A Vision Worth Designing
How Ben Lorimore plans to alter the human experience
By Ray Garcia
His pen glides across a sheet of paper, quick yet controlled. Although his hand does the work, his eyes take the lead — chasing after a phantom that’s lost within the stark white page. With each defining line, Ben’s vision takes form.
Suddenly, he stops.
Glancing at what he created, he puts the sheet aside and starts again. The sketch is just one of many, but he won’t stop until he gets it right.
“I’m more focused personally on the idea … If I focus too much on making the sketch beautiful then I can’t think as fast and fluently,” he said.
Benjamin Lorimore is a third-year student in the industrial design program at Western Washington University. His interest in the field manifested during his senior year of high school when he interned at a design company. During his time there, he mastered the computer-aided design program Fusion 360, which allowed him to create 3D models of his products.
“It kind of all just clicked at once,” Ben said. “This is what I want to do.”
Western’s industrial design program is competitive, to say the least.
In the academic school year for 2014–15, an aspiring industrial design student would have had a 40.7 percent chance of getting into the pre-major, according to data from the Industrial Design program. With the increasing number of applicants each year, the acceptance rate has since dropped.
For the 2018–19 academic school year, the program had an acceptance rate of 23.5 percent for those applying to the pre-major.
Industrial design professor Arunas Oslapas first met Ben when wandering into a studio design class. He said Ben immediately introduced himself, appearing intense yet professional, and asked Arunas to comment on a project he was working on.
“We want people that are just rabidly passionate, and he had that,” Arunas said.
Now that Ben is an official industrial design major, his idea for what he wants to accomplish has changed.
Throughout the program, he said he’s become more wary of how modern technology affects our society. He said much of our daily interaction takes place virtually, leaving little room for genuine human experiences. In an effort to change that experience, Ben tries to design products that will incite raw happiness in others.
“At the end of the day, we’re living to enjoy life… it’s about the experiences. And if those experiences are eliminated by efficiency then I just don’t know,” he said.
But how can you design a product around something as complex as human emotion? Ben said although designers can’t force the user to do something, they can encourage them through subtle design elements in the product. He spends a lot of his time researching ways to emulate humanity in his designs, which proves to be no easy task.
His current process for designing emotion is heavily influenced from his past experiences and interactions. Since his admission into the program, Ben said he spends most of his time analyzing people throughout the day.
“I don’t want to sound like creepy or anything, but I love watching how people interact with each other and imagining those little stories in my head,” he said. “I feel like this is building in the back of my head, and I subconsciously draw from experiences or things I’ve noticed.”
At times, Ben said he struggles to find inspiration for creative projects outside of his school work. When this happens he likes to have long, meaningful conversations about his ideas with his best friend, Tommy Oleson, who is also an industrial design major.
“Ben likes to focus on these intangible connections, those areas of life that aren’t visual or physical but that matter so much,” Tommy said.
“A lot of design is cold and very techy, it lacks a human element. I think that’s something he always tries to bring into his work.”
Recently, Ben completed a project under the mentorship of a designer working at Oculus, a tech company that specializes in virtual reality.
He said the project focused on incorporating more physical interactions in modern technology, in an effort to bring life back into our society. He designed Sound Tool, a speaker that explores the connection between physical interactions and emotion.
Because of his natural-born passion, Ben tends to investigate his ideas for a product more deeply than others, Arunas said.
“It’s a good departure point to create a product that tries to imbue those feelings,” he said. “It’s giving life and humanity and warmth to a product.”
Unlike most speakers on the market, Sound Tool doesn’t have any buttons whatsoever. Instead, the speaker has a pull tab on both ends. If you wanted to raise the volume, you would grab the tabs and pull the speaker apart, making it physically bigger — like an accordion.
Although it’s a subtle difference in design, Ben said he strives to conceptualize an experience for the user that doesn’t currently exist. Creating a product that’s merely focused on visual aesthetics doesn’t cut it for him.
During his initial research for Sound Tool, he found inspiration in the way a conductor manipulates music through physical interactions, according to his online portfolio. He didn’t just want his product to become louder, he wanted it to feel more alive, too. When the speaker is pulled, the material expands with it, making it brighter in color due to the pleated design.
Over the summer Ben plans to intern at HTC, a leading technology company. Despite his excitement, he struggles with the idea of locking himself down, wanting to travel and experience the world some more first.
With his plans currently in motion, he is bringing his vision to fruition in hopes of leaving a real impact on the world — one design at a time.
“What [Ben’s] focusing on is exactly where we need to go in design, thinking about these more human-centered designs and enriching life in that way,” Tommy said. “I don’t know his exact path, but I’m excited to see where he goes.”
