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NY Product Design AwardsEnter Award

Conceptual

Lost Focus

Entrant: Ruilin Mao

2026 Silver winner badge
2026

Silver

CategoryConceptual
Class / SubcategoryInterface & User Experience
Interactive Design (IxD)
Country / RegionUnited States

The project

Project description.

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Photography is now an important part of our daily life. We record our moments, trips, and feelings with photography. But as tools like phones have become easier and more powerful, photos have become highly repetitive: the same location, the same color, and the same feeds. We gained convenience and better image quality, but we lost the human, familial core of photography. We have more images than ever, but they carry way less meaning. When film was still widely used, each photo was handled with care. From loading the film roll to developing the negatives, those rituals gave images historical and emotional weight. As technologies made photography easier, that meaning has faded, and photography became quick and casual. Social media pushed the focus toward polished results and sameness, not the experience. I want to study this shift and use what I learn to guide a design project.

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