A Decade Exploring Meaning-Making

A cluttered workspace table with electronic components, tools, decorative objects, and miscellaneous items.

For the past 10 years, I've been obsessed with a question:

Can we design meaningful experiences that help people connect with what actually matters to them?

What started as academic research has evolved through multiple experiments, each one teaching me something new about how meaning-making actually works.

ARS-1 (2015-16)

The vision that launched everything

A technical drawing of a person standing next to a large, detailed mechanical or electronic device with a circular base and various components, depicting an engineering or design schematic.

ARS-1 became my first experiment in exploring the question of meaning-making through personalisation.

I built a contraption that would create a personalised concoction through scent tests, or so called "aguas de tiempo" (traditional Mexican herbal remedies) using tinctures made from flowers, roots and seeds.

The project which remains unfinished launched what would become an investigation into how meaning works.

Colorful illustration of a robot with a square body filled with gears, paper sheets, and star symbols. The robot's head has a surprised expression. Surrounding it are various tools and gears, with words like push, click, clack, and wow. There are four smiling faces and sparkles, indicating excitement or amazement.

Multiple electronic circuit boards with red LED displays and wires attached, arranged on a beige surface, with some components connected to a larger device.

Workshop with people observing a tall, multi-tiered metallic structure on a wheeled stand, with various tools and equipment in the background.

Designable Religion (2017)

The thesis that built the foundations

Collection of various sculptures and artifacts, including busts, statues, carved stone, and modern art pieces displayed together.

My MA dissertation explored how to extract meaning-making mechanisms from religious practices and apply them to design.

The core insight: religions have spent thousands of years perfecting ways to help people connect with purpose, people and to make sense of life transitions. How might we identify these mechanisms and use them as part of the design process.

The research gave me a framework for thinking about meaning as something that can be intentionally designed rather than just hoped for.

Sketch illustrating a model of human behavior involving external stimuli, behavioral data, and internal responses. It shows a person on a grid receiving stimuli, with arrows pointing to different internal and external responses such as a talking face, a brain, a thought bubble, and a mouth.

A historic black and white photograph of a church interior with people gathered for a service. The room has paintings on the walls, an ornate altar with tall candlesticks, and various items labeled including music, painting, scents, light, clothing, jewellery, and literature.

A detailed hand-drawn diagram illustrating the components of an AI system, including mini labyrinths, real-time data processing, reactions, AI profiles, patterns, scaffolds, amulets, a god figure, text, historical data repositories, crowdsourcing components, physical computing, and various interconnected elements such as training stations, scoring rules, body language, and digital versions.

MMM - Meaning Making Machine (2018)

From theory to prototype

A transparent, multi-tiered robot with various small objects, including white, black, and yellow items, arranged on each shelf, against a black background.

I built a physical machine to create personalised meaningful objects. Users would interact with various stimuli, and the machine, powered by artificial intelligence, would combine elements based on their preferences to create a custom "amulet."

The technical execution was ambitious but clunky. More importantly, I learned that meaning can't be manufactured: it emerges from process and relationship, not just a a personalised outcome.

Diagram with four quadrants showing interconnected concepts: semiotic cavern at the top, connected amulet on the right, computation in the center, and ritual machine on the left. Each quadrant contains images and labels representing related ideas.

A transparent robot frame with white foam pieces on top and electronic components, including wires and circuit boards inside.

A detailed architectural floor plan of a building layout, including various rooms, corridors, and furniture arrangements.

Mood Lab (2019 - 2021)

Building a wellbeing business

A woman with curly hair wearing a black shirt and patterned pants standing at a table with bowls, notebooks, and electronic devices, writing with a pen.

Mood Lab was an experiment in creating a business around personalised wellbeing experiences. I designed 30-45 minute sessions that would adapt to users' personalities and emotional needs, sequencing short activities that focused on either enjoyment (hedonia) or significance (eudaemonia)

Through extensive prototyping and user-testing I developed the complete service framework alongside technical specifications for a real-time adaptive intervention.

A woman is drawing colorful circle patterns on a large sheet of paper attached to a wall.

An abstract illustration with geometric shapes, human figures, and various patterns, including a speech bubble with scientific and technological icons, and a color-coded happiness scale.

A printed well-being playground self-reporting logbook titled "VERONICA'S WELLBEING PLAYGROUND SELF-REPORTING LOGBOOK" with various prompts and scales for feelings before and after activities, held by a person with red nail polish.

Ethereal Realms (2023-24)

The first workshop format

Two women smiling with eyes closed, standing in front of a colorful projection on the wall.

Group experiences around meaning-making. The format invited participants to channel frustration and anxiety into creating meaningful moments of beauty and connection for future participants of the workshop to find.

Person standing indoors with a large brown paper bag covering their upper body and head, wearing black pants and colorful sneakers, surrounded by scattered papers, boxes, and miscellaneous items.

Abstract art installation featuring blue foam pool noodles bent and arranged to resemble a tree or plant, with attached yellow tags. The structure is supported by a metal scaffold frame with black and white straps, located on a gray tiled floor with a foam mat underneath. The background has white walls with printed papers attached.

Black and white isometric illustration with various abstract and geometric objects, including arches, stairs, pyramids, pyramidal structures, spherical and cube elements, and figurative human figures in different poses.

A digital illustration with the words "Ethereal Realms" overlaid on a background of interconnected geometric shapes, such as ovals, rectangles, and lines, suggesting a conceptual or abstract network.

Workshop Workshop (2025)

The breakthrough

Collection of black-and-white cartoon-style faces with various objects and characters on top or around them in a playful, surreal arrangement.

I decided to test the simplest possible version:

Just gather people and explore meaning-making together through conversation and creative exercises.

I ran a survey first. 73 people completed it, and the results surprised me: 91% already knew their priorities, but almost everyone felt disconnected from them in daily life. This wasn't a clarity problem, it was a connection problem.

Instead of “designing meaning for,” the problem to solve became: How to stay connected to what you already know matters to you.

A drawing of a face with a house on top of the head, featuring eyes, nose, and mouth, with stairs leading to the house and an animal or figure on the roof.

What I've Learned

A decade of research distilled into one key insight:

We don't need more frameworks for finding meaning. We need better ways to stay connected to the meaning we've already found and to each other.

This journey also informs my strategic consulting work. If you're curious about any of these individual projects, feel free to explore them.