Ken Kawamoto
I love building things that blur the lines between the digital and physical worlds.
90 projects
🔥Popular
Everyday is a Holiday Calendar
Somewhere in the world, today is a holiday.
Toddlers' massage T-shirt
Lie down, and your kid happily massages your back
AR Sensor
See your Wi-Fi signal hanging in the air
RomoCart
A racing game where your living room clutter is the track
1Click Drinks
One click from “let's drink” to “cheers”.
tempescope
A box of rain in your living room
🔨Built
blend in
As the only human in a chatroom of machines, don't get found
Storybook
Write a story, see it turn into a storybook
Spot the Glitch
Turn your surroundings into an AI-powered spot-the-difference puzzle
Human Eye Simulator
A webcam filter that puts the eye's own flaws back into the picture
Spellmaster
An AI study companion that turns spelling sheets into lively spoken quizzes
essai
An AI writing tutor that mentors and marks student essays
readingtuner
Chrome extension to "translate" webpages to your reading level
A log: Filming a sunken yacht
Someone's yacht sank outside the house. I wanted to see it.
Book Hook AI
Bookshop-style blurb generators to lure people into reading books
Shy Dads Simulator
Simulating how fathers space themselves out in school events
Blind Spot Visualization
Visualizing vehicle blind spots using volumetric light and shadow
Tokyo Skyline Masking Tape
Tokyo's skyline as 1.2m of masking tape.
Not Satire bot
Bot that collects news that people mistook for satire
IV-friendly jacket
A modified jacket that can be put on or removed without disconnecting an IV line
When's My Turn?
A tool estimating your hospital wait time from call-out intervals
Focus-On-Your-Food Charger
A tabletop wireless charger for ramen restaurants that trades screen time for battery life
No-right-turns nav
Directions that never ask you to turn right.
Where Can I See Mt. Fuji?
A 3D map to find Tokyo spots with a direct line of sight to Mt. Fuji
Stick Figure Recorder
Turn webcam video into a stick-figure GIF.
OpenKen
A public dashboard broadcasting my post-hospital vitals and location to the world in real time
Difficulty Adjustable Clock
A clock training web app with an adjustable difficulty slider
True-Scale Solar System AR
An AR walk demonstrating the solar system with true-to-scale size and distance
Mosquito Kill Count T-Shirt
A T-shirt featuring kill markings to key scores against mosquitos
Sound-speed visualiser
Clap your hands, and watch sound travel as a wave of light
Indoor sundial
A digital sundial that works indoors
Spoiler onigiri nori
Laser cut nori that tells you what's inside
Wall-Mounted Earth at Night
A laser-perforated light panel recreating the glow of Earth at night
Forced eye-contact filter
A Snap Camera lens forcing eye contact during video calls
Hand Wash Timer
A soap dispenser stand that plays music for 30 seconds when pumped
Fit-in AR
Find furniture that fits an empty space in your room
Skip Work Search
A search engine that finds scenic escapes past your work stop
Half-Planter
A cross-section planter designed to reveal the hidden life of roots and soil
Rewind home camera
“Ok Google, keep the last thirty seconds.”
Deepfake safety-training video
An experiment using deepfakes to personalize safety videos to fix "someone else's business"
Experiments: Context-Aware Signage
Some prototypes for physical warnings that only appear to the people violating them
Forgotten News bot
A bot that resurfaces what everyone stopped being angry about
"Hello World!" Baby Towel
A baby blanket welcoming a programmer's newborn with their very first "Hello World!"
Morse Notification
Read your notifications through your leg
See in AR
Two clicks to see how big “128×145×285mm” actually is
Face To Text Style
A Chrome extension that maps facial expressions directly into text styles
Free-Range Chess
Continuous chess without a grid
Operational Limit Clock
Counting down the remaining operational time before outdoor temperature hits 30°C
Bouldering T-Shirt
Turn yourself into a climbing wall for your kids
Everyone's a cat
A Chrome extension that replaces everyone's into cats
Free-layout Marble Maze
A customizable marble maze that you can laser cut
Laser Cut Fake Fossils
Engraving fake trilobite fossils onto roadside pebbles with a laser cutter
Shadow picture book
A laser-cut wooden book that projects pictures onto walls
Evolution Tree mobile
A baby mobile that shows the evolutionary tree of life
Instagram vs Twitter Classifier
An ML model that classifies photos as Instagram or Twitter material.
Mean vs Median
An interactive tool showing how different mean and median can be
Directional booklight
Read in bed without waking the person next to you
TOIKI
A robot that draws ephemeral notes on condensation on morning windows
Smiley Coffee Mug
A mug with a molded bottom so that spilled coffee rings turn into smiles
3D Photo Pop-Up Card
Generate printable pop-up cards from 3D point clouds
Swea-T
A t-shirt that turns armpit sweat stains into part of the illustration
Dual Phone Case
A smartphone case that can hold both personal and work phones back-to-back
Thermal Table
A table where you can see heat
iroiro (色色)
Colour palettes generated from any word
Myra: Autonomous Robotic Lighting
A robotic spotlight that lights whatever you're doing.
Moving Windows
Using projectors to hack the view from your living room
Lend-a-Back
Back-mounted tablet stand for mutual support on commute trains
Calls from the Afterlife
Automated phone calls to loved ones from beyond the grave
Headache Forecast Bot
Predicting atmospheric headache risks by correlating social media self-reports with barometric pressure trends
Synthetic Sky
Predicting today's sky with photos retrieved from matching historical weather data
`PI´⏰ `PI´⏰ `BOOM´💥
Hide the phone then find it before it goes off
Breaking Me
A personal newspaper celebrating your day based on lifelog data
Small Things
Footwork Mirror
A footwork training tool that measures your reaction time with a webcam
Do Movie Sequels Always Get Worse?
A data-driven visualization testing if movie sequels are really worse than the first
DBViz: Matching Dragon Ball Anime and Manga Episodes
Visualizing anime pacing vs the original manga
Sleeping population simulation
What fraction of the world is asleep right now?
Analysis: Recipe effort vs Popularity Map
Find recipes that have the highest ROI from data
Self-sorting LEGO box
A laser-cut storage box that automatically sorts LEGO bricks by size
Shabetter
A Twitter client that reads your timeline aloud.
webdiff
A visual diff tool comparing web pages against archives to highlight text content changes
Surname Extinction Simulation
A multi-agent simulation modeling the extinction and convergence of Japanese surnames
Auto Chorus Generator
Tool that pulls cover songs and converts them into a chorus
Playing with Himawari-8
Exploring a weather satellite's full-disc images
Which Yamanote Line carriage is the most comfortable?
Playing with the Yamanote line congestion dataset
Tweet density
Comparison of the information density of tweets in different languages
Calculating the Most Comfortable Place on Earth
Using global weather to find the location with the least average discomfort index
Solving spot-the-difference puzzles with computer vision
Most of life's problems can be solved with OpenCV
Analysis: Grassroots Internet Simulation
Simulating how far an ad-hoc Wi-Fi mesh network could reach from Tokyo
Life analysis from Wikipedia
119,024 Japanese lives, parsed out of a Wikipedia dump
Best timezone for Topcoder
Does competing at 1am cost you rating, and where should you live?