Ethical, Accessible & Mindful Design is a one-week module that trains students to examine the ethical dimensions of design decisions. Through practice, students learn to design experiences that are inclusive, transparent, and considerate of their broader social impact.
This semester, the module took low-vision accessibility as its central design constraint. Working under the brief Goodbye to All …, students were asked to guide a user through a permanent, irreversible, and non-negotiable farewell. Beyond WCAG compliance, the exercise required sustained attention to contrast across all interface states, legible typography, keyboard-only navigation, focus visibility, and layout integrity at both 100% and 300% zoom, without loss of hierarchy or readability.
This tarot game allows a mother to hear and respond to revelations made by her child. In the first version, it is intended only for my mother; in the second version, anyone can share their stories before asking their mother to interact. The goal is to talk to each other as equals in order to break down the parent-child dynamic.
The mother who is playing reveals the cards one by one and can only respond once. Once the cards revealing the past have been revealed, a bonus card appears to summarize the current relationship. She then must turn all of them over and put them away in a box. The memories are not destroyed, but left in the past so that a new relationship can begin. When a card can be interacted with, it glows and shifts slightly when the mouse hovers over it. To move cards, you can click or drag them.
The user witnesses the irreversible demographic transformation of Jongny by Nestlé. A progressive interaction prepares them for the village's disappearance, guiding the ultimate "forgetting" of its history.
My research moved beyond basic WCAG 2.2 checklists to focus on success criteria contrast and reflow. This led to the "Information Density" insight: low-vision users need a clear anchor. I prioritized layout with generous white space to eliminate the "clutter trap". By ensuring that color is never the sole conveyor of meaning adding distinct patterns to historical states; the design remains legible in grayscale or high-glare environments. The choice of Selecta's specific metrics was a direct result of researching how letter-spacing affects readability for users with central vision loss.
The Most Inaccessible Website is a deliberately hostile interface. By breaking every accessibility rule on purpose, it makes able users feel what others navigate every day.
Instead of treating accessibility as a background constraint to smooth over, I made it the subject. Most projects meet the guidelines quietly; I went the other way building the most inaccessible website possible, so people without disabilities are forced to feel what others deal with every day. I went through the WCAG guidelines and more generaly, looked into how blind and low-vision users actually navigate the web: keyboard-only flows, screen readers, dwell-based interaction, head and eye tracking as cursor replacements. What stuck with me wasn't any single rule, but how much of the web silently assumes a mouse, stable vision, and fine motor control. You don't notice those assumptions until one of them is taken away.
This short scenario is about saying goodbye to your micro-digital crimes. A unknown detective is giving you the file they have on your digital activities. Your goal is to read it and then destroy it.
This project has a lot of high colors, and the WCAG requires high contrast between typography and background. Part of the research was to find accessible typography, and good text size, color choice for reading. Readability was the main objective, without losing too much design.
The concept is about exploring the duality that is developed when exposed to judgemental ideologies and stories. A duality that laces social perception into every personal decision. The interactions aims to give a glimpse of what it might be like to make often simple decisions, where the user’s choices has implications on how they are percieved. So by the end you say goodbye to this invisible checklist that comes with every choice. Saying goodbye to filtering every choice, big or small, through other opinions.
As the visual design was intentionally chromatic, one that uses saturated colours layered across backgrounds, testing was a challenge. Each colour combination required individual evaluation. Each iteration included testing foreground-background pairings across UI states (default, hover, focus, disabled), adjusting hue, saturation, and lightness values until combinations passed recommendations without compromising the art direction. I used low-vision accessibility test with WCAG 2.1 as a base, focusing specifically on contrast requirements; AA (4.5:1 for normal text) and AAA (7:1) metrics. I also was looking into guidance from resources like the Accessibility Guidelines Working Group's supplementary notes and community-driven tools such as Stark and Colour Contrast Analyser. Typography decisions were guided by legibility principles that go beyond type size. I tested typeface using character disambiguation checking if visually similar characters like S/5 and I/l/1 remained indentifiable at small sizes. This ruled out typefaces with ambiguous letterforms regardless of their aesthetic appeal. Collectively, these findings changed my design process from an aesthetics first to a constraints led approach, where accessibility thresholds became generative parameters rather than last minute checks.
My research focused on low-vision accessibility principles from WCAG 2.2 and inclusive interaction design beyond compliance. I studied contrast ratios, typography readability, zoom behavior, motion sensitivity, and visibility in difficult lighting conditions. I also explored the role of dark mode interfaces in reducing eye strain and improving comfort in low-light environments. One important insight was that accessibility is not only technical but emotional. Since the project deals with confession and vulnerability, the interface needed to feel calm, readable, and reassuring without overwhelming users visually. I therefore avoided dense layouts, decorative noise, and excessive animation. Accessibility directly shaped the project’s aesthetic language: the minimalist dark interface became both a conceptual choice and an inclusive design solution. The final experience balances emotional storytelling with clarity, legibility, visual comfort, and ease of interaction.
An anonymous confession machine lets users reveal personal secrets, then permanently destroys them through a ritualized digital interaction that transforms vulnerability into release, making the goodbye emotionally irreversible.
BA MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
with Harry Bloch
Websites developed over the course of a semester based on books chosen by students, which they adapted into web experiences as part of Harry Bloch's Screen Design course, second year of the Bachelor's degree in Visual Communication.
BA MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
with Pauline Saglio, Christophe Guignard, Alain Bellet, Gaël Hugo, Laura Nieder, Lara Défayes
A simple password can be cracked in a matter of seconds. Many people reuse the same password for years, or entrust all their passwords to specialized software, counting on not having to remember them themselves. Moji offers a playful and accessible alternative for strengthening our digital security, without the complexity. Designed for people who are less at ease with these issues, the application accompanies the user step by step, guided by Moji — a little character who simplifies the creation of passwords and makes their memorization more intuitive. The whole experience is designed to be fluid and non-anxious, transforming an often tedious task into a simple, guided and reassuring moment.
BA MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
with Pauline Saglio, Christophe Guignard, Laura Nieder, Alain Bellet, Gaël Hugo, Lara Défayes
Before the rise of digital technology and social networks, everyday moments were captured on analog media and watched with family in one uninterrupted flow. These long VHS tapes, composed of successive sequences, gradually disappeared, victims of their obsolescence. Magnetic Fragments offers a way to rediscover these forgotten memories through a three-dimensional web interface, where each bubble represents a memory to explore and comment on. Designed for a private circle, the collaborative platform allows free navigation, revisiting each memory fragments in a dynamic way and breaking with the monotonous structure of past viewings. Magnetic Fragments thus becomes a space for intergenerational transmission, where the past is shared in the present.
BA MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
with Tibor Udvari
Many platforms degrade over time, shifting from useful tools into manipulative systems. In this workshop, we explore enshittification as a creative method by modifying existing websites or developing small web experiments that exaggerate friction, automation, overload, and disorientation in order to reveal the underlying logics.
BA MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
with David Liebermann, Maximilian Kiepe, Jana Reddemann
Hello World! Goodbye predictable, standardized and interchangeable web. Students questioned the conventions of the digital World, explored the Wide possibilities of the medium, and even invented new approaches to interact with the Web. And what better way to give web design meaning than through the students own portfolios, understood as expressions of attitude and personality. https://websites.ecal-mid.ch/