how interactive technologies and philosophical frameworks can empower them as active participants and co-creators in design processes, facilitating richer, more inclusive, and adaptive meaning-making experiences. By highlighting participants’ integral roles in shaping design outcomes, this research positions users not merely as passive recipients but as essential contributors to evolving design narratives.

In conclusion, this thesis advocates for a speculative, adaptive design framework where meaning continually emerges through collaboration, technological mediation, and sustained user engagement. Future research directions include further refinement of integrative practices, deeper exploration into intersections of physical and digital methodologies, and advancement in immersive, interactive narratives. Ultimately, the aim is to significantly expand participatory and co-creative potential, fostering environments that actively respond, adapt, and evolve alongside user participation, thus reshaping the future landscape of design practice. Additionally, this thesis encourages practitioners and theorists alike to reconsider traditional boundaries within design, urging them to embrace uncertainty, complexity, and continuous innovation in their methodologies, thereby enriching the discipline’s capacity to adapt and thrive in rapidly evolving sociotechnical contexts.

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