2026
A dissertation for my final-year BA Design project at Goldsmiths, exploring the relationship between emotion, facial expression, and design. Through research into emotional expression and emotional design, the report questions how we communicate, recognise, and interpret emotions, and how these meanings can differ between individuals and cultures.
Drawing on the theories of Paul Ekman and Donald Norman, alongside a series of visual and material experiments involving emojis, facial expressions, and everyday objects, the research explores how emotions can be expressed through design and how designed objects themselves can be perceived as emotional.
Rather than finding a single answer, the report reflects on how design shapes the way we express, experience, and understand emotions beyond the human face.
Written, designed, and bound by Grace Wang.