My name is Imanina. I’m a designer interested in designing for a post-capitalist society.

My most recent work explored media and democracy in the UK and looked at how alternative, citizen-owned media might provide a voice for the mis- and under-represented groups in society.

I’m keen to further explore how design might be used as a catalyst for social good, that is accessible for all and not just an elite few.

I originally graduated from a Graphic Design Masters orientated towards social matters. I developed a background in print and editorial design. My practice is now focusing on research, social design and community-based projects. I am interested in looking at how design can support emancipation but also how design relates to politics and democracy.

My Master’s research project looks at political representation and democratic processes. It challenges the concept of representation and majority as effective forms of democracy and proposes different frameworks for democracy and civic engagements.

Because politics is often pictured as a complex topic only accessible for experts to discuss, instead, I tried to look at it with a didactic approach.

The research presents two complementary approaches “From the System to the People” and “From the People to the System”. Ultimately, what I am asking is how to represent multiplicity? What are the obstacles and problems of representation? Why do they exist and how to go around them?

I first attempted to define the French political system of representation in principle and in practice as a case study. I looked at its history, philosophy, practices and the roles played by experts and public institutions hoping this will enable me to identify entry points or short-circuit for change and civic engagement.

As my research perspective shifted I realised people were affecting the system themselves. I researched around the problematics of participation and how, why, when and by whom they are currently fostered. I identified different discourses around participation relating to different ideologies.

To get perspective, I searched for analogies. I compared network theories, animal and vegetal philosophies with the different discourses and ideologies around participation and with the way our social and political systems function. This allowed me to anchor my topic in a wider ecosystem and to compare current interactions and modes of assembling, of co-existence, and see what can be improved or challenged.

If you would like to know more about my work, don’t hesitate to get in touch!

After finishing my BA in Industrial Design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, I pursued a Masters in Design Innovation & Citizenship at The Glasgow School of Art. Together with my partner Kat Zavada, we organise Nadmiar/Excess – contemporary art and experimental music festival. I was part of the editorial board of Formy.xyz – Poland’s first peer-reviewed design journal (2018–2019). I held design roles at Ergo Design and Comarch. Together with Tillman Kratzer and Kat Zavada, we are preparing to launch Works On Work – a collaboration space for people pursuing projects related to the topic work.

For me, Design isn’t necessarily about finding a solution nor about solving problems. It is about creating space or situations where conflicting views and power relations can be discussed and renegotiated. I oppose the idea of the designer as a facilitator who seeks consensus between different actants, for it blurs authorship and what follows – responsibility. My practice is not about creating consensus or pleasing all parties. On the contrary, I see great value in conflict and dissensus as vehicles for liberation.

My master’s thesis looks at the idea of wellbeing appropriated by the contemporary mainstream managerial discourse, where employees’ happiness is perceived as something to be quantified, managed, and used as a productivity-enhancement strategy.

In opposition to the dogmatic aesthetic representations happiness related to a neoliberal moral fantasy imposed by those in the position of power, I propose taking a step back to anticipate and celebrate the spontaneous, unmanageable sources of joy and satisfaction resulting from autonomy.

The project aims to document minor everyday activities, techniques and coping strategies that go against the managerial regime – micro-disobediences that give one a sense of autonomy. Some examples may include: binge-watching Netflix during work time, taking unnecessarily long breaks, choosing different routes than the algorithm decides, being intentionally mean to your customer, acting grumpy when everybody is overenthusiastic or perhaps not participating in socials. And through these ‘coming-outs’ create a space free of slack-shaming and overstepping guilt.

With this project, I want to provoke a further conversation about work dogma and the spiritual violence of positivity at work. Unguilty Pleasures is an (auto)therapeutic tool for many working people, including myself.

I am Mugdha Patil, a graduate of the Master of Design in Design Innovation and Citizenship course at the Glasgow School of Art. I completed my undergraduate studies with a Bachelor of Design degree in Furniture Design from the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad (NID). I am a designer who believes in making social change through people-centered and people-led actions and policies. I design services, products, product-services, and experiences that promote social, ecological transformation by applying research that focuses on people and the ecosystems (social, cultural, economic, psychological as well as physical) they occupy.

Citizenship for me means having a sense of belonging to a society. Design can help bring that about. I believe that taking into consideration the needs of an ecosystem as a whole gives us an opportunity for creating lasting change that is not just environmentally sustainable but also economically feasible and socially equitable. I believe that the design process has a thousand endings; it simply doesn’t end with a product and I continue to absorb its messages and meanings beyond that.

About the project.

My project, The Design of Dissent, combines public pedagogy and participatory design to create a Museum of Dissent. The final proposal made is that of a co-curated and co-created space where citizens can educate themselves about the various ways of critically participating in government, engage in the causes they believe in, and commemorate people’s power and struggles from the past.

The overall aim of this project is to identify how citizens perceive their duty of participation in government, especially in terms of dissent and our civic education on this particular topic. My focus is especially on the process of collective legacy-making, trust in institutions, and different approaches to critical civic participation, in times of protest and social change.

Following a qualitative case study + participatory design approach, this research intends to build a rich in-depth investigation focusing on how civic education is realized in our political lives and how critical sentiments are expressed by the citizenry, through the use of interviews, workshops, surveys, and document analysis. The results of this project are intended to bring more clarity to the ‘design’ of dissent, legacy of people’s movements, people’s trust in institutions (or lack thereof), and the viability of leaderless social movements.

Since 1880, we’ve lost two thirds of our ocean’s fish biomass and if nothing changes we could lose 60% of our ocean species by 2100. Coronavirus led to a collapse in fish exports and many people’s livelihood is being used as a bargaining chip in Brexit negotations.

Within this context, I sought to ask: what is the future of our ocean industries and how might we take a more regenerative approach to harvesting our oceans?

To divine this knowledge I asked experts who work in sustainable fishing advocacy, seaweed harvesting and government bodies. I learned about Integrated Multi-trophic Aquaculture(IMTA): a means of growing edible seaweeds next to shellfish in a way that cultivates biodiversity by drawing new fish and plantlife to areas where it’s cultivated.

I then worked with budding crofters and people who fantasised about escaping from the city to navigate what they wanted and how they might take steps to reify their fantasies. There wasn’t an awareness of the possibilities that were available.

I propose an informational campaign that would help those who want to work closer to nature to take clear steps to starting an IMTA farm.

A Fashion and Textiles Educator currently working at BPS Secondary College in Mauritius. As a fashion and textiles teacher she has always promoted the Green concept in students project work.

With a Bachelor degree in textile and fashion, she is always interested into studying the properties of fabric, basics of colour and texture.

This project began as an exploration of fabric construction methods.

It involves engaging stakeholders and collaborators in the processes of designing, making and testing of textiles. The strategy used is upcycling of fabric remnants sourced from the local textile mill in Elgin. The approach to upcycling, with which this practice is aligned, treats the textile source as laden with information that guides the form of new fabrics out the textile waste. Subsequently, the fabrics were sent for testing in Portugal for the creation of Almalaguês- Spanish sneakers.

Awarded as a Highly Commendable project in September 2020 for the SIE Fresh Idea Competition.

Dialect heritage aims to protect and promote dialect heritage. It focuses on remote communities in Scotland for their decline number of dialect speakers. Also, the research concentrate on Doric language as research example and the final outcome is related on it. The final outcome visualizes the idea of ‘dialect heritage make up a part of cultural heritage in the community’.In addition, this board game can be used as a catalyst, with youngsters meeting up with older native Scots speakers. During this process, youngsters have the opportunity to discover and begin to use new words, and the speakers found their inheritors and pass on their dialect knowledge. It could solve the problem of fewer dialect inheritors in remote communities.

This project used design as a medium to explore the significance of ordinary furniture to residents’ daily life and the feasibility of sustainable development of furniture.

As a necessity of residents’ daily life, furniture hides many unknown stories and secrets and also carries emotions of different users. Every piece of furniture has a special meaning for everyone. However, the fast-paced life of modern society makes the circulation of products faster, and the replacement rate of furniture is increased so waste is inevitable. It is regretted that many furniture worthies of being preserved are therefore neglected and then abandoned. The reason for its waste is not only because of damaged furniture, style changes, and residents’ relocation but also ignore daily furniture and the lack of environmental awareness. Although there are endless related education projects, how to implement residents’ behaviours into daily life is the pinpoint of this project.

This project traced the circulation process of furniture, explored and redefined the meaning of furniture to residents, and finally designed a solution to extend the service life of furniture accordingly.

Hi, I’m Maja! In a previous life I was a physics grad but I realized I was more passionate about studying and helping people through design. My main interests are in public space as an arena for tactile democracy, encounters, and explorations. I aim to examine this through an analytical yet playful approach.

My master’s project, Serendipity in the City, looked at the city through the lens of “designing for serendipity”. I saw serendipity as a possible antidote to physical filter bubbles, routine, and strictly functionalist uses of space.

Through a series of discussions and walks, I explored the meanings of serendipity, community, connection and strangership with a range of people. The project identified 4 key areas to consider when building for serendipity, and proposed a freely accessible publication to inspire and empower citizens to form new relationships with their surroundings.

The full report can be viewed here.

I am a visual communication designer based in Seoul, South Korea. My current interests and practice are in socio-environmental design, especially focusing on the possibilities of collective changes that individuals’ behaviour can foster.

This project ‘Empathy-derived recycling model’ opens up the opportunities of personal connection between refuse collectors and the general public, for residents’ better understanding of what results their behavioural decision on waste disposal could cause. The research explores people’s cognitive and environmental behaviour change when no one intends to cause environmental harms but far too much waste that could easily be recycled is going to landfill. The system highlights the significant environmental impact of correct recycling and putting the stuff in the right bins, and the intrinsic drive for such waste disposal behaviour can be improved by building up the familiarity with refuse collectors.

“Please try your utmost to separate and wash. It’s not just us you are helping. It’s yourself in the future.” – Mr. C, Refuse collector

My name is Francesca.

I graduated in Industrial and Graphic Design in Venice, where I understood how good products and multimedia projects should be planned. I learnt that the formal aspect of a product depends on its function and the user experience. In my opinion, the most important thing is that the designer role is to produce something that is durable even if the time passes by.

During the final undergraduate year, I started to work for a year in an Italian company, that produces glass objects and technical lamps. This job made me realize that I would like to do something more helpful for people.

The link between urban spaces and wellbeing has always been interesting for me, so I decided to move to Glasgow and attend the Environmental Design Master. Here I focused on the way a city or space can affect our behaviour in a positive or negative way. I learnt the importance of exploring and understanding a specific context through qualitative research to find solutions that can solve real issues and truly improve people’s lives.

Actually I am based in Italy and I would like to find a job in the Architecture and Urbanistic field. To be honest I do not know where I would like to live or do in the future. However, I know for sure that I would like to travel and live in different places to do as many experiences as possible, to enrich not only my career but also my life.

With a curious mindset to unpick and discover hidden opportunities for design intervention, Fanechka seeks to understand behavioural insights from psychologists and scientists to nudge people towards a more sustainable form of living. Can Design play this role when assessing behaviours of communities collectively? She has a previous background in the interior design and architecture sector with her focus now shifted on projects that aim to understand the social and cultural complexity directly influenced by various biases, social norms and spaces.

Fanechka’s Final Project:  How might we promote pro-environmental behaviours to create sustainable neighbourhoods?

Communities and Climate Change are complex challenges that force us to act in a certain way due to various systemic issues. Based on the COMB model tool provided by the behavioural insights team in London, I directed my research to find motivators and opportunities that drove people to act a certain way.
Understanding and analysing these behavioural insights to drive social change has moulded this project.
Making the language of climate action and environmental sustainability more inclusive and accessible to groups of people from various class structures had built the foundation of this project. Can we multiply and amplify certain behaviours to create a new and pronounced sense of identity to those communities that are tied with complexities? This project does not intend to focus on one specific behaviour, as sustainability is a journey with one success action resulting in us taking the next action – this was uncovered through various forms of research.

Visualizing the whole community as a complex system within which a collection of design interventions take place would help in the shift towards adopting sustainable lifestyles. Collective behaviours could then influence individuals due to social norms or perceived values.
As the local council carefully creates change to its infrastructures it needs to also ingrain behaviours within this system simultaneously to have the community working as an ecosystem.

Proposal:   WHITE CITY CARES
The design outcome considers behaviours projected by citizens of a social housing estate in London. Based on these behaviours, there are 3 different parts that work in cohesion to instil certain values among residents i.e pro-environmental.

‘White City Cares’ inspires and empowers people from different backgrounds, cultural values and upbringings to inspire, learn and take action individually or collectively to help live as a part of the ecosystem.

Brief detail on the design process is mentioned under each slide.

I have a background in Architecture and have always been interested in exploring lived experiences. I am inspired by how narratives can play a part in shaping culture, influencing change in systems and attributing new meanings to spaces.

My graduate project was focussed on exploring the gap between the representational aspects and the built material reality of cities. My effort was to mediate an experience through a dialogue between the city and its people by challenging everyday conditions in urban streets. The result was an audio experience that could serve to dismantle the built, objective perceptions of the city and re-orient human perspectives. It is rooted in the idea that people form dynamic, iterative relationships with the spaces around them and this can be used to transform the urban experience.

A graduating Design Innovation and Environmental Design master student. After completing an undergraduate course in Industrial Design at the School of Design in Zagreb, Croatia, I wanted to expand my work into broader social contexts. In the future, I wish to explore how spaces and environments could be used as transformational tools for society. In my final MDes project, I researched death and dying in order to develop ideas for new environmentally and socially sustainable alternatives.

Grief and Growth is a speculative design for a holistic new death practice lead by the principles of nature, equality, and healing.

The outcome imagines a new death service ran by nature preservation charities. It includes requirements for memorial and ceremonial grounds installed at protected nature sites around the UK, as well as a model for use and service outline which provides accessible funerary options while aiding nature conservation efforts. Those remembering their loved ones in this context intrinsically think of nature, the circle of life, and their place in it. As the charities’ reach expands through this service, caring about and protecting nature become part of a shared heritage.

Upon further development, Grief and Growth hopes to introduce something that’s missing from contemporary death practices: perspective and options.

Coming from a Product Design background in Politecnico di Torino I am now finishing a MA in Innovation Design and Environmental Design.

The following study explores what the digital support for mental health is, and the relationship that people have with it. The research is based on interactions with people connected with mental health support. Different methods were used to get information from the people, such as digital interactive workshops and video interviews.

Stage1. Observation. The first step in the research came from the analysis of the current online support for mental health. This observation was intended to be a starting point in the understanding of the topic, and at the same time it has turned out to be the beginning point for the understanding of the problems connected to this service.

Stage2. DeskResearch. The literature was done to better understand the potential of the digital tools in the mental health sector, following the citations and the references from other articles in the same field. The study of the literature concluded in the analysis of different therapies ( CBT, ACT ) used in the digital online services, and of the digital tools used by therapists as extra tools for their sessions.

Stage3. Interviews. The interviews were done to experts of the field to receive their viewpoint of the digital mental health support compared with the more traditional face to face therapy. During the lockdown therapists were obliged to use digital media to get in touch with their patients and conduct their sessions. The feedback from the therapists interviewed were absolutely positive and encouraging for the future of the sector. A therapist though underlined the problems about the accessibility of digital mental health, especially for the lack of safe places where to do online sessions, as reported by some of his patients.

Stage4. Workshop. The workshop was meant to get information and experiences from the users of the mental health support and digital mental health support. It was a fully online and interactive workshop designed to help people to speak about their personal experiences in an open way, ensuring the maximum privacy. The results were, again, focused on the problems of accessibility of different online services, above young adults leaving with family, not feeling at ease to have online sessions with the possibility of someone hearing from another room.

Stage5. Modelling. The designing of the intervention came exactly from the problem found in the previous research: the accessibility of digital mental health. This idea consists in a net of SafeRooms to be located in cities and urban areas. A SafeRoom is simply a room in which your privacy is guaranteed, where it is possible to access the digital support systems that already exist online. Inside these rooms you can find all the tools you might need during a complete digital session. To be free and open this net of rooms will be placed in public and open spaces. Libraries, schools and universities are the best locations, but there could be many others. The important thing is to give people a safe place where they can feel comfortable while having mental health support.

The renderings of the intervention were given to the participants of the workshop to get feedback, that were positive and people were giving interesting stimuli for future possibilities of this service.

Conclusion. This journey brought to the definition of a problem that some people are facing now and probably more people will in the future. The intervention is just the first step to try to resolve this situation, but is a good base for further research.
The next steps for this design project are to keep organizing workshops with users to codesign the layout of the SafeRooms and their more suitable locations. Another extremely important perspective is that the initial concept was based on the idea “to make mental health support in step with the times of technology”.This project has to be fluid and able to change as fast as technology evolves.

‏More information in the attached document

‏

Natural Light in Learning Environments

Learning environments and especially schools have always been of great interest to architects mainly because through design those spaces can influence a child’s education and future. A school is not just a building to accommodate students and teachers, and it must not be seen as such. A learning environment can play an important and significant role in students learning and academic performance.

The importance of natural light in a learning environment is what this research will focus on. While dealing with natural light in a learning environment, the architect will come across many other aspects like natural ventilation, views, the relation- ship of the classroom to the outdoor spaces, the orientation of building and classrooms, the colours and materials in the space that will have to be chosen to improve the quality of the natural light without causing discomfort or other negative effects.

In my research I have tried to determine the positive effects of taking advantage of natural light in the architectural design of learning environments. More specifically, the positive effects that are connected with student’s performance, health, the aesthetic and efficient quality of space and the possibilities that arise from the implementation of natural light in a learning environment.These positive effects are connected with a better quality of learning which is human-centred and sensitive towards the environment. In effect will lead to conscientious individuals and stronger societies able to confront today’s and tomorrow’s challenges.

Instagram : @sonyalizbeth

Linkedin : http://www.linkedin.com/in/sonyalizbeth

Email : sonyalizbeth@gmail.com

A multidisciplinary designer with a socially engaged practice. Her practice-led research looks at creating accessible and democratic engagement processes and toolkits for public space and land research to mobilize alternative voices and experiences of the landscape. From sensory and sound mapping to spatial imaginaries, she is exploring ways in which notions such as ‘having a voice’ can go beyond the metaphorical, and sensory engagement can create accessible consultation processes.

Having delivered a diverse body of collaborative work internationally she has worked with experts across art, design, architecture and science to create work that is socially and environmentally driven. This includes public installations and engagement projects for TATE Britain, London Design Week, Hello Wood International Architecture Summer University, KÉK – Center of Contemporary Architecture and Istanbul Biennale.

She received I-Portunus European Union artist mobility grant to work with CCA: Center of Contemporary Art in Glasgow – as part of their ‘School for Civic Imagination’ public engagement programme and was awarded IDENSITAT ‘Sound of our Cities’, a Creative Europe Cultural Collaboration grant to deliver an urban sound mapping project in Barcelona this year.

The Exploding School: The Potential for Outdoor Learning and Play Space in Dublin’s North East Inner City along the Royal Canal

Please find a short image diary of my process and outcomes at the bottom of this text.

Background and overview of project:

Note on Language: NEIC refers to the North East Inner City of Dublin, a geographical area with a population of over 18,000 people.

Covid-19 has exposed the quality and accessibility of our public spaces in Dublin. When schools in the Republic of Ireland closed on March 12th to prevent the spread of Covid-19,  the availability of outdoor space was thrown into stark relief. It was my assumption coming into the research that the NEIC was already suffering from a lack of public spaces and invitations to spend time in the area outside of commercial spaces. It was also my belief that this lack of possibility to freely gather outside without spending money disproportionately impacts young people.

I chose to focus my research on the needs of schools in the NEIC as major stakeholders who would benefit from an increase in outdoor playspace, interviewing teachers in the local community and young people who live and go to school in the area.  Through engaging with schools I found that space for schools in the NEIC is critical not just to facilitate play and engagement during Covid-19, but also to provide space to play for pupils, many of whom do not have gardens or are living in temporary emergency accommodation due to the acute rental and public housing crisis in Ireland.

Space to play and the possibility of learning through play is a vital aspect of a young person’s wellbeing and development. However research also shows its relationship to the wellbeing of the broader community. In particular, play in public space, either on pavement, the street, the immediate public realm has been shown to have a vital role in breaking down social isolation.

In the existing literature written on improving a young person’s experience in the NEIC, we often see a heavy focus on preventing “anti-social” behaviour and increased police presence. However the effect of this fear of people gathering outside has been to remove many places to rest or gather outdoors, leaving more vulnerable street users such as older people, children, people with specific mobility needs at a loss for space in the city.

When it comes to a young person’s experience of the city at street level in the NEIC, we do not find many playful touchpoints in the immediate public realm. Through speaking to teachers and young people themselves, I found many young people who live and go to school in the NEIC carry negative associations with the urban environment, often associating it with rising levels homelessness due to the ongoing housing crisis in Ireland. Many also associate it with negative interactions with police, experiencing or witnessing racism, or being hit by traffic.

A lack of public space which invites play and is accessible to young people leaves us with the self perpetuating narrative of anti social behaviour – if the urban environment is solely to be used for commerce or travel, we face the problem that anyone spending time in it who is not performing these roles is at risk of being seen as acting in an “anti social” manner.

To address this, I am proposing built interventions into the Royal Canal to create new opportunities for play and pedagogical engagement with the city.

As Ward and Fyson write in Streetwork: The Exploding School:

“Just as the school should be open to the community, so should the community be open to the school. All resources of the community are educational resources.” [Fyson, Ward, 1975]

I chose to visualise this possibility through the introduction of mooring points along a specific stretch of the Royal Canal. The site was picked after a process of mapping the schools and distribution on young people in the area. The Royal Canal was built in the 1700’s as a motorway of its’ time, to link Dublin port with North western counties, however it is now largely used for foot and bike travel. Focusing on the water of the canal based on young people’s observations around it, I chose to imagine mooring points for activities like boat racing and raft building, and as spaces that could add focus to the huge biodiversity of the canal beds.  Collecting and building objects is a tradition in the inner city particularly around October and halloween when bonfires are lit. These skills could be brought to raft building, or attention could be brought to the huge amount of native plants which grow along the canal as pedagogical activities and embodied learning.

I went through several stages of research from critical inquiry and interviews, to quantitative mapping of the area, to ethnographic observation and workshops with young people who live and go to school in the area.

It is the hope of my project that I will use the work and insights gained to build a proposal for a community build project in partnership with a youth project in the area. I am currently working on the proposal for this, and would be interested to hear of any similar community based building projects happening in the UK or Ireland.

Thank you to everyone who contributed to my project in particular the young people who took part in the workshops and teachers who gave their time to talk to me. For any further information or to read more about my process, please feel free to email me at rosi.j.leonard@gmail.com

As a designer with a foundation in architecture, I am fascinated with how spaces can be well-utilized to improve the quality of life in society. I aim to understand how people use the space around them by applying user-oriented design research methods to everyday problems. As a graduate student in design innovation and environmental design, my goal is to uncover the layers to problems in food sourcing in crowded cities and arriving at creative solutions. I have explored possibilities for change and hope to continue learning and growing from the research done for this project.

INTRODUCTION

Fresh fruits and vegetables at your doorstep are what I consider to be a sign of progress. Getting your hands dirty and working towards ensuring that progress is how I envision the direction for society’s prosperity. Sourcing food in a sustainable way is something that a lot of designers and professionals have been trying to figure out. Farming locally can ensure not only a steady supply of groceries for yourself but also help resolve the shortage of resources in the world. I have always believed that together we can achieve more. The pandemic has shown us the importance of banding together as a civilization. The support and kindness we can offer each other collectively can prepare us for any unforeseen problems. This can be a broad concept and difficult to navigate where to begin with.

In this fast-paced and ever-changing world, the demand and need for basic amenities like food and water are increasing. There is tremendous pressure on the world’s resources, and we are not fully aware of the consequences that are yet to follow. I am interested in finding a way to live in a society where we can source our food ourselves. We are dependent on grocery stores and supermarkets for our daily fruit and vegetable needs. What if there is a way to find an alternate source of food that doesn’t rely solely on other systems. This idea of a sustainable way of living first came to me during my undergraduate studies. I visited a distant relative who was living in the countryside with a small farm in their backyard. They are an elderly couple who now use their retirement savings to live a clean holistic living by growing their own food. I was fascinated with this concept of sustainable living. But living in a city, I didn’t have enough resources to make this a reality yet. All my groceries have been store-bought. But amongst many reasons, not having the benefit of having your own plot of land to farm with all the right resources and time are some of the reasons I want to explore through this project.

The next experience showed me the importance of locally sourced produce in society. A few years ago, I was living in a community in the south of India called Auroville, outside of any Indian authority or laws and functions as an independent city. The philosophy of this town is to “a universal town where men and women of all countries are able to live in peace and progressive harmony above all creeds, all politics and all nationalities. The purpose of Auroville is to realize human unity”. Here I was able to experience a holistic life where I ate locally sourced food. I witnessed a pretty different environment from where I grew up. In the city, slowly people were losing connection with their neighbors. When I was a kid it was a common practice to gather in common spaces and have a chat or share stories in the community. While living in Auroville, I witnessed the same feeling of togetherness with the quality of food we shared. Here, all the food was locally sourced, and the establishments were also privately owned. I witnessed a healthier lifestyle through food that was independent of any corporation or business. My mission to obtain a close-by supply of fresh fruits and vegetables was rooted more than ever with this experience of my life. I want to be able to use gardening as a tool to be the starting point to reach a sustainable way of life in the future. As a designer, I hope to use the tools and skills I have been equipped with to make a positive contribution to society, starting with the area of food and farming which is a topic I have always been intrigued with. Through various research methods, I have explored the various aspects and characteristics that are attached to growing your own food and the related services that are currently present.

PLANNING

INITIAL RESEARCH
Community gardens are a key part of urban cities that create a common space for growing your own produce. Such spaces help people who don’t have their own land because of space limitations in a city. They are an integral part of enhancing the beauty of a neighborhood. I came across a paper which explores the effects of a community garden in improving the collective development of an urban neighborhood. This paper informs the joined efforts of a diverse community is favorable for advancing future. The community gardens that were “multi-functional” and “met social needs” were most succeeding. (Yeager, 2020) I have tried to understand the connection between people and their community and how these existing resources can be enhanced to result in something beneficial for everyone. I am also interested in finding a way to live in a society where we can rely on each other when it comes to source food ourselves.

At the start of the project, I realized that I just had the bare minimum information on food sourcing or farming and had only the passion in the subject, to begin with. I started exploring different resources to broaden my knowledge to discover the possibilities I could go to. I found out about a webinar on Eventbrite organized by Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) called Food Sourcing Solutions which at once caught my eye. The topic that was discussed was a live project conducted by graduate students along with collaborators and stakeholders from their community in Chicago, Illinois. Attending this webinar proved to be instrumental in setting the ground running for me. I got a rough understanding of a design project similar to mine. Here, the students spoke about the multiple solutions they had arrived at by prototyping their ideas and concepts with the community they were designed for. Through desk research, I found various news articles, journals, and reports that were helping me further understand the different layers and scope for this project. As shown below, I sketched out a rough mind map of what aspects of food I wanted to address. This helped me gather my thoughts and focus on growing fruits and vegetables and how this could be achieved.

DESK RESEARCH
The relationship between sustainability and farming was my main concern to address. I began investigating the concept and value of sustainable farming. I came across one of Unilever’s initiatives that emphasize the positive effects and more importantly the urgency for sustainable farming practices. Reducing the effects of climate change and benefitting the farmer’s community were some of the topics they were hoping to be working towards to meet the demand for goods and services. They also mentioned how providing farmers with a better yield would not only improve their lives but also the surrounding communities. However, this highlighted the role of an organization with sustainable ways to source food which was not the direction I aimed for. Through this project, I was hoping to find a way to meet the world’s growing needs without destroying all of the earth’s resources through individual contributions. To better investigate the effects of food sourcing on a person and their community, I would have to study the different nuances of what sustainability means. All of the preliminary online search for buzz words like sustainability, community, farming, etc. swept up pages of information with relation to environmental or economic impact. I was curious to learn about the social connection to sustainability. According to this paper on placemaking, different factors are responsible for the outcome of urban community garden projects. Here the emphasize that a community garden’s success is not only measured on its scale or the yield of crops. By acknowledging the effects of community gardens, I want to explore a way to incorporate into a variation of “home gardens”.

The pandemic has taken its toll over the world and people over the globe have gone through similar experiences with the lockdown. Having to isolate from society is the sole connection experienced world-wide. But the importance of supporting each other is a core value we can learn from this catastrophic event. I had to enquire more about whether the attitudes of people were changing in a more positive light was accurate or just optimistic delusions. I came across an article published by Civil Eats, a news source sharing stories surrounding the American food system. Here, a group of commercial farmers who usually do not grow fruits and vegetables is now contributing to helping the nearby town in times of need. This showed the potential of battling a shortage of food as a collective effort.

But why choose to grow it ourselves? For starters, it is an opportunity to learn a new skill. To have the closest nutritious food source that can improve our physical and mental health is always a plus. It could be cost-effective if done using the right methods but more importantly making us more independent. This article supported that theory which speaks about a retiree in her 60s from Singapore who overcame a shortage of food at the local store by growing it herself. Previously, she was unable to find the time to garden more often. There were also several other examples and data collected highlighting people’s increasing interest in home farming. These stories substantiate my belief that farming at home is possible despite having no prior knowledge or space for it. Not only is it achievable but also has mental health benefits. An article from the Guardian demonstrated the health and socio-cultural benefits of growing your own food. This article was about a man renting out a small space and growing vegetables in the garden for himself and helping neighbors do the same. He was able to live a healthier lifestyle for an entire year without ever going to the store. This article supported my idea of bringing people together using farming specifically to become more self-sufficient.

The connection between urban community empowerment and the benefits of farming was the next area I was curious to get insights from. I read about a paper that examines the positive and negative reasons behind the development of a community garden in an urban context. This was necessary to contend my assumption that cities do not have enough space to farm individually. Hence community gardens could be a great alternate to not having a private plot of spare land to grow crops. The purpose and functionality of community gardens or allotments were the main focus on my desk research stage. I briefly researched organizations that contribute to gardening and urban development that came across 2 places that I was aiming to speak at a later stage of my project. ‘Urban Roots’ in Glasgow and ‘Urban Growth’ in London would have been a great source of information to understand the role they played in their communities. Unfortunately, this was the start of the lockdown, and all places were temporarily closed and proved to be a roadblock for me at this stage.

LIVED EXPERIENCES
I began combining my desk research with my personal experiences that could also contribute to my research planning. I had participated in a bamboo construction and organic farming workshop in June 2018. The workshop run by Ar. Richard Belho of Zynorique Initiatives at Nagaland, India. Here I got a better understanding of how farming can be conducted in a cost-effective and organic way that benefitted their community. The farm was in a small village where there were not a lot of amenities that we find easily in most cities. I got to be a part of every stage of the gardening process, from planting the seeds to plowing the land. Not only that but also every member of the staff was putting in their contribution towards the farm. They were able to save money; instead of buying tomatoes and chilies, they were growing it themselves. This is when I was able to see how a small community with limited resources was able to be self-sufficient by working together. Another experience I had was coincidently on my way to get groceries in Glasgow, where I came across Greyfriars Community Garden. I was amazed to see it thriving in the middle of a global pandemic unaffected. I went on to explore other community gardens to confirm my theory that these spaces were functioning successfully considering the current situation.

SECONDARY RESEARCH

FIELD OBSERVATIONS  
Assessing the current state of community gardens around me, I went through a report on Glasgow’s community gardens. The research conducted in this report was to expand on the connection between sustainability and the urban community. It also speaks about a grassroots organization called Just Food which engages in collaborative community projects to feed the local community. I stumbled upon ‘Stalled Spaces’, a Glasgow City Council project on the closed gate at Greyfriars community garden. Because the place was closed like every other establishment, I was unable to find anyone to talk to and I observed the surroundings to find any information. This project was started to support local community groups and organizations across the city to develop stalled, under-utilized spaces. These temporary spaces aimed to improve the health and well-being of the community by increasing community engagement. This space was meant to open up spaces for recreation and making them safer for the public. To my dismay, I was unable to find any proof that this city council project was a success. I visited 6 of the community gardens, based solely on their location to my cycling radius. The first 3 community gardens I visited were on the south side of Glasgow. These were located in the middle of residential spaces with abandoned plots. The current situation of these spaces was in bad shape. They were completely abandoned with no sign of greenery, and some were reduced to being unused spaces again. The next 3 community gardens were situated by the Scottish Canals. These were also located close to a residential neighborhood, but it was different from the other ones I visited. Spiers Wharf, for example, is inside a well-maintained residential area and is not easily available for everyone. Since it was temporarily closed for outside access, not much information about the garden was available.

After visiting these community gardens, I was able to gain some insights on what to explore next. I decided to look into a few other city council projects to see if there is a pattern forming there. This was meant to help me work towards a solution to design a more functioning community garden. I noticed some of these “stalled spaces” initiatives were in neighborhoods that were not maintained properly. I planned to explore the urban rejuvenation aspect of the project to see how to bring people together and make them feel safe and look for any opportunities to make these community gardens feasible and accessible for everyone. Based on this one particular city council project it was obvious that these spaces were not living up to the potential. My deduction by this stage was that community gardens are currently failing to be a good enough food source for a person. However, I had to be sure before making a snap judgment and dismissing community gardens altogether based on just a few visits. I created a rough stakeholder map that wasn’t based on a lot of data, but it was a base ground to look at broadly the end-user to my design idea.

ENGAGEMENT

INTERACTIONS AND LIVE CASE STUDY
My reasoning from the observations to know the exact direction I have to take to reach a long-term goal had to be explored further. Starting with interviewing people who are experts and non-experts in farming. I drafted emails inquiring for stakeholders to interview by branching out to my personal and professional networks. Not everyone got back to me, but I was able to get some interesting leads. But it wasn’t too much of an issue as I soon found out after connecting with my extended family and friends’ circles on social media platforms. I discovered an organic farm providing fresh produce in a locality in Mumbai. Through mutual friends, I asked to set up an interview, but it did not go as planned.

INTERVIEWS
My first interview was with my family’s longtime friend who shared the first experience I had that gave me the inspiration for this project. They were able to provide another perspective to mine. I asked them several questions by breaking it down to simple general questions to get them comfortable with the subject matter and then dug deeper to see the reasoning behind their responses. The first one was from the perspective of people who turned to become expert farmers without prior knowledge. They continue to rely on themselves to source their own food. They originally lived in a crowded city and were able to achieve this holistic living after moving to the countryside, where space was abundant. The second interview happened after I attempted other research methods because I wasn’t able to get people to agree to sit down and have a chat. The second interviewee was an amateur gardener from Woodlands Community Garden in Glasgow and has been using the community garden in their neighborhood for the past 10 years. They lived alone in the city, so the community garden activity was more of social activity for them rather than as a way to source food. I downloaded my notes and data collected into a “journey map” describing the key elements for each interview and the recurring themes from these separate worlds. The main element that started to inform the project’s main concern of successfully growing food was that the gardening plot was available in close proximity and it because it was a platform to socialize. Also, both were unaffected by any concerns with food sourcing in the lockdown.

ONLINE QUESTIONNAIRE
I created a questionnaire through Google Forms to branch out and reach out to more people quickly. The response from the questionnaire was overwhelming because in a few days I managed to get a total of 150 responses. This itself was a positive sign that people were interested in this area of food sourcing. Here again, 3 key themes jumped out which I felt were interesting to explore later. I discovered that people were:

·       open to the idea of avoiding supermarkets completely.

·       they were willing to share a space with their neighbors.

·       would welcome help and resources to farm at home.

ANONYMOUS USER EXPERIENCES
The form sparked a conversation amongst people and they happily came forward with their personal stories with farming at home.

Following are anonymous experience-based personas I drew out that addressed some of the insights I made from the preliminary observations and assumptions.

·       Persona 1

She is a middle-aged doctor who finds time in her busy schedule in a crowded city to grow a few essential used daily in the kitchen. Returning home, she plucks a few herbs in the community courtyard to prepare dinner. If shad more space and time she would love to grow more fresh ingredients.

·       Persona 2

Working professional woman who has now found time in the lockdown to grow an abundant supply of micro-greens and pulses using plastic containers piling up at home. She has coped with space shortage with resources at home which would otherwise just land in a landfill somewhere.

·       Persona 3

Stay at home mother of 2 young children who has converted the rooftop of her house as a farm. Living in the countryside which has a more favorable climate she has utilized her skills to source all of the groceries at home. Diary products and other food groups are what is store-brought, and she would love to expand into gathering those at home too.

LIVE CASE STUDY
Equipped with all the data I collected from talking and interacting with experts and stakeholders, I revisited my initial analysis from my field observations. In passing conversations with friends here in Glasgow, I was recommended to visit a couple of community gardens that disputed my theory that community gardens are a failing concept to grow food in the city.

WOODLANDS COMMUNITY GARDEN
This one was a well-designed space that showed an engaging community of people. There were other amenities provided which made the community engagement more of a success. Although they were currently shut, it was a beautifully designed space that is thriving with people socializing and growing produce. Multi-level spaces to maintain social distancing rules and enjoy the space were well-designed. A community garden with pizza oven and barbeque grill were also available as per the weather permits. Office spaces with a deck for social events are usually open to the public were closed now yet there were people using the space because of its design.

MARYHILL COMMUNITY GARDEN
This community garden I came across while cycling through Glasgow. It is located right by the main road blending in perfectly with the surrounding giving it a welcoming look. I figured this was thriving because of its positioning giving access to passersby on foot or in a vehicle. It also provided a green buffer space living enough to drown out noises and distractions from any traffic on the main road.

GARNETHILL COMMUNITY GARDEN
This one was suggested by a friend who lives close to it. This was smaller compared to the other 2 I visited but definitely functioning. It was beautifully decked with inventive planters made from recycled furniture and household fixtures. Though the place was small it was well-maintained from the conditions of the growing plants. The personalization of the space showed the investment of the community.

DATA ANALYSIS

EARLY INSIGHTS
I referred to IDEO’s Human-Centred Guide among other such toolkits I found online. I attempted some of the exercises and activities to understand navigating the data to reach the desired results. I started by attempting another way to address my goal for this project since the start of it. Asking “5 whys” was a useful tool to understand the depth of all the information I acquired from interactions and observing spaces. Questioning the first “why” showcased the reason to start was from a desire to learn a new skill. After digging deeper with each “why”, I was able to decipher core themes emerging from them. I put them in the form of “how might we” questions.

·       How might we create a sustainable food source through a community: to achieve a sustainable and healthy lifestyle.

·       How might we become less dependent on supermarkets: to become more prepared for the future.

·       How might we reduce food waste using gardening: to avoid a shortage of food.

This process helped me arrive at the long-term goal which was to work towards living in a self-sufficient sustainable community. But before that, I would have to prioritize the problem to reach that goal. With the “frame your design challenge” exercise, I tried to define the possibilities of taking practical steps towards making a change. I decided to concentrate on gardening as a stepping stone to reach the goal of an alternate source of food. I studied the changes in existing issues in the context of the stakeholder’s environment, currently getting in the way of being independent.

SYNTHESIS AND OUTCOMES

OPPORTUNITIES
The last exercise helped me identify opportunities to arrive at possible solutions. Changes needed to happen to the current systems in place to explore opportunities and solutions. I began asking the following questions like how might we make accessible space for everyone and keep people interested in learning something to be more self-reliant? To make these solutions a reality I had to uncover the actions required to be done. Following the worksheet “Impact Ladder” from the IDEO toolkit handbook, I looked at the changes that are deliverable in the stakeholders’ actions. My field observations in the start revealed that community gardens were not living up to its potential. Therefore, I needed to focus on the reasons for the ones that are functioning and contradicted my assumption. My questionnaire regenerated responses that supported my reasoning from the desk research. The perception that people were enthusiastic in gardening at home but for reasons like not having space, time, or confidence in skills to develop it further. My next motive was to find a way to generate a way to get people excited about it as a hobby but not let it fade away when other priorities take over.

I had to understand the different characteristics in the user’s environment that factored in their behavior towards gardening at home. But layering in this activity into a person’s life without making it tedious. I don’t want it to be a process of imposing my idea on people just because I had faith in it.  I had to make sense of the users’ context to begin forming a solution. Creating an ecosystem map suggested in the IDEO handbook, revealed the scope for change in the user’s environment, community, services, and institutions that contribute to their behavior in society. For the user to be consistent, they would have to have more access to the resources and time to be an expert. They should be aware of what is already existing in their community by better ways of communicating with other like-minded people in the neighborhood. As for the services and institutions that inform the user should be made available through a precise medium. So that they can be better advised on how to use the resources that they might not be aware of.

CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT

IDEATION
I was hoping to start a ripple effect in inspiring and improving the overall lifestyle and well-being of society. The close possible outcomes that can be generated to begin having that effect is what I explored next in this stage of my research. After refining the insights, I stepped into ideating the opportunities for change in the different stakeholder groups. I mapped out the shifts that needed to happen to arrive at the final goal in the form of a service or a product. Loosely following the steps in this activity guide (theory of change), I created some rough concept ideas against each of the shifts. These shifts or changes were a cumulative result of all the analysis and insights from the users I interacted with. In the map below, I placed red post-its’ on the concepts I wrote down that could have the most impact with “addresses this well” and the pink post-its’ on the concepts that have the potential to have an impact with “addresses this somewhat”.

FINAL ANALYSIS AND SOLUTIONS
Mapping out the concepts with the areas I wanted to make a difference in was starting to make sense after this exercise. I was happy to find out that I was arriving at some concrete deliverable ideas. In this next step, I bunched up the concepts that had the most impact (the red post-its).

·       Local neighborhood pamphlets/ newsletters/ advertising-

This service or product addresses the problem of misinformation because of technological issues or being unaware of how to use digital platforms.

·       Portable mobile structures in transition spaces-

This product addresses the need for a gardening space that can be flexible to the users’ limitations of space and accessibility. By allowing the user to place them in a familiar space, it has a better chance of blending into their routine and making it less of a chore.

·       Fixed structures placed strategically for different purposes-

This product would have to be placed after careful planning of each neighborhood’s shared spaces to ensure active participation. These zones will have to be either designed for specific vegetations or depending on the stage of growth.

After focusing on these 3 concepts, I began narrowing it down to one concept I can design now for this project. I started eliminating the concepts that I felt would not hold merit to be successful enough. Since all the types of vegetation require specific conditions for growing I researched the basic fundamental of gardening. A wide range of tutorial videos and hacks on how to garden are existing resources. I felt that designing a better medium through service just to spread awareness to people is not the direction I intended for this project. After watching a Ted talk on how Rob Greenfield transformed his life into becoming an expert from scratch was inspiring. The instructions and guidance from his blogs helped me design a few basic essentials I would have to incorporate into the final product. The elements that were necessary for a beginner were my base point for envisioning the final product. The first advice was to start small, next was to ensure there was access to light and to ensure a healthy growing plant. The last advice, which I thought was most important was to check locally what is available. The following are the key outcomes I would have to incorporate into my design.

·       From not knowing where to start to be able to see actual results: This would have to be a medium for people to socialize and learn to grow together. Thus, being well-informed combining with all the information found individually.

·       From not having space and time to be able to garden anyway: This would have to eliminate any space constraints in most urban cities and be an interesting and easy way to accommodate a busy lifestyle.

IMPLEMENTATION

CONCEPT ANALYSIS
The final concept I narrowed it down to with the help of the last exercise was to create an educational toolkit. This product would have the resources to start the process of gardening by including information, containers for planting, and a set of seeds for the basic ingredients for daily use. I wanted to focus on one of the facets of gardening. By concentrating on the “seed” stage of gardening I can contribute to changing an individual’s lifestyle.  I read a chapter from a report stating that the joint efforts of both the individual and their community are important in a successful urban garden. “Urban gardens can further serve as a vehicle to engage individuals and communities in efforts toward other social and environmental initiatives” (PDF) Urban Community Gardens as Multimodal Social Spaces, 2020) This helped me move ahead in the direction of addressing the problem in bite-sized solutions. The way I see it is that literally planting seeds is the first step to a green future.

DESIGN SOLUTION

FINAL OUTCOME
The journey map highlights the effects each element of the design will have on the user. The toolkit will hold containers that will be designed in a way so that it can be placed on a shelf or even hung from a hook. By making it mobile I believe it will be helping the users’ who lack space and natural light. This design will later suggest shared transition spaces can be used in case one does not have the conditions for the seeds to sprout after being tested out with the public. It would create an atmosphere to socialize, interact, and learn from each other. I believe this could bring people together to inspire more people. I would also integrate into the design a way for the user to personalize their containers to have a special connection to it. This way each person will hopefully have a personal intention to succeed with this experiment. I prototyped some alternatives to how these containers could be woven into the users’ life. One method was to place them along with shared transition spaces like corridors, parking lot, alleyways between buildings, provided that they have access to natural light and drainage. This would solve the space problem in cities. Another idea was to place the containers along spaces used in their daily commute like en-route to work, to exercise, or even just running errands. This would solve any more space issues by using place-making to ensure desired results. Also, these public spaces can be presented in a fun and interactive way to generate investment. I also had to consider the risks and pitfalls that can cause the product to fail or at least make the user demotivated to stay invested. The seeds would probably still not sprout in spite of perfect placement, they could be still be neglected after decorating and personalizing it. I would have to prototype elements of the design with different stakeholders to see how effective it really is. The stakeholders ranging from experts to amateurs. Since I was unable to prototype and reiterate the specifications, I got feedback for the design ideas from peers and colleagues with varied skill-levels in gardening. I would also like to take this forward and prototype the “container” at a local community garden.

I have broken it down into three main categories that will give a shot to capture the individual and their community’s behavior when it comes to growing food. The “seed” stage will help inspire aspiring gardeners to continue learning, the second stage of “sapling” when the seeds sprout will be pushed to a larger radius of using spaces shared with neighbors guaranteeing community engagement. Finally, the last stage of “yield” is the scope for design to be explored. Here I would like to design a system where it can work with the help of a community garden. Thus, forming a full circle of starting at home to end at a sustainable home outdoors. In the future, I would like to design a service that connects people and places iterating on different designs that blend with community engagement programs.

FINAL REFLECTIONS

FUTURE GOALS
For a community to achieve the kind of self-sufficiency where freshly grown food can be found at our doorstep is still a long way off. I believe that by having addressed even one small aspect of gardening at home can help solve problems in food sourcing. And by doing so, as a collective, we can be more self-reliant amongst each other. I would want to inspect the scope of gardening in different user environments like school or workplace. Learning to be skilled can be incorporated at an early age by introducing nursery beds in schools as well as in-office campuses. I also hope this research can collect feedback to see any development in society. Above all, I want to see this become a contribution to making lasting change in the world. Once the world gets back to its daily grind, I would like to develop on the scope of the project once we get back to our old routines. The importance of community togetherness should not be lost when the world slowly recovers from the pandemic. That would be interesting information to study and see if we would arrive at different solutions.

From there, a raw potato will expose itself to the world out of the soil. The potato has not thought much about what will be like in the future, the potato just wants to enjoy the sunshine.

From there, a mocking seagull will expose itself to the sky. The seagull has not thought much about where to find the next meal, the seagull has to learn how to be quite firstly.

I am that raw potato.

I am that mocking seagull.

I will expose myself to the real world of design. I have not thought much about what I want to do, want kind of role will I fit in the society, I just want to make full use of what I have.

As for who I am, I think I do not have an answer for that.

The only thing I know, more than all of you behind the screen, is that I want to take the responsibility of design to a wider range of groups.

Exploring the diverse aspects of design, until the seagull can no longer fly into the sky, the potato becomes the fertilizer of other potatoes.

In a situation like the current one with Covid-19, many people might experience more disturbing dreams as an increase in background stress. Furthermore, this epidemic is changing our lives.

An increasing number of psychologists and neuroscientists are finding evidence that dreams are not just the brain’s way of recycling and cleaning up the images of the day. Still, they are essential features of our psyches, responsible for things like memory retention, emotional regulation and deep sleep. Although occasional nightmares are normal situation, repeated nightmares might affect quality and mood during the day. Therefore, dreams are significant in our daily life, which affects the emotion in our life.

Results of the investigation are intended to study the effects of dreams on people’s lives, and finding a relaxing and useful approach to release nightmares in participants’ daily life.

Some psychological treatments can alleviate nightmares. However, after my interviews and research, I found that very few people go to psychological clinics for nightmares. Therefore, I hope that more people will pay attention to this problem in a relaxed and pleasant way, and their nightmares can be alleviated. It’s not professional therapy, but it’s a psychological approach. In order to let more people get rid of the nightmare, design a card game. Through entertainment, participate in the interaction before going to bed, thereby reducing the possibility of nightmares. The people bring their attention before they go to sleep, thinking about what they want to happen in their dream and dream process takes over they do not have to worry about it anymore.

This game is like a decryption story. Participants can create a dream story by themselves and use game cards to fantasise their stories before going to bed. Thinking what they want to happen in their dream and believe they will have a sweet dream just like they imagine in the card game. The game is random in the selection of CARDS, and different choices will have different storylines. The game will provide the main story frame. Participants choose their favourite characters to bring into it, create their own storyline, choose different endings, and create their own virtual dream story before sleep.

This is my final project in postgraduate stage, the topic is about Insomnia, I hope to solve everyday problems.

Sleep is an important component in everyday life and plays a key role in keep people healthy. Most people experience problems with sleep in their life. According to the NHS third of Brits will have episodes of insomnia at some point. Additionally, the World Health Organization claimed that a third of people in the world have sleep problems. In conclusion, sleep problems need to be solved without delay.

Welcome to the GSA 2020 graduation exhibition.

This is my personal graduation work.

The theme of this project is youth physical and mental health and online entertainment. Through a survey of youths’ Internet usage situation in the recent years, this project analyzes the tendencies of today’s youth in online entertainment activities and the main problems they encounter. After analyzing these problems in detail, I proposed a conceptual plan, which is an interactive system to solve these problems.

On the right is a snapshot of some project portfolios

Enjoy it!

More at:

Aline Jarneau is a designer interested in topics of general interest such as healthcare, digital accessibility and social transformation. After a Bachelor’s degree in industrial design and working in a Paris-based service design agency, she started researching death and grief in the digital age at the Glasgow School of Art.

With the emergence of modern technology and its potential impact on not only how we live today but also on dying and grieving, our traditional death system is evolving at a fast pace, with some rituals and commemorative practices being transposed into the digital space.

As modern technology brings new ways of preserving the memory and presence of the deceased, the first ethnographic exploration on dying and grieving in the digital age focused on digital memories in the mourning process, how they are selected and preserved and how they compare to traditional tangible artifacts.

In this project, I explore “identity and relationships” and, in particular, improve the phenomenon caused by the unequal distribution of food resources. In the experimental part, I explored the possibility of food value and designed the service objects related to daily life to remind people of the importance of cooperation.

In the final design, I will be looking at self-service places, public places, and discussing how people can express themselves, enhance their happiness and balance the more general social concepts they now have.

I want to stop forcing people to sit together and share resources, or to make the public aware of the real needs of each of them.

Therefore, I designed a service system Food Luck based on the Meal Club. This is a way to explore ways to address social inequalities and redefine tools for dialogue.

Once the service flow is implemented, it introduces people to identity, connection, and the difference between identity and self-expression. The menu will provide a space for learning and questioning through unconventional and relaxed dialogue, allowing people to feel a lack of belonging, understanding and confidence.

As a soon-to-be graduate with a Master’s Degree in Design Innovation from Glasgow School of Art, I design a user-centric, pleasant and human experience with the collaboration of stakeholders, experts, and end-users through empathizing, defining, ideating, prototyping and testing.

I dedicated my final design project to coffee waste. Since I arrived in Scotland, the morning ritual of starting the day with a cup of coffee from my Nespresso machine has been followed religiously. However, the routine was interrupted by my neighbor when she slipped in a note under my door, informing me that our recycling bins wouldn’t be picked up by the council due to Covid-19. This forced me to reflect on ethical coffee consumption, and how my behavior would impact the planet if I was unable to recycle capsules. It became the very beginning of my coffee waste journey.

After engaging with capsule users and interviewing multiple businesses, I created a solution that combines the circular economy model and smart material – Mycelium, the root structure of mushrooms. Binding with used coffee grounds, mycelium can grow into a durable material (similar to bio-plastic) and any desirable shapes with the correct mold (including coffee capsule shapes). With this idea, I entered my project into SIE Fresh Idea Competition, and am very excited to share that my project has been judged “Highly Commended”.

Please get in touch at letao222@gmail.com if you have any thoughts or feedback to share!

Close to me for 7 days: This project will focus on the mental health of Chinese young people, and try to find a suitable and effective way of communication between young people and family, friends through innovation design methods. I will focus on how might we create an effective and sustainable way to help young people relieve mental stress, also gain more understanding from our family and friends.

New Sharing model for society:
Empower disabled people and more to ask for and offer help

Introduction
The project is a trial about service design and inclusive design.

It explores disabled identity, disability narrative and finds a definition of what is real inclusion.

It explores what is the real world of disability and why people have barriers and fears on both sides?

It is also a trial about how to have a sharing model for society to empower people to ask for and offer help.

During the coronavirus, we are facing difficulties and challenges in the same storm, but sometimes we find we are not in the same boat. It’d be essential to acknowledge that the crisis magnifies this and not caused directly by it, before Covid-19 this was also an issue.

We have various disabilities, barriers and fears. It means that we have shared challenges. How can we create new connection model?

Framework of toolkit

Part 1: When you can embrace different yourself, you can find others’ diversity.

Part 2: Help is taking it off someone, support is letting them do it their own way. Start a conversation in many ways. Don’t be afraid of trials and errors.

Part 3: We can be empowered to do what we want to do. We have information, we have a good environment. We celebrate diversity and disability.

ADJUST THE IMBLANCED RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FLEX COURIERS AND THE PLATFORM

The gig economy is becoming more and more popular, not only because of new technologies but also because of fewer job opportunities. People make money through flexible work functions to support their families. They have also begun to play an important role in awakening cities in the global epidemic, but when they work so hard, the platform (ie, the employer) can fire them at any time and unconditionally according to their nature, without any responsibility. Therefore, I want to find a suitable direction through investigation and research to better protect the rights of this group of people.

Through secondary research and data, I have a preliminary understanding of the work characteristics of the performance workers and the problems they face.

Current problems: 1. Lack of financial security; 2. Loss of dignity at work; 3. Inability to develop a career or to leave a career. The nature of the work of gig workers: exclusive health protection and contracts for employees and ordinary workers, but couriers and other gig workers are called self-employed, without a stable income and protection, and without any benefits. And unemployment insurance.

Based on the data obtained from the desk study, the questionnaires were aggregated for interviews and surveys. I mainly interviewed the innovation platform (CoopCycle) and the Courier team (from different countries: UK, China and Japan), and made many adjustments through feedback. For example, the target group should be narrowed down from general couriers to flexible bicycle couriers, and the work process, age-range and work experience of the target group should be redefined. Analyze their similarities and differences based on interviews to find their common concerns. Comparing Doteveryone’s report and collected data, “difficult communication” was selected as the main theme of the next research direction.

Have contacted the IWGB union (unlike traditional unions, it specifically provides assistance to those called “gig workers”, such as bicycle couriers, Uber drivers and cleaners, to help people beyond the scope of traditional unions), try to establish communication and cooperation with them. Because of the feedback before the interview, many young drivers have become members of the union.

https://gsapostgradshowcase.net/2020/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/presestion-11-scaled.jpg

Seb (a union worker) and I compiled the specific manifestations of “difficult communication” and the role of the union.

For the courier and the platform to communicate difficulties: standardized answers through AI and algorithm programs-lack of nuances and background-can do not solve real problems; encounter unexpected emergencies at work-can not get quick response help- -The courier bears the responsibility for refusing to work; the communication channel is too poor, and most of the inefficiencies are carried out through mail, which cannot bring smooth dialogue and sense of security to the courier; lack of real interaction between people; the communication rules are It is unilaterally formulated without considering the feelings of the couriers.

IWGB effect: As the advantages of trade unions in the proceedings as well as the target population to understand, so you can play the role of supervision of consultants in the rear. When problems arise in communication, they can communicate with the platform through specific situations to participate in the interests of union members (couriers).

Based on previous thoughts, the first suggestion was made. Set up two interactive parts, the sharing part and the help part.

Community (sharing) part:

The courier can share his work situation and the problems encountered in the communication interface, as well as the problems he encountered and the parts that he felt inhuman or too harsh when using the platform. The platform can give feedback based on these opinions and shared things. For the few people mentioned those useful questions adverbial clause: recommended that the platform will be the payment of allowances, reward him as improve platform library personal contribution.

Help section:

People can choose interactive buttons of different colours according to difficulty and urgency, each
. The colours represent different situations and contact information. If the flexible express company is unable to contact any staffing service and cannot solve the real problems in time, you can single-click the partner (IWGB) button, and the union will record these problems as (litigation) materials and target them They provide specific suggestions for different changes. IWGB will use its own resources to continuously contact the platform to reflect the problem of the courier. If the platform still cannot solve the problem and bring some navigation consequences to the courier, the platform must provide certain compensation; otherwise, The union will take measures to record the materials.

After giving the first suggestion back to the former replacement (Ewan), he thought that the interactive operation process the interface was too complicated and would waste a lot of time. The process can be optimized to make it easier to operate. In addition, NING MA, who met me on a similar topic when I was sending mass messages on Facebook, is also using algorithms to improve the work of gig workers. After asking her opinion, she thought that the reward point could be concretized, which was what the flex couriers really cared about. Only in this way can the work enthusiasm of couriers be enhanced and the platform is more efficient and praised by the public. After listening to her advice, I simplified the operating system process and set up a ‘wish page’ (study future plan, wish items) for each courier. When a shared suggestion or question is popular and meaningful, the platform will support his desired project and learn plan to encourage him to contribute valuable information Based on the improved proposal, I sketched some key interfaces. To determine and improve some details (such as the location of different information, the ratio of different information, the appearance of graphics, etc.), but also to determine the specific information and content of each section

Creating more visual languages ​​to display more intuitively, such as storyboards, key interactive interfaces with their relationships and process program.

For this suggestion, it can not only bring a lot of positive effects on bicycle express companies.

Courier: Couriers have more voices to express their opinions and suggestions to protect their rights.

Platform: Expand the good reputation of the platform, increase employees’ sense of belonging to the platform, and find better suggestions and directions to improve/optimize its governance structure and brand.

IWGB: Trade unions have great influence. More and more messengers accept and recognize this new and innovative trade union.

For future plans, there are mainly three things:

Verification scheme and prototype

Try to fully test and communicate with them through joint design and seminars, and solicit their opinions and suggestions on the project, to adjust the project prototype to make it more suitable for the life and habits of the target population, and to serve them better.

Redefine the role of unions

The new union (IWGB) has played an important role in safeguarding the rights of flexible delivery companies through previously collected data, but usually only appears behind the stage after the rider has trouble. I want to try to discuss the future plans of the union with the union staff (Seb). Through closer communication with the platform, can the platform play a more important role?

Collaborate with experts

Through chatting, I learned that she had just obtained the computer information system index in the United States. Her project is very similar to mine. He uses his professional programming to improve the rights of performance workers.

Hi, I’m Arooj!

I’m a designer who creates engaging experiences using a mix of research methods, intuitive hunches and authentic human stories. I’m particularly passionate about helping to build better structures that won’t disadvantage certain minority groups in our society.

‘Pulling The Race Card’ is a project motivated by my personal experiences with racism and micro-aggressions as a Scottish South Asian woman, realising that there are many others who have had to deal with similar issues throughout their life. The project is focused on empowerment, as a direct response to women beyond their school years trying to understand their identity and blend of cultures.

What is it?

A platform based on the second-hand furniture store cooperates with the designers to attract more consumers to join in.

The service provides for consumers who have the aesthetics demand of the furniture and the refurbishing process by them could build an emotional connection with the furniture. The card they earned which is like a kind of birth card of the furniture. They are the creator of the furniture and they need to take care of them like family. The platform engages three kinds of groups people: Consumers, Designers, and furniture staff. It meets different people’s demands which could be a holistic system.

The detail of the project that could contact me:xiaonanyangellen@gmail.com

Glasgow School of Art: MDes Design innovation and Service Design [2019.09–2020.09]

2020 Philip Student Service Design Challenge [2020.01–2020.05]

Roy Ascott Studio, Shanghai Institute of Visual Art-BA Techonectic Arts (Interactive Arts) [2015.09–2019.06]

This research project is an attempt to improve the well-being of social workers from the perspective of social innovation. The whole project has gone through 12 weeks. Design thinking has been applied to the design process, a variety of design methods and tools have been tried to use each problem research and idea production process. From the initial search for the reasons behind social work phenomena to the specific stakeholder interviews to gain insights, and then to try to design from the perspective of design innovation can act on the actual minimum value output, and finally to improve the well-being of social workers.

Acknowledgements: Thanks to all the social workers who have been fighting on the front line during the epidemic, and thanks for the time, energy, and even lives to make this society better. I would like to thank my supervisor Kaitlyn Debiasse, who always supports, care about my project, and gave me lots of suggestions and guidance as well as the contacts. I would like to thank Sarah Rose, Catherine Brannan, Alistair and Lyz, who gives me tones of support during the process of my research project and help me more understand the social work industry. Thanks to the tutors, Jonathan Baldwin, Iain Reid, Mafalda Moreira, Emma Murphy who helped me and gave me support and valuable suggestions during the project. Thanks to my classmates, including Zain Ail, YuXuan Lou, Jie Zeng, and Hannah, Li Wang, YuHin Chan, Struan Fraser, who help me conduct the research activities and work feedback.

Xidan Tu is a service designer focused on innovative service, experience, and design trends, she currently works at KONE China as a service designer.

She previously worked in a design consultancy based in Shanghai as a UX researcher for four years (Sep 2015- May 2019). The primary clients she has served include different industries, such as transportation, consumer electronics, fast food, FMCG, and stationary. These various projects cultivated her of different practical research abilities, brought her pleasures to do the design research, and paved the way for further studying service design.

She believes service design could cultivate holistic and critical thinking to tackle social and commercial issues and bring future changes. During GSA’s one-year study journey, she had opportunities to participate in social innovation projects, which allowed her to dive deeper into the human-centred research methodology and thinking mindset and to become a more kind and patient person.

‘HOME ON TAP’ is her diploma project, aiming to explore the role of a community pub in creating a sense of community belonging and enhancing social well-being to help reverse a community pub’s shutdown. It gives her an exciting opportunity to research and think about a typical local culture icon’s social values in an innovative and warm view by getting access to and engaging with experts, associations, and lovely ordinary people.

For the whole project report, please see here.

Awards:

May 2019 – Work in China as a UX researcher – Received the Governor’s International 12 month Postgraduate Scholarship from GSA to Study Abroad

Jul 2020- The Glasgow School of Art, Innovation School- Project ‘Healer’-  Top 20 Teams of the 2020 Student Service Design Challenge

Financial literacy is an important life skill which helps us understand the value of money and handle it better. Young people starts to have a basic financial understanding before age 7, and kids’ financial behaviour could be influenced by parents and their conversation around money topics. However, many parents feel it difficult to teach kids money management and talk about finance, which causes their difficulties of getting kids spending wisely, also losing the chance to bring lifelong financial skills. This project aims to empower parents to teach kids money management effectively. Cubee is a tool and conversation starter for parents to teach kids financial knowledge, it let kids get their regular allowance by unlocking and finishing the activity tasks in secret advent boxes with parents. It can promote conversation about money topics in family, and let kids learn financial responsibility in a fun way before they get the money.

‘Death Literacy’ is a project inspired by my recent personal experience with bereavement and the resulting realisation that myself and many others are ill prepared to deal with death. The project explores how people can start developing death literacy; having the knowledge, understanding, skills, and confidence to support yourself and others in achieving a good death at the end of life.

Three key areas emerged for developing death literacy, which ended up being central to the proposed concept of a role-playing card game about the end of life.

I’m a designer with a background in psychology who is passionate about finding ways of promoting and improving people’s health and wellbeing. If you’re interested in my work, do get in touch via the links below.

With the development of China’s economy, the government’s support for rural infrastructure, and the enhancement of welfare in all aspects, more and more people want to build their own modern private residences in the countryside. At the same time, their requirements for self-built houses have also increased with the continuous improvement of their living standards. This might be a good trend, but there are many problems existing during the whole process.

Villastruct

Villastruct is a company that helps rural homeowners build houses. Not only we provide pattern houses, such as standardized high-quality housing options to meet users’ needs and save costs; but also we provide a platform for homeowners to better obtain information from professional service providers and collaborate with them.

The complete and systematic solution provides most of users with standardized, low-cost, high-quality pattern houses. For users who wish to customize more, they can better establish relationships with the settled professional service providers through the platform. We build trust and efficient communication so that they can access professional design and construction.

Zain is a Service Designer by profession with a background in Advertising, and has led projects in healthcare, social inclusion, finance and agriculture sectors. He values systems-level thinking in the design process to make a holistic social impact and is passionate about design for social innovation. His practice is focused towards helping groups in our society that are disadvantaged or vulnerable due to systemic challenges and hopes to work in the public sector to improve their living experience.

For his Masters’ project ‘Journey to my Home!’, he explored the situation around hidden homelessness in the UK to understand the challenges they face, the societal impact on people who are experiencing homelessness and how can they access adequate support to improve their circumstances.

Journey to my home! is a one-stop solution for anyone experiencing homelessness or is at the risk of eviction, by creating a personalized journey to get housing and providing information on all the existing support structures while signposting them to the most compatible organization for their needs. It enables people to navigate through their homelessness and gives them the agency to change their circumstances.

Urban ecosystem services are vital for the well-being of residents, however, greens, as the providing elements of urban ecosystem services, some are just there but not serving people. This project is a green spaces co-creation workshop event specially designed for the community Blythswood, aiming to break through the barriers of urban ecosystem services’ delivery and ensure the residents to enjoy the well-being which comes along.

For details, please watch the video.

For research, please see the project process journal (PPJ).

The project explores how to make sustainable living easier for people in China, where awareness of sustainable living is severely lacking in most of the population, and how it can be integrated into the local cultural context. Focusing on groups of people who are aware of environmental issues but do not practice these behaviours due to various problems, the project explores the complexity and malleability of the interplay between human awareness and behaviour. It explores the complexity and plasticity of the interplay between human consciousness and behaviour, which is influenced by the individual’s background and external environment, as well as by his or her self-awareness of the relationship he or she has with the planet. As social creatures, we are always mindful of our social role, but often forget our “ecological role” in the whole ecosystem. Through research and interviews, I have rethought the relationship between consciousness and behaviour, and gained a deeper understanding of “Chinese people”.

For Chinese, what do they care more about in their daily food, clothing, housing and transportation choices? And what is the impact that family life brings to them? Lifestyle is more of an infiltration of environment, culture and family heritage. Lifestyle cannot be imposed, it needs people’s heartfelt recognition and self-choice, and the premise of recognition is neither indoctrination nor moral kidnapping, but the need to let people actually feel the “good” of it. A thousand readers have a thousand Hamlet’s. A thousand people have a thousand kinds of Hamlet. A thousand people have a thousand kinds of lives, which can be a thousand different kinds of sustainable, but each one is the choice of people’s free will, and each one can make people still be comfortable and happy to be themselves.

The Covid-19 has been a challenge that nobody wanted. Still, it also raised awareness of rethinking the relationship between individuals and organisations. In terms of using workshops or other engagement methods to better involve more people in discussions and collaborations, one of the key factors is their motivations and their imagination capacity.

This project Daydream aims to invite more people to discuss their preferred future in a more collective and caring way. Given that change is a key theme in such uncertain times. This framework works as a way to help participants to enhance their understandings of their current challenges and opportunities. Using a more current-orientated strategy, participants can take actions and reflect their collective visions simultaneously. Using storytelling and metaphors, this journey will create a share-momentum benefiting people from different background.

Daydream has received some positive feedback from stakeholders such as local communities and engagement professionals to local authorities. This project will still ongoing, and looking forward to opportunities to apply this engagement model with greater impact.

Kwanprapa is a designer from Thailand, experiences in communication design. She curious about human behaviours with surrounding influences and intend to apply design disciplinary for develop user experience.

Wandering Walk: When city wandering supports lifelong learning in the ageing population

Inspired by childhood memory with her grandparents, the project focused on the topic of ageing society and questioned about how to maintain the ability to live independently in older age. People live longer but longer doesn’t mean healthier or happier. Many older people have health and cognitive ability recession after retirement. So, the first research question is not about ‘how to live longer’ but ‘How to live independently as long as possible’ and found that lifelong learning approach might be the key to maintain their ability.

However, there is not every older people is an active learner due to various cause such as stigma, and their early experience in learning. One of the challenges of learning in older age is how to build up a growth mindset and nudge them to physically and metaphorically step out of the comfort zone. To support the older population to have lifelong learning lifestyle, the project use walking activity that the target user familiar with to take them to explore the city and introduce them to learning activity by local organisations in the city. Walking activity is flexible, no-hierarchy and provide opportunity for learning at their own pace as well as create a chance for socialising during the walk.

Wandering walk is the activity that aims to a learning mindset and encourages older people to enjoy learning again through city wandering activity. The framework designs to nudge curiosity of ageing users and encourages them to be an active learner by sharing, learning and cooperating in informal-open-environment.

See full project and the research process here

My project is a campaign to help families avoid getting into funeral poverty. Funeral poverty is where the price of a funeral is beyond a person’s ability to pay. It is a growing national crisis in the UK, most affecting those on the lowest incomes. In making decisions for the funeral, families may go into debt due to issues of pride and the desire to provide a ‘good’ send-off, they didn’t want to be perceived as saying that they didn’t care for the deceased. However, this is often not the wishes of the deceased.

Through my research, I found that the leading cause of funeral poverty is the lack of communication among family members. The death is still a taboo topic. If people can understand the funeral expenses and make funeral plans in advance, families are more likely to reduce unnecessary consumption.

I designed two visual tools, posters, and a toast recipe to raise people’s awareness and engage in it. It is also a campaign through social media. In the recipe, toppings on the bread represent the prices of different funeral services or products. The way of talking and designing this tombstone bread is also a process to think about your own funeral and its costs. The analogy metaphor in the design is the bread, as its shape is very similar to a tombstone, and the bread is a universal symbol in the world that meaning life and money. I hope people realize that talking about death or funerals is as necessary and ordinary as eating. Eating is also an iconic family gathering scene, where many topics occur. No matter what kind of funeral plan one chooses, the bread all tastes good. People will not choose food that exceeds their financial ability in daily life. It is the same for funerals.

In the future, my project will hold more workshops, such as chatting, cooking, and eating toast together in the community. There are some social organizations aimed at solving poverty or funeral poverty, such as Quaker Social Action, Dying Matters, and Funeral Link. This project would unite with these organizations to plan social activities in the future and make these organizations and activities more influential through design innovation.

Hello! I am Lushan Qiao, a Service Design Student from the Innovation School of Glasgow School of Art.

I am passionate about doing things for the communities and society. Especially committed to sustainable development. This can be seen throughout both of my final year projects and my time here at GSA.

This project I focus on the development of cycling in China in the future. Cycling has always been the mode of travel advocated by the whole world, because it is of great benefits to the environment and individuals. And from the perspective of the future development trend of transportation, cycling still plays an irreplaceable role, which is also the reason why China has always advocated people to ride. However, due to the economic development speed and other factors, some data show that the number of people cycling dropped every year. In 2020, the Covid-19 began to spread around the world. The bike for people to become the most popular means of transportation. This change also brought more benefits to the environment and people’s health. Cycling played a very important role in our life now. That’s why I’m interested in this topic.

By using various methodologies to explore and solve problems. In the process I gained a lot of new knowledge and experience. I love to learn and have a motivated mindset. I think it is important to stay openminded in design and look forward to challenging myself and designs in the working world. In this special year, a lot of changes have taken place in our life. Making me feel more responsible as a designer, contribute to society and human.

IMPROVE THE SHOPPING EXPERIENCE OF THE ELDERLY

provide a service system that combine offline and online service to develop customer’s experience in apparel retail during COVID-19.

How might we promote tenants connection in a large-scale co-living community?

CoBuild is an online virtual city established by metaphorical ways.

We guide tenants to metaphor the living experience as the process of operating a building a city. Users’ interests and skills are visualized as different kinds of buildings, finding similar kinds of building means the owner of them hold similar interests so that tenants can discover like-minded people using a gamification way.
As the owner of a building, the user can hold an event, keep an operator diary, or participate in other tenants’ events to gain Prosperity value. The value contributes to an offline award to stimulate spontaneous events.

To relieve people’s inner anxiety and improve their mental health, the strategy of the cafe can start from convey positive perspective to foundation customers and the fan group from social media. To let them know that the cafe cares about their inner feelings so that people can establish trust with the cafe.

How might we Set up the in-store event or information design to show concern for community residents?
So that residents can consciously reflect on the pressure, then the customer trust the value of cafe brings

Linkers Talk to me – An Invisible relationship sign for tourists to use.

From the disaster experience shared by tourists, I found out most people do have a warm heart that is willing to help others, but sometimes they can’t identify whether someone needs help. This kind of embarrassment makes people unable to lend a helping hand. Language is not the biggest gap. The most important thing is to build up a bridge to fill it. This signal is to let them confirm their needs and encourages people to communicate actively.

Also, as a familiar sign for tourists, it will become a guiding role when they search for help. Not all police stations or hospitals will provide translation services. It could become an obvious signal for them to feel they are well come to access. Foreign tourists may feel anxious and helpless when they stay in the earthquake shelter. This signal will guide them to find a group and benefit for local people to know their identity. Then they could better receive appropriate information and find a way to access to Multilingual help platform.

We always emphasize that community resilience has great power in the disaster recovery stage. But it is difficult for foreigners to access to the local community. So I design these sign to help them build up the relationship with local people and service. It’s a kind of short-term community.

The doctor-patient relationship has always been a big contradiction in China. According to the White Paper on the Practice of Chinese Doctors, published by the Chinese Medical Doctors Association in 2018, 66% of doctors experienced conflicts with patients, and more than 30% were treated violently.

However, many diseases, especially those that require long-term care, are very dependent on the doctor-patient relationship. So I chose patients who need long-term care as my main users.

After a lot of primary and secondary research, I found that the reasons affecting the doctor-patient relationship are mainly caused by insufficient medical knowledge of patients, low communication efficiency between doctors and patients, and low participation of patients in the decision-making of care plans.

In order to solve these problems, I designed a PERSONALISED CARE MODEL to help stakeholders including doctors, nurses, third-party support organizations, patients and their families to co-create the patients’ plans.

Children’s Socialization

The social development of children is a very important aspect of the growth process.

However, public events like lockdown caused by COVID-19 have artificially blocked the social life of children. When the children’s social circle is blocked, socialization cannot be formed smoothly in the critical age group, which will not only cause physical problems but also easily affect the children’s psychology.

Therefore, under this topic, I would like to find out how to help children ease and avoid negative emotions during and after social isolation, helping them return to their social circle where they were forced to be ‘kicked out’.

This is a community-based mutual aid project for major illnesses, promoted by charitable organizations and the community. Charities take the lead, the community as the carrier, and the  residents as the main users.

A mutual aid organization based on understanding and trust among residents. Before joining, members should meet the corresponding health standards and share the mutual aid expenses equally every month. While helping the diseasedmembers, it also adds an extra protection for every members.

My goal is to explore new ways of charity, make people realize that charity is a tool for humans.

With an interest in social complexity and human behaviours, Carolina Moyano is a Mexican, with Colombian heritage, and 3 years of work experience as an Industrial Designer. Who just finished her master degree at GSA in Service Design. Carolina’s current project is the development of a platform that searches for the learning of a healthy sexual life, provides legit source information and assists the issue of male gender behaviours and stigma.

This platform wants to break the mainstream mindset of the male gender we have today, creating a channel of prevention for toxic masculinity and violence against women.

The inspiration from this project came from the interest in creating solutions to problems that affect people’s lives based on the nature of their gender. She wants people to understand the roots of the problem to find a way to prevent them. This platform is just one step closer for that.

Other concerns of Carolina’s work are Alzheimer’s, violence against women and motherhood.

“Flee in the quake” is a lightweight earthquake escaping skill learning app.
By understanding the type of user’s living environment, the app provides customized, suitable escaping guidance for users. Let users learn the most suitable earthquake escape method in the shortest time.

“If you ever have the experience of not knowing how to do when an earthquake happens;
if you have not encountered an earthquake before, but want to learn some earthquake escape knowledge in advance;
if you feel that there are many earthquake escape situations and the escape method is difficult to remember;
“flee in the quake” app will be your best choice.”

This project began from loneliness before the COVID-19 affected Europe a piece of news from The Guardian called We millennials have more ‘friends’ than ever. Then focus on new residents and their journey in markets or grocery stores. To avoid their loneliness experience, providing more possible touchpoints for newcomers or new residents to get in touch with local people.

PRINCIPLE OF DESIGN:

• Build up a bridge between new residents and local people around newcomers’ living place.

• Provide more touchpoints for shop staff and customers to communicate.

• Let new residents feel welcome and cordial.

• Build up an appropriate connection with residents who can provide suitable assist.

WHY

• Most of the interviewees find the market, pub, or restaurant after they are arriving at Glasgow.

• From previous interviews and research, acquaintances may help people feel safe, comfortable, cordial, and involved in the local environment. Besides, most of the time, physical acquaintances can provide more efficient help for people.

• Build up connections can prevent people feel isolated and lonely.

There is a group of people who would be more relaxed when working remotely because they often struggle to communicate with other people, behave normally at any kind of public event and speak in front of others. In psychology, these symptoms are called social anxiety disorder (SAD). SAD is one of the most common mental health conditions, and it affects millions of people around the world. For people living with social anxiety, the workplace can be a pretty stressful place. They protect themselves the best they can by avoiding situations in which their ‘flaws’ might be seen by colleagues. Even having a conversation with others about experiencing social anxiety is not an easy thing to do for anyone feeling socially anxious. Keeping away from such a workplace seems like a good way to deal with social anxiety, but it actually makes anxiety worse.

I designed a toolkit for the workplace and named it Cheerboard. It is suitable for use in a team or an entire company. For those who are about to face public occasions or stressful social engagements, Cheerboard provides a card to write down their work tasks. They can either choose to do this anonymously or disclose their name. Other members of the team can stick different gesture symbols on the board to encourage the sufferer, or they can also leave a message to tell the sufferer their own experiences or feelings. The only principle is to encourage employees to actively express their encouragement for others.

I come from Italy and I have a background in product design, after Milano Politecnico I have decided to come to GSA because I wanted to have an experience abroad. I have chosen the Mdes in design Innovation and Service design because I prefer to analyse the problems with a systemic approach, reflect on people’s needs, and I believe in the value of research to create a valid project outcome, every step of my projects follows an innovative method and empathy.

My final project aims to reduce the amount of cast-off clothing by reducing buying and to do that I have decided to focus on the potentiality of the emotional connection we can have with our garments, stimulating the users to build memories and live their clothes. My action wants to be a systemic action that is why in my analysis of contemporaneity I have came upon the companies point of view and I have developed also a new business model, more sustainable and transparent.

We live in a paradoxical world. As we continue to deliver more material comforts and conveniences to more people, we are simultaneously confronted with the cost of delivering those comforts in the form of climate change. According to the UN Emission Gap Report, our ‘commitment gap’ is steadily rising. Policy changes are necessary, but how do we get people to change their attitudes and behaviours towards consumption, and make their attitudes, habits and rituals more synonymous with our emerging future ?

Though there are many ways to explore this question, I was particularly drawn to the idea of re-imaging popular rituals and rites to make them more attuned to a future where environmental crisis is a reality. Rituals are a ubiquitous part of our social world, and among other things, mark rites of passage in an individual’s life (birthdays, weddings, anniversaries). Though they are ubiquitous, it is worth questioning whether these rituals carry the same significance anymore. An important element of many rites of passage is ritual of ‘gifting’. Though never thought of as a rite of passage, the global gifting market is poised to be about $77B by 2022. In many ways, it is worth asking if current gifting trends contribute to our own future demise by adding to our consumerism ? If so, what can be done about it ?

The Future Present hopes to explore such an alternative. The project aims to reimagine rituals of intergenerational gifting to young urban adults to be more meaningful and conscious towards the present and future environment. It is envisioned as a gifting service/platform that enables parents to gift their children the promise of a greener tomorrow by investing in urban gardens/forests. The youth are given a chance to explore the bounties of these gardens, make an investment into their future as well as pass it on to someone else.

Glad to E-meet you!

This project is an effort to explore a simple solution (positive practices at workplaces) that can promote a more holistic and satisfying society. Initial inspirations were from situations that led to dissatisfaction and concepts like collaborative social innovation and synergy. The proposed solution involves the induction of cost-effective and straightforward positive practices to be followed at workplaces that aim to repair and balance work-life patterns, attitudes and habits, additionally, that promote wellbeing and financial resilience among the changeable – young working parents and youth. The concrete repair during this stage impacts the future generation positively.

This project also shows the need and importance of Positive practices that may seem familiar to many through value learning, but if observed following it is relatively minimal, leading to the imbalances among ourselves.

The significant methods to elicit relevant insights from the audience involved desk research, interviews and two questionnaires, totally involving over 24 learned respondents. Additionally, also tried “constant observation and reflection” that involved observing surroundings, attitudes and habits that we exhibit naturally, to understand the link of the cause, effect and human behaviour. It was quite an elevating experience that emphasised the value of empathy and its ability to magnify productivity. Constant observation and referring expert papers proved useful amidst the challenging lockdown due to COVID.

Please click on the PDF opposite or below to learn more.

Thank you for your interest in my project- Positive Practices 🙂

Sincerely,

Sai Paresh Goklaney

Keywords: Collaboration, Social, Innovation, Parenting, Upbringing, Work-Life, Workplace, Positive Practices, Influence.

Alderman, L., Chisholm, J., Denmark, F., & Salbod, S. (1998). Bereavement and Stress of a Miscarriage: As it Affects the Couple. OMEGA – Journal Of Death And Dying, 37(4), 317-327.

doi: 10.2190/dqnq-pfam-7v00-52f3

Bailey, S., Boivin, J., Cheong, Y., Kitson-Reynolds, E., Bailey, C., & Macklon, N. (2019). Hope for the best …but expect the worst: a qualitative study to explore how women with recurrent miscarriage experience the early waiting period of a new pregnancy. BMJ Open, 9(5), e029354. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2019-029354

Bailey, S., Bailey, C., Boivin, J., Cheong, Y., Reading, I., & Macklon, N. (2015). A feasibility study for a randomised controlled trial of the Positive Reappraisal Coping Intervention, a novel supportive technique for recurrent miscarriage. BMJ Open, 5(4), e007322-e007322. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2014-007322

Bailey, S., Boivin, J., Cheong, Y., Bailey, C., Kitson-Reynolds, E., & Macklon, N. (2020). Effective support following recurrent pregnancy loss: a randomized controlled feasibility and accept- ability study. Reproductive Biomedicine Online, 40(5), 729-742. doi: 10.1016/j.rbmo.2020.01.022

Bailey, S., Boivin, J., Cheong, Y., Bailey, C., Kitson-Reynolds, E., & Macklon, N. (2020). Effective support following recurrent pregnancy loss: a randomized controlled feasibility and accept- ability study. Reproductive Biomedicine Online, 40(5), 729-742. doi: 10.1016/j.rbmo.2020.01.022

Bardos, J., Hercz, D., Friedenthal, J., Missmer, S., & Williams, Z. (2015). A National Survey on Public Perceptions of Miscarriage. Obstetrics & Gynecology, 125(6), 1313-1320. doi: 10.1097/aog.0000000000000859

BUENO, J. (2020). BRINK OF BEING. [S.l.]: VIRAGO PRESS LTD.
Doka, K., & Martin, T. (2014). Men Don’t Cry, Women Do. Taylor and Francis.

Meaney, S., Corcoran, P., Spillane, N., & O’Donoghue, K. (2017). Experience of miscarriage: an interpretative phenomenological analysis. BMJ Open, 7(3), e011382. doi: 10.1136/bmjop- en-2016-011382

Miller, E., Temple-Smith, M., & Bilardi, J. (2019). ‘There was just no-one there to acknowledge that it happened to me as well’: A qualitative study of male partner’s experience of miscar- riage. PLOS ONE, 14(5), e0217395. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0217395

Obst, K., Due, C., Oxlad, M., & Middleton, P. (2020). Men’s grief following pregnancy loss and neonatal loss: a systematic review and emerging theoretical model. BMC Pregnancy And Childbirth, 20(1). doi: 10.1186/s12884-019-2677-9

Living after Sea Level Rise in Bangkok, Thailand

This project start with UNEP report that While the population in the world is increasing, but the amount of land on earth is decreasing and is being replaced by water. It provides many negative effects around the world. Bangkok, the capital of Thailand also faces with sea-level rise situation by 2050. The objective of this project is to explore the solution that helps people live-with sea-level rise area effectively and sustainably focus on Bangkok, Thailand.

Solution: Dwelling for flood after sea level rise. “Not only a house but activities inside will be considered”

In this dwelling, there are facilities that can support a normal life and life during flood. A story during flood would change in a way that makes life easier and can live in a house more effective. Users can live both on land and on water with utilities. It could combine with a technology that happens in current life that is an application to alert flood.

Hello, I am Yian Chen from Msc International Management & Design Innovation. In my recent work, I explored on an emerging issues, supporting museums to survive from COVID-19.

During pandemic, 90% of museums around the globe closed the doors during lockdown. 10% of museums all over the world may never reopen. Considering the roles museums play on collections, individuals and communities, there are impacts when the museums close that we should care about.

Several insights are gathered through my desk research and participatory research, providing clear direction for my further idea development stage. My solution focused on how to keep the financial sustainability of the museums and how to make them more resilient when facing the other crisis.

The essential theme of my concept is to improve the digital engagement through the collaboration with the theatres and the visitor sharing between the museums members to raise the digital awareness of the public and make them get used to online visiting. The co-created plays and the immersive system are the attraction to achieve this goal.

In the short term, not only the incomes will increase, but the costs will also increase, which would become a challenge. However, once the branding grows up and the online habits are developed, it is easy for museums to do more charging program through the Internet such as charging families activities and more audiences would be involved. At that time, museums would be more financially sustainable without overly relying on incomes from the physical site and would become more resilient even there is an inevitable crisis.

Jiaqi is a graduating student from Glasgow School of Art. At the stage three project, she showed her interest in sustainability.

Fashion cycles have become shorter and various new merchandise has been launched onto the market every season. A linear model of ‘make, use, dispose’ is causing a waste problem globally. The over-consumption of clothes plays its part in deepening the main environmental challenges. The aims of the project are to people explore their wardrobes and inspire them to consume less.

I designed interfaces of an APP. This APP offers a holistic solution, which helps users make sensible purchase decisions and provide post-consumption services to increase the lifetime of garments. The APP will make users change the disposable culture into sustainable lifestyle.

Happiness Observation: Mental health support activity

“Exploring your world by observing happiness around you”

This activity and toolkit are designed to use as a beginning of a self-recovery journey and as a template in mental health support groups. The concept structure of this activity is based on a design tool called stakeholder map integrated with CHIME recovery model.

Insights: lack of motivation for self-recovery is one of the main barriers among some people having mental health issues. Voluntary organisation as a secondary support plays a significant role to support them during self-management. The current support focuses on “what is wrong with their emotion, what they are struggling, how it affects day to day activities and how to address causes of negative emotion”. However, for some people who have a lack of motivation for self-recovery, sometimes, it can make the thing worst because of only looking at deeper negative causes and bad things.

Objectives: Thus, the objectives of the activity are to focus on a bright side in the mental health support by looking at what resources people have, what people can do rather than putting order to do things. The activity will allow people to reflect and explore their aspect of positivity instead of negativity to get motivation and inspiration from each other with a more constructive way. Finally, for a pinnacle value, they might be able to look back on the unique aspect of them from small steps to bigger steps to gain the motivation and positive drive for self-recovery through creative storytelling activity.

Brief Scenario: Participants will reflect their positivity into five areas of happiness observation, from the core of oneself, namely E: empowerment and I: identity, and move wider to C: connectedness, H: hope and M: meaning, by picking up the conversational cards to explore particular keywords, or even open-ended questions; who, what, where, when (with or without facilitator, depending on conditions of attendees)

Having a multidisciplinary background in social sciences, business and design, my core research interests resolve around the interface of remote labour, communication, and work culture. I am convinced that in order to formulate an approach towards remote work concepts that acknowledges the practice’s benefits, we must fundamentally rethink the way in which we perceive work.

Traditionally, the office has provided us with a designated working space, more or less firm working hours, and a commute to transition between work and non-work domains. Remote work and working from home in particular removed these boundaries. Many workers identify this development as the cause of considerable stress as the resulting clash of their different roles leads to competing and overwhelming demands.

The guide “How To Work Remotely” is a list of advice that I want to give remote workers in order to make remote work work. These are based on my own experiences, the findings of my research, and the observation of best practices.

Hello, everyone, I am Zhuofan Chen. This project improves the recycling service of old clothes.

How often does each garment be used in my wardrobe? I asked myself this question when I was planning to move back to China. And where should these old clothes go? How could it be if everyone wastes several clothes? Is there any solution to cover it out?

This service has three innovative points:

Recognizable logo and online-to-offline model: Although many brands have the recycling service, they did not have recognizable marketing things, only some of the consumers know the service. Moreover, they did not have an online cloud system to operate the service.
The regular notification of ethical disposal: It sends the e-mails to the memberships regularly through account management. It not only reminds the consumer to donate their old clothes but also provides the ethical knowledge of caring to those non-fast fashion fans.
A win-win mechanism for the provider and users: On the one hand, the consumer could have a more convenient way of ethical disposal. Meanwhile, they could get rewards for it. On the other hand, the retailer could have a better reputation, and they could attract more potential consumers n this way.

I’m Yurie. I’m from Brazil but moved to the UK more than 10 years ago. I have diverse experience working in graphic design, engineering and in the Embassy of Brazil and the Brazilian Army. Somehow, I was even awarded a Brazilian Navy medal.

Along this path through different fields, I questioned how I could combine my skills as an adaptable, creative and analytical problem solver. The International Management and Design Innovation MSc suited me perfectly and I was really happy to receive the Adam Smith Business School Excellence Scholarship (UK/EU).

The Glasgow School of Art and the Adam Smith Business School brought engaging content and encouraged socially conscious projects, whilst still grounded in business principles – precisely what I wanted to do.

So here it is my final project, researching Food Systems and proposing a solution to build an alternative food supply for Glasgow that is both scalable and applicable to other places.

Hello there, my name is Paddy.

I am an aspiring designer with an interest in the intersection between design and business. My background is rooted in the theoretical study of International Relations, and Economics in subjects for Environmental and Behavioural Economics both at the University of Strathclyde.

This project was completed in partnership with my parent’s business, BGL Contracts, and is focused on exploring energy-awareness as part of a strategic change within businesses and their quality goals to become more energy-efficient. The UN Sustainable Development Goals that have been ambitiously set for 2030 should be relevant for businesses and organisations across the public and private sector, as well as in social enterprises and the third sector. This is all whilst considering that Scotland the very ambitious target of becoming a net-zero carbon society by 2045, requiring more collaboration and innovation, firstly in technology but then also in strategy.

Therefore, the proposed solution of this project will continue to be a work-in-progress. In the aspiration of achieving continued knowledge exchange and implementation of best practices, I believe the targets that have been set out by the United Nation’s SDGs and governments around the world need to be better understood and integrated in both small business and major corporations. I support the view that the provision of behavioural insights tools and partnerships with energy-hubs such as Zero Waste Scotland might well provide the long-term behavioural change required to make individuals and businesses more energy-aware and energy-efficient.

MSc International Management and Design Innovation has prepared me well to start applying new approaches to environmental and energy policy through themes of the circular economy within my parent’s business. Continuing to build partnerships and engage in co-design focused upon organisational strategic changes will be essential to long-term changes. Building on existing strengths and identifying weaknesses will help private sector businesses to introduce new energy policy that might help to future proof both staff and organisational interests.

Ultimately, Glasgow has faced redevelopment throughout its history and may of came up short. However, the electrification and redevelopment of this city through innovative energy-based approaches may provide the basis for enabling change and providing new opportunities. It is essential for individuals and businesses to seek out these opportunities, to become energy-aware by increasing efficiency and making an effort to develop innovative green strategies for their existing organisations or when under-taking new business ventures.

paddy.skirving@bglcontracts.co.uk

Paddy Skirving LinkedIN

The design element has always been a part of my life from a very young age, from helping my grandfather with his carpentry work, to working in the restaurant with the design of new venues, leaflets, and dishes.

My interest in design has drawn me to study interior design at university, which developed my skills and understanding of the design process.

During the last twelve months through studying at the University of Glasgow and Glasgow School of art, my comprehension of the design process continues to be refined. I am eager to see the journeys and new perspectives, design, will show me in the future.