Blissful Rain, Isn't It?
Designer-Researcher: Alice Stevens
Creative Technologist: Mark Benson
Year: 2023
Funding: Supported by HEIF through AUB Innovation Studio
Blissful Rain, Isn’t It? turns the British obsession with weather speak into a direct conversation with rain, inviting reflection on the words we use when talking about weather.
The prototype is weather-responsive and features speech bubbles that are triggered on an LED display when a person is detected. The specific weather-greeting, drawn from live forecast data, invites participants to reconsider how they talk about rain and other weather often considered less favourable.
Drawing on Kate Fox’s observation that weather speak is culturally considered a “safe” form of conversation in Britain — expected, socially accepted, and rarely challenged — the project uses this familiar British habit to inspire more reflective ways of speaking about everyday weather. It also prompts reflection on language itself, echoing Michael Halliday’s insight that language actively shapes our reality (Halliday, 1990).
The prototype was trialled at the Inside Out Dorset festival in 2023. Visitors paused to read the weather-greetings, and the unexpected phrasing prompted reflection — both on the tendency to complain about rain without recognising its ecological value, and on how language can shape how weather is perceived and felt.
Weather in Conversation
Designing technology that responds to presence and connects people to rain
The Blissful Rain, Isn’t It? prototype was developed in collaboration with creative technologist Mark Benson. The installation combines a proximity sensor with an LED matrix display: when someone comes within 1.5 metres, the sensor is triggered and a weather-greeting appears.
These greetings are drawn in real time from live, geolocated forecast data via the openweather.org API and displayed as pre-defined text, creating a sense of immediacy as if the weather itself is addressing the participant.
As a prototype, the work tested the relationship between data, technology, and human response. Feedback from the Inside Out Dorset festival suggested that while the concept was engaging, the hard black aesthetic felt less inviting, pointing towards future iterations where the form might better reflect the accessible, conversational spirit of the idea.
Making and Thinking
Sketchbooks as method
My sketchbooks are a core part of my method, serving as an iterative space for developing and refining ideas. They function as an archive of thinking, experiments, drawings, and notes. For Blissful Rain, Isn’t It?, they trace the journey from concept to prototype and continue to inform reflection and iteration beyond it.
The selected images below provide a glimpse into this process, showing how ideas have evolved. The project remains in development, with future iterations offering opportunities to realise its potential and explore more engaging, conversational visual forms.
