Will Napier

For work, questions or anything else:

hey@willnapier.co
github.com/willnap
linkedin.com/in/wpn
Social media: nah

Practice

Design Engineer

Imagination without engineering remains speculative, and engineering without imagination remains incremental. The work I’m most interested in sits between the two.

Currently

London, United Kingdom

Studied

2026MSc Innovation Design Engineering
Dyson School of Design Engineering, Imperial College London

2026MA Innovation Design Engineering
Royal College of Art

2024BS Multidisciplinary Design
College of Architecture + Planning, University of Utah

2017–20Computer Science
Utah Valley University

2019Software Engineering Intensive
Codesmith, Los Angeles

Recognition

2026IDE Summer Show 2026, Dyson School of Design Engineering, Imperial College London

2026RCA2026, the Royal College of Art graduate show, London

2025IDE Summer Show 2025, Dyson School of Design Engineering, Imperial College London

2025Near Future HMI Design Awards, Huawei: Runner-Up, Phase 2, for Split

2025Near Future HMI Design Awards, Huawei: Award for Prototyping, Phase 1, for Split

2025Supergreen, Regenerative Materials, Structures & Aesthetics Exhibition, Royal College of Art

2024Kiosk of the Future, Transdisciplinary Practices Exhibition, Royal College of Art

2024Collaborative Practice Award, Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture: Bears Ears Education Center Outdoor Classroom (contributing designer)

2023Utah State Legislature: SALTEYE included in House and Senate discussions on the Great Salt Lake

2023First Place, Hacked Printer Fair, Prototyping Methods, University of Utah

Exhibitor, Refugee Resettlement Design Show: Copper

Featured Guest, International Rescue Committee Tech Podcast

2022Selected Designer, 5th Annual Utah Design Exhibit, Clubhouse SLC

2022Featured in PIN–UP: Magazine for Architectural Entertainment, Issue 32

2022Artist in Residence, Domaine de Boisbuchet, France: Kinetic Fountain, Permanent Installation

Featured on FOX 13 News, Salt Lake City (not affiliated with Fox News)

Featured on Park City Television

2019Speaker, Codesmith, Los Angeles

Worked with

2024–Stealth

2025–26Specs (Snap Inc.), Royal College of Art collaboration

2024–26Huawei, industry collaboration on Split

2022–24International Rescue Committee, research partnership on Copper

2022–23Bears Ears Partnership and Bureau of Land Management, Visit With Respect

2019–20OSLabs, open-source developer tooling (Preducks)

Black-and-white render of SALTEYE: a sphere of spiralling chrome bands with its mechanical core visible inside, floating half-submerged in still water with mountains and cloud behind. — SALTEYE, Autonomous Research Buoy for the Great Salt Lake, 2023

Green-tinted view through a concrete opening down a long university gallery, where five white panels of 3PV drawings stand in a row with the white headset on a plinth at their centre. — 3PV, Installed in the Gallery, University of Utah, 2022

Experiments with Vision Pro, Park City, Utah, 2025

On the lawn of the château at Domaine de Boisbuchet, a small crowd watches a woman in white pose in the doorway at the top of the front steps, which are scattered with bright pink objects. — Artist Residency, Domaine de Boisbuchet, France, 2022

A natural surface under extreme magnification: rippled salmon-pink tissue with black blotches spreading up from below, like ink dropped in water. — Scrutiny of Natural Systems, 2022

Countertop Drink Maker from a Modified 3D Printer, Gaussian Splat, 2023

A tall phone home screen painted like a canvas: dense autumn trees in rust, gold, cream and lilac, with a row of round icons near the top. — iPhone/Freedom, Stealth, 2026

The PatriotVoice harness on a white backdrop: looped tan leather straps with steel buckles and bolts, and a white moulded mouthpiece. — PatriotVoice™, with Sarunas Berinas, 2025

Two hands pulling Split apart. The small octagonal top half, showing the day’s briefing and a clock, slides up out of the black lower body. — Split, with Archana Merla, Lisa Nana, Luke Hale and Vamsi Madhav Tata, Huawei, 2025

Black-and-white photo of the SALTEYE prototype on show: a lit glass dome inside a striped shell sits in a clear bowl between white 3D-printed shell studies, in front of a framed photo of the Great Salt Lake and a print of the exploded render. — SALTEYE, Working Prototype on Show, University of Utah, 2023

The Sunflower Display, a screen in a thick white rounded bezel on a steel arm, glowing above an empty workshop bench at night, with a laptop at its foot and drafting lamps all around. — Sunflower Display, in Studio, 2022

GitHub Contributions on Stealth, Last Four Months

Exploded render of SALTEYE on dark stone with every part labelled: a 3D-printed hull with toroidal propellers, a copper water-cooled compute core, a solar panel, sensors for mercury, pH and air quality, a camera, GPS and 5G antennas, and the ribbed chrome shell. — SALTEYE, Exploded View, 2023

A hand holding the small detached half of Split. Its screen shows a morning briefing in bold serif type, with coloured highlights for events, messages, deliveries and the weather. — Language Oriented Operating System, Dyson School × Huawei, 2025

Grey renders of the shell forms SALTEYE went through, ringed, ribbed, finned and slatted spheres, with early sketches and plots fading in at the left. — SALTEYE, Shell Form Studies, 2023

A phone battery and circuit board seen through overlapping sheets of green-dyed acrylic inside 3PV. — 3PV, Electronics Under Dyed Acrylic, 2022

Side view of the F-50 on a white studio background: a glossy red open-cab pickup with oversized tyres, chrome wheels and a tan leather seat. — F-50, Studio Render, 2025

Dimensioned construction drawing of the Porcupine Bench, a slatted wooden box frame with round teal handles, shown in section, in plan and in two isometric views. — Porcupine Bench, Bears Ears Education Center, Bluff, Utah, 2022

A matte copper capsule lying on green cloth, looped in a long ribbon of interlocking 3D-printed copper chainmail. — Supergreen, Copper Capsule and Chainmail, Royal College of Art, 2025

Black-and-white satellite map of the Great Salt Lake with its 1985 extent painted in torn orange over the shrunken 2023 shoreline, lettered The Great Salt Lake Is Dying, with the newly exposed lakebed marked. — The Great Salt Lake Is Dying, 2023

Three stacked, hand-formed copper discs buckled into a car seat by its seat belt. — Copper, Conversational Computer for Refugees, Giving Turn-by-Turn Directions, International Rescue Committee, 2023

Cream wireframe drawing of a navy capsule on a pale cream ground, both ends crowned with clusters of chainmail rings. — Experiments with NASA Chainmail and 3D Printed Copper, 2025

A copper card tray with a weathered green-grey edge, holding a stack of cards under a black elastic band, a lime-green debit card on top, beside a car key on a white shelf. — Copper Wallet, 2023

Render of the F-50, a red pickup on oversized tyres with a chrome grille, parked at the edge of a cracked country road between green fields under a cloudy sky. — F-50, Suburban Renaissance, 2025

Mint-green render of the 3PV apparatus: a triangular frame of green tubing and a black cord loop over white spheres, above a green ring crossed by a diagonal bar. — 3PV, Apparatus and Brace, 2022

Jordanelle Reservoir Through a Printed Relief, Utah, 2021

Black-and-white page: three ribbed chrome SALTEYE spheres floating in a lake below a mountain, seen past blurred hikers, above a short text on SALTEYE pleading for the shrinking Great Salt Lake with tones and flashing lights. — SALTEYE, Pleading with Passing Hikers, 2023

The Snake Lamp, a thick cream tube coiled into a spiral and glowing from within, on a wooden table in the dark. — Snake Lamp, Utah Design Exhibit, 2022

CodexBar Redesign, Open Source, 2026

Split from front and back: the pale octagonal back with a single camera, beside the small detached half sliding from its sleeve, showing the briefing with the date and a clock. — Split, Front and Back, 2025

The Evolv toy box at the Kiosk of the Future show: a white box covered in red, yellow and blue blobs with a window onto a sculpted toy, labelled New Toy Every Week and Ages 1–3, beside its printed exhibit card on a cardboard table. — Evolv, Kiosk of the Future, Royal College of Art, 2024

Throw-to-Send Email Signup, Stealth, 2026

Magnified grey 3D-printed concrete: fine vertical layer lines and scattered dark air pockets, with the board’s small label running up the left edge. — 3PV, Print-Formed Concrete Brace, 2022

Side elevation render of SALTEYE on black: the sphere’s striped chrome bands, with a dome of clear glass at its face on the left. — SALTEYE, Side Elevation, 2023

From above: an Arduino rig of glowing blue LEDs, breadboards and red and blue wiring under clear acrylic on black webbing straps, beside a printed page of red data plots and photos for The Crushing Weight of Life Under a Spire. — The Crushing Weight of Life Under a Spire, with Jake Schlaf and Kiernan Grissom, 2023

Split in three steps: the whole phone with its briefing screen and app buttons, the dark sleeve with the top half lifting off, and the small half alone showing the briefing. — Split, Coming Apart, 2025