Hailun Wu – MDes Design Innovation & Interaction Design – School of Innovation & Technology

Hailun Wu is a multidisciplinary designer and design researcher exploring relationships between materials, technology, people, and more-than-human environments.

Currently completing an MDes in Design Innovation and Interaction Design at the Glasgow School of Art, she previously studied Product Design, developing a particular interest in sustainable materials and material-led experimentation.

Her undergraduate fish-scale project explored how biological waste could be transformed into a tactile and environmentally responsible material, considering how sensory qualities and cultural associations shape material value. The project was nominated for the 11th Innodesign Prize Junior in the Textile Design category in 2024.

During her master’s studies, Hailun expanded this material focus into interaction design, digital experience, and ecological systems. Her projects examine how sensory materials are communicated across physical and digital environments. Her final project, Plastic Afterlife, traces how plastic moves through Scotland’s coastal environments and becomes incorporated into seabird nesting systems, revealing its growing entanglement with coastal ecologies.

Her practice combines research-led thinking with visual communication, interface design, material experimentation, and prototyping, supported by experience with Adobe Creative Suite, Figma, Unity, Arduino, 3D printing and basic creative coding.

What happens when a material continues beyond its intended life?

Plastic Afterlife investigates how plastic moves through Scotland’s coastal environments and becomes incorporated into seabird nesting systems.

Through field observation, material collection, pathway mapping, and speculative design, the project traces plastic flows across selected coastal sites and examines how seabirds encounter, incorporate, and redistribute synthetic materials.

These findings are translated into material passports, availability maps, and speculative future scenarios that reveal emerging material relationships, identify where harmful pathways might be redirected, and explore more careful forms of coexistence between humans, seabirds, and coastal environments.

Supervisor: Dr Gruffudd Hill

Links

Plastic Afterlife Project Website URL