Aiden Hwang

Ditto

A camera that physically refuses to take a bad photo

  • Tangible AI
  • HCI Research
  • Embedded Electronics
Semester
Fall 2025
Role
Designer and maker
Tools
Autodesk Fusion, 3D printing, Embedded Electronics
Results
Co-Author, ACM Creativity & Cognition 2026Exhibited, Perversion of Interfaces, 2025
A hand adjusts Ditto, a white handheld device with a wide-angle lens on its front face, held outdoors against a blurred backdrop of autumn leaves
Semester
Fall 2025
Role
Designer and maker
Tools
Autodesk Fusion, 3D printing, Embedded Electronics
Results
Co-Author, ACM Creativity & Cognition 2026Exhibited, Perversion of Interfaces, 2025

Ditto is a camera that brings AI behavior into a physical, creative context. When a user points Ditto at a subject that its AI model doesn’t like, the camera will mechanically retract its shutter so it can’t be pressed.

Cameras are iconic instruments that bring technology to the humanities, and vice versa. A camera is socially, technically, and artistically ingrained in society as a device that captures a moment of time from the user’s perspective. Referencing these established norms, I designed Ditto’s concept to challenge our assumptions of technology’s role in normal aspects of life.

Ditto installed in a gallery: a pale wall hung with a blue diagram poster headed DITTO, annotating the camera’s retractable shutter, and two large photographs of it being held up and aimed outdoors. The camera itself sits on a white plinth below them beside a stack of printed cards

Ditto is part of my research exploring how physical design can embody AI decisions that are normally confined to software. Through combining industrial design with AI models and philosophical exploration, I explore how human-computer interaction can evolve to serve a future society where AI expands from software into the physical world.

This work was my contribution as a co-author to a pictorial featured in ACM Creativity & Cognition 2026.

It was also a piece in my lab’s Perversion of Interfaces exhibition, held in Cornell University’s Martha Van Rensselaer Hall through October 2025.

Ditto installed in a gallery: a pale wall hung with a blue diagram poster headed DITTO, annotating the camera’s retractable shutter, and two large photographs of it being held up and aimed outdoors. The camera itself sits on a white plinth below them beside a stack of printed cards
Ditto, a small white handheld device with a round black lens on its front face, standing on a weathered wooden table outdoors, with a columned building under a low dome and autumn trees blurred behind it
A hand reaching for Ditto as it is held up in front of a columned building under a low dome on a bright autumn day
A close view of Ditto’s back in two hands: a small screen showing the scene it is pointed at, a black diamond beside it, green leaves blurred behind
Ditto held up at arm’s length to photograph a glass-fronted building, the photographer’s face just inside the frame
Ditto on a white plinth beside a small wheeled printed trinket, with a large photograph of the camera in use mounted on the wall behind

Although Ditto’s name means to agree with what someone has already said, the physical feedback it gives does the opposite. I chose this ironic name for Ditto because it reflects the camera’s counterintuitive interaction with people.

Why create such a thing in the first place? I created Ditto because it is a demonstration of how humans and AI can interact in future environments, especially ones that deviate from today’s conventions. When AI becomes more than a way to optimize processes, it will adopt roles that reach deeper into meaning than just making things more efficient. How can we take on that new exploration, especially in the physical world, where AI is a nascent field, and in creative contexts, where it isn’t fully accepted?

The pale blue DITTO poster on the gallery wall, in focus and fully legible: it diagrams the camera’s retractable shutter and lists what the camera has preferences about: compositions, contrast, colors, contents and contexts. The camera itself stands out of focus in the foreground, a soft white shape on the plinth
A print of one of Ditto’s photographs taped to the gallery wall: a person in a gray shirt holding the camera up to their face among blurred autumn trees
A second print on the gallery wall: the photographer seen from behind, holding Ditto up to frame a wooded field
Two stacks of lilac printed cards on a white plinth: one offering a Halloween discount on a Ditto launch kit, the other headed A GIFT FOR YOU beside line drawings of the exhibition’s objects

I used an Adafruit Memento camera module, servo motor, linear potentiometer, and torsion spring for Ditto’s internal mechanics.

Ditto was presented in a marketable design image in the Perversion of Interfaces exhibition, where it was “advertised” alongside other objects that create thought-provoking interactions with their users.

Ditto cannot perform a real-time, in-depth creative analysis due to technological limitations, but it has used simpler operations for demonstrations.

Rough Drafts

Click each image to enlargeTap each image to enlarge

A page of handwritten notes in white on black, headed Camera: the concept of a camera that is picky about what it photographs, with a shutter button whose push resistance varies, and small drawings of Polaroid, analog, Canon/Nikon and hybrid camera styles
A pencil page dated 2/21/25, noting to account for the device’s AI personality by focusing on its emotional characteristics, above three drawings of a rounded camera body with a shaded grip, the first marked “Mini?”
White line sketches on black of a camera with a round lens on an arm beside a ridged handgrip, drawn in several variations, with the flash and camera module labeled on the lens
White line sketches on black of hands holding square camera bodies with round lenses, one held by a handle and labeled “Like a magnifying glass”
A pencil page headed “3-second sketches”: quick, loose outlines of camera bodies with round lenses, the last one annotated “click! shutter button”
Mechanism sketches in colored lines on black: a shutter lever driven by a servo, gear and torsion spring, drawn in several positions, beside dimensioned drawings of the spring and the Memento camera board
Rows of small white sketches on black exploring the camera body’s outline, from boxy shapes to rounded ones, with two circled in blue as candidates
Pencil drawings of a camera body with a large round lens and a grip at one end, annotated with a small “foot” that makes it “cute,” an ergonomically tilted grip, a body that can be oriented sideways, and an isometric view asking “More ‘organic’?”
Annotated sketches in white on black of a shutter button mechanism: a spring in a housing pushed by servos to raise the button’s resistance, with an iso view of the enclosure and notes on its benefits

My original idea for Ditto was to have the camera vary the physical resistance of its shutter button according to how much / how little it liked a potential photo.
I switched to the current retracting shutter design instead because it’s a stronger visual symbol of the camera’s intent being brought into the tangible world.

3D Modeling

Ditto’s final model in Autodesk Fusion: a white camera body with a large round lens housing and a dark blue shutter button on top, beside Fusion’s list of the model’s parts

The final form, modeled to contain various embedded electronics and 3D printed to be physically displayed.

An early Ditto model on a dark ground: a boxy white body with the lens on one end and an upright grip on the other, a dark shutter button on top
A rounder Ditto model: a white body that swells into a deep lens housing, with a narrow grip at the other end
A Ditto model with a slimmer waist between the grip and the round lens housing
Another white Ditto model on a dark ground, with a deep, round lens housing and a narrow grip
A Ditto model with a thin seam drawn around its round lens housing
The final versions of major iterations I made in Fusion
Front and back views of my Ditto modeling process