TAL BENISTY
  • STUDENT WORK
  • PROFESSIONAL WORK
  • SIDE PROJECTS
  • ABOUT ME
  • SketchTone
    SketchTone is an iPad application for sketching music and my Masters degree project for Wacom. Today's music programs are frighteningly complex; Wacom's brief was to design an engagingly simple consumer application for creating music. I developed an iPad app over multiple iterations in which sounds can be sketched across a canvas in time and in pitch.

    After my graduation, Wacom contracted me to design a full-fledged desktop application out of SketchTone.
    Music sketching application
    2011
  • Shortcase
    Shortcase is a startup I founded with two friends while I was a student. We started Shortcase as a file sharing service, but pivoted to building a knowledge sharing platform for design agencies.

    The idea is to have a repository of all the projects the company has worked on. Every project page contains the story of the project, along with the final files and a bunch of metadata (teammembers, methods, client domain etc). These case studies are not only useful internally, but can also be sent to the client for delivery, to the press for marketing, and to potential clients for business development.

    I am Shortcase's product manager and interaction designer. I work very closely with the developer (and manage his scrum sprints). Whenever I can, I also try to polish the visual design and the copy writing.
    Knowledge sharing platform
    2011
  • Heist
    Heist is a multiplayer laser game I designed and built together with Reinier Jansen in under 7 weeks. In this game, two thieves challenge each other to steal a diamond from a laser guarded warehouse. While they compete against each other in absolute darkness to find the diamond first, they also depend on each other to be quiet, at the risk of triggering the volatile laser system.

    Heist delivers a gesture based and spatially immersive role-playing game experience. It was voted Best Game by participants of the Interactive Technology Design exhibition 2007.
    Interactive laser game
    2011
  • Headphones
    What if the sound you heard between your ears had the physical qualities of sand, or water? These headphones explore the possibilities of giving sound physical attributes such as weight or viscosity.

    Using an accelerometer, I prototyped the headphones to alter your musical experience according to your head movements. Tilting your head left and right makes the sound flow from one ear to another, while moving your head up/down causes it to sound closer or farther away.
    Interactive headphones
    2011
  • Aqualibrium
    Aqualibrium is a playful installation that encourages children of age six to twelve to collectively build a city on water. Spreading various buildings across floating pieces of land, the children get to experiment with the concept of balance in society. Several elements of balance are explored, such as land buoyancy and urban weight, rural areas and cities as well as a town planning.
    Children's museum installation
    2011
  • SimpleThings
    Increasingly, designers have to design interactive products and systems that integrate both hardware and software. Designing for such complex interactions requires a highly iterative design approach involving many experiential prototypes.

    To support designers in early prototyping, I toolkit for Max MSP -an interactive prototyping environment- with a series of plug&play modules. The toolkit helps designers think-by-doing and try their ideas out early in the design process.

    SimpleThings was the result of my research project at ID Studiolab, where I also tutored students of a Master course on tangible and embedded interaction design.
    Prototyping toolkit
    2011
Tal Benisty – mail@talbenisty.com
PROJECTS
  • SketchTone
  • Shortcase
  • Heist
  • Headphones
  • Aqualibrium
  • SimpleThings