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Exploring creativity through research, design, and experimentation

Exploring creativity through research, design, and experimentation

Spark Imagination through Play

Spark
Imagination through Play

Spark Imagination through Play

ABOUT

ABOUT

ABOUT

Vision:
Desert Brain is a hybrid lab & studio founded by Rghad Balkhyoor, an interior architect, design scholar, and digital media artist specializing in immersive and interactive design.
It bridges academic research, design & art practice, and speculative design, functioning as a creative research lab that develops playful tools and methods to spark imagination. Rghad's work, blending phenomenology, speculative design, and immersive technologies such as VR, AR, and interactive media. The aim is not only to showcase outcomes, but to reveal the processes, experiments, and gestures that give birth to creativity. In Desert Brain, creativity reveals not as a fixed outcome, but as a journey of discovery.

Why?
To inspire designers, researchers, and creatives to embrace ambiguity, play, and experimentation as catalysts for imagination in the design process.

Vision:
Desert Brain is a hybrid lab & studio founded by Rghad Balkhyoor, an interior architect, design scholar, and digital media artist specializing in immersive and interactive design.
It bridges academic research, design & art practice, and speculative design, functioning as a creative research lab that develops playful tools and methods to spark imagination. Rghad's work, blending phenomenology, speculative design, and immersive technologies such as VR, AR, and interactive media. The aim is not only to showcase outcomes, but to reveal the processes, experiments, and gestures that give birth to creativity. In Desert Brain, creativity reveals not as a fixed outcome, but as a journey of discovery.


Why?
To inspire designers, researchers, and creatives to embrace ambiguity, play, and experimentation as catalysts for imagination in the design process.

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LAB

LAB

Research Interest:

Conceptual design and Imagination 

Imagination and creativity

Play as design creative process

Phenomenology and perception in design process

Immersive and interactive media and design

Speculative design and imagination

Virtual reality and Augmented reality in design and education

  • Conceptual design and Imagination 

  • Imagination and creativity

  • Play as design creative process

  • Phenomenology and perception in design process

  • Immersive and interactive media and design

  • Speculative design and imagination

  • Virtual reality and Augmented reality in design and education


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STUDIO

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CONTACT

Bio

Bio

Bio

Rghad Balkhyoor is intermedia artist and researcher in Digital Media, based between Saudi Arabia and United States, explores creativity and imagination in design through the convergence of technology, art, and culture. With a background in interior architecture, her practice creates immersive environments that blur the boundaries between physical and digital space, shaping new ways of perceiving and experiencing the world. Her research emphasizes creativity as a process rather than a result, investigating how ambiguity, play, and open-ended exploration drive imagination in design. Gestures, interactions, and lived experiences are central to this inquiry, revealing how ideas evolve before becoming fixed outcomes. The unfinished, the experimental, and the speculative are treated as fertile ground for discovery. Emerging technologies—real-time interactive multimedia, virtual and augmented reality, and LIDAR scanning—serve as tools to sculpt hybrid realities that are both aesthetically engaging and conceptually provocative. Projects highlight the complex relationship between technology and the physical world, offering speculative spaces that encourage dialogue, curiosity, and transformation. At its core, this practice reflects a larger quest: to explore imagination as a vital force in human creativity, and to reimagine how technology and design can shape cultural and spatial experiences.

yeah that’s me

yeah that’s me

image of man in front a painting
image of man in front a painting

yeah that’s me

yeah that’s me

image of man in front a painting
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Resume

Resume

Resume

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Last update October 1, 2025

Academic Resume

Academic Resume

Academic Resume

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Art Event Highlights
Art Event Highlights
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Image of a team
Image of a team
A person attentively paints a vibrant, expressive artwork of two people embracing, featuring bold colors like pink, blue, and green, highlighting themes of love and closeness in the painting.
A person attentively paints a vibrant, expressive artwork of two people embracing, featuring bold colors like pink, blue, and green, highlighting themes of love and closeness in the painting.
A person attentively paints a vibrant, expressive artwork of two people embracing, featuring bold colors like pink, blue, and green, highlighting themes of love and closeness in the painting.

Interested in my work?

Let's collaborate

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© 2013

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© 2013

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© 2013