PROFILE 001 — NEW MEDIA DESIGN, NID
Creative Technologist building physical interfaces where electronics, mechanism and meaning meet — kinetic installations, IoT objects and systems that move, sense and respond.
ABOUT
Arshad works at the New Media Design domain of the National Institute of Design, where he treats hardware as a creative material rather than a constraint. His practice sits between engineering and exhibition design — building the embedded systems, sensing and mechanisms that let an object move, react and hold someone's attention.
The work spans kinetic art, smart furniture, interactive exhibitions and early-stage autonomous vehicle research, but the throughline is the same: take a technical problem — motion tracking, gesture input, a motor that needs to behave like it has intention — and stage it as an experience people can feel, not just use.
CAPABILITIES
EL · 01
Designing and engineering robust electronics for products, toys and smart furniture — from circuit and sensor selection to firmware that has to survive real-world use.
KM · 02
Building physical mechanisms and motorised systems for kinetic art and new media installations, where movement itself carries the narrative.
IOT · 03
Connecting hardware to software — smart furniture and product systems that sense, communicate and respond intelligently to their environment.
AI · 04
Using motion tracking, gesture recognition and AI-based solutions to give interfaces a sense of perception — including early-stage autonomous vehicle research.
APPROACH
Complex technical constraints — sensors, motors, timing — are treated as raw material for a designed moment, not just problems to solve quietly offstage.
Before optimising a system, the question is what it should feel like to encounter — curious, alive, surprising — and the engineering follows from that.
Installations and products are built to survive real audiences and real use, so the experience never breaks character.
GET IN TOUCH
Open to collaborations across kinetic installations, smart products and interaction design — at NID.