Reduced Perceptual Cues (RPC) Design Card Deck
Designing through perception rather than form — a toolkit for composing atmospheric experiences from light, sound, and sensory abstraction.
October 2025
The Reduced Perceptual Cues (RPC) Card Deck is a conceptual and design tool developed to explore how sensory experiences can be constructed from minimal and abstracted inputs.
Rather than addressing architecture through walls, materials, or forms, the deck shifts focus toward atmospheric composition—working with light, sound, airflow, temperature, and reflection as the raw matter of spatial experience.
Each card invites designers, artists, and researchers to consider perception itself as the medium of construction.
Rather than addressing architecture through walls, materials, or forms, the deck shifts focus toward atmospheric composition—working with light, sound, airflow, temperature, and reflection as the raw matter of spatial experience.
Each card invites designers, artists, and researchers to consider perception itself as the medium of construction.
The RPC Card Deck emerged from the study of Reduced Perceptual Cues, a framework that examines how spaces can evoke complex sensations through limited sensory information.
By abstracting visual, aural, tactile, olfative and gustative stimuli into discrete yet combinable elements, the deck helps articulate what often remains intangible—the threshold between suggestion and perception.
The cards do not prescribe fixed outcomes.
Instead, they operate as a prompt system, a way to think through atmosphere and sensory structure.
Each composition becomes an experiment in how perception can be tuned, how attention can be guided, and how meaning emerges from reduction rather than saturation.
By abstracting visual, aural, tactile, olfative and gustative stimuli into discrete yet combinable elements, the deck helps articulate what often remains intangible—the threshold between suggestion and perception.
The cards do not prescribe fixed outcomes.
Instead, they operate as a prompt system, a way to think through atmosphere and sensory structure.
Each composition becomes an experiment in how perception can be tuned, how attention can be guided, and how meaning emerges from reduction rather than saturation.
The deck was first introduced in a series of workshops where participants used it to translate memories, sensations, and site-specific experiences into multisensory spatial compositions.
By combining cards on a design board, participants could visualize the relationships between cues—light interacting with mist, sound blending with movement, or temperature modulating presence.
The process revealed how minimal perceptual information can still evoke recognition, emotion, and spatial coherence.
It also demonstrated how collaboration and interpretation play a role in constructing low-definition environments, where meaning emerges collectively through sensory abstraction.
The RPC Card Deck is part of an ongoing research project on Reduced Perceptual Cues (RPCs) and low-definition spatial design, situated within the Informational Atmospheric Toolbox framework.
It functions as both a pedagogical and methodological tool, bridging design research, human perception, and ambient computation.
Within this framework, the deck supports:
This approach connects to broader discussions in Human–Building Interaction (HBI), ambient computing, and media architecture, contributing a new vocabulary for designing environments that communicate through subtle sensory dialogue.
*The RPC Card Deck will soon be available for download for designers, artists, and researchers interested in experimenting with perception-driven spatial composition.
It is being released as an open resource to encourage adaptation, remixing, and new applications across different disciplines—from architectural education to interactive media design.
By combining cards on a design board, participants could visualize the relationships between cues—light interacting with mist, sound blending with movement, or temperature modulating presence.
The process revealed how minimal perceptual information can still evoke recognition, emotion, and spatial coherence.
It also demonstrated how collaboration and interpretation play a role in constructing low-definition environments, where meaning emerges collectively through sensory abstraction.
The RPC Card Deck is part of an ongoing research project on Reduced Perceptual Cues (RPCs) and low-definition spatial design, situated within the Informational Atmospheric Toolbox framework.
It functions as both a pedagogical and methodological tool, bridging design research, human perception, and ambient computation.
Within this framework, the deck supports:
- The study of how perceptual cues can be abstracted, combined, and transferred across different environments.
- The development of systematic methods for crafting mediated spaces that operate between physical and informational layers.
- The exploration of affordance-based interaction, where users intuitively engage with sensory feedback without explicit instructions.
This approach connects to broader discussions in Human–Building Interaction (HBI), ambient computing, and media architecture, contributing a new vocabulary for designing environments that communicate through subtle sensory dialogue.
*The RPC Card Deck will soon be available for download for designers, artists, and researchers interested in experimenting with perception-driven spatial composition.
It is being released as an open resource to encourage adaptation, remixing, and new applications across different disciplines—from architectural education to interactive media design.