Hi, I'm Dr. Phoenix Perry. I'm an artist, technologist, and design researcher.
Today, I want to discuss how open hardware empowers new forms of access, care, and joy through custom interface design, using games and play as a guiding principle.
Personal Journey
This story begins in 1999 in a doctor's office in Silicon Valley. After seeing multiple specialists for extreme nerve pain and cysts, I found myself facing a specialist who delivered a sweeping blow: "You have permanent arm and spine damage and might never work again. From this moment on, you are on disability leave."
In a daze, I stumbled back to my development job. Our HR director looked me straight in the face and revealed she had a chronic health condition herself. Then she said something that ignited my rebellion: everything I had hoped for myself as a developer was no longer possible without the full function of my arms.
Their shared assumption was apparent: "A disabled life is a limited life."
At 24, learning that my life would possibly be filled with pain—and that I might never type or use a mouse again—could have broken me. Instead, I took it as way to form a new relationship with technology, one where technology was personal, community oriented, and in the service of human potential regardless of the drive for mass commercialisation. This is when I began hacking my own hardware in service of my creative practice.
The Limitation of Standard Design
The limiting belief within mainstream technology design follows a logic of standardization and universality, depending on default assumptions baked into mass market capitalism. Most commercial design caters to what Caroline Criado Perez describes as "one-size-fits-men." It is more accurately stated that whoever holds the most economic purchasing power in the market the the company is trying to sell product to. Right now, this happens to be normative-bodied, cisgender, white affluent men in the prime of their lives for most major technology releases.
Games as a Compelling Example
Games offer a powerful example of a field ripe for new open source hardware and design creativity. Game designers are the storytellers of our era, but many game loops, controllers and consoles have stagnated as we get closer and closer to the maximum end of realism.
The Xbox controller, launched in 2001, became a locked in design form. Created using User-Centred Design (then brand new), its vast success normalised game controller design to the point where its shape extended into military drone and tank controllers. Made for its launch titles which included "Halo: Combat Evolved" a first-person shooter, and multiple racing games, it embodies a utilitarian design for shooting and quick movement. It also demands that players have two hands, 10 fingers, and good hand eye coordination.
Many mainstream games use a dopamine-based design loop to create flow rooted in B.F. Skinner's cognitive behaviourism—a stress-based system that's incredibly addictive with its uncertain rewards. This design loop has been extended to many fields and has transformed politics, culture, and society, and it is seen most prominently in the design of platforms like Instagram and Facebook.
But are there other systems in the brain we can design with? Yes. Can we, as designers, create deeply engaging experiences that tap into our neurochemistry not to addict or isolate, but to reconnect people—to each other, to care, and to a collective sense of wellbeing? Absolutely. That is the opportunity before us.