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Transforming Postsecondary Education with Service Design: Engaging with Colleges in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA)
Get PDFService Design has emerged as a powerful tool in recent years to improve the experiences of users in both the private and public sector. This paper explores the potential of Service Design to improve the experiences of learners accessing student services in colleges within the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). To achieve this, the study engaged several student affairs practitioners to understand the current approaches and challenges in the development and delivery of student services. The study generated system archetypes that aided in identifying patterns and behaviours influencing service development. The findings indicate that there is no standard approach to developing student services, and several systemic obstacles impede student-centred service development. This paper puts forth a series of evidence-based recommendations, inviting the student affairs community to explore Service Design as part of their practice
di Soup - Geoartistry (Art for Earth's Sake)
Get PDFdi Soup is an illustrative sculpture that visualizes the planetary boundaries responsible for regulating life on Earth. These boundaries comprised of nine interlinked systems were developed in 2009 by a team of scientists led by Johan Röckstrom. As corporate interests continue to undermine planetary health, this thesis complements the scientific knowledge that efforts at restoration. Even in its subtlest inferences, art comprehensively stores and provides insights about humanity’s relationship with the natural world for future consideration. di Soup presents these boundaries as living and intimately connected, where together they contribute to, and depend on, the health of the entire Earth system
Enhancing South Asian Folktales through Mixed Reality: Exploring Accessibility, Contextualization, and Discovery
Get PDFThe rich cultural heritage of South Asian folktales gets shared across generations through various storytelling styles and channels, such as oral traditions, books, cartoons, comics, and blogs. However, with the rapid evolution of new media, there is a growing need to adapt these traditional stories to modern formats to ensure their continued accessibility, contextualization, and discovery. This project aims to explore the potential of Mixed Reality (MR) in enhancing the experience of South Asian folktales by creating immersive and engaging story environments that connect to their geographical roots. Using Research Through Design (RTD) methodology, I iteratively developed and evaluated prototype setups to identify critical design decisions that shape the user experience. The findings from this study will provide insights into the design of MR applications for storytelling and contribute to the preservation and dissemination of South Asian folklore in the digital age
Work for Stake: Reimagining Ownership & Work in the Emerging Internet
Get PDFThe modern labour economy is fraught with challenges, such as economic inequality, job insecurity, digital intensification and shifting labour market composition along the lines of skills, employer consolidation, and the profile of the average employee. Ownership has emerged as a powerful, growing, and increasingly accessible solution to these challenges, as it enables workers to reap the full material benefits of their labour and generate wealth and security in a digital-first world. However, despite a positive perception towards ownership, few workers participate in ownership models, such as co-operatives and entrepreneurship. This research investigates barriers to ownership optimizing behaviours among workers, the costs, risks, and benefits of transitioning to ownership, and the differences between employees and independent workers. The hypothesis is that experimenting with interoperable digital ownership tools can lead to disruptive worker-centred innovations that increase worker stake, such as capital ownership, capital income, and voice in decision-making. This research employs strategic foresight and design research methodologies to provide a structured approach to understanding complex systems and framing future scenarios and experimentation. Ultimately, this research aims to decrease precarity and increase agency for workers by laying the groundwork for practical innovations that enable ownership-driven security
What's the big ick? Examining how behavioural change can shift perceptions about eating insects
Get PDFThis study explores the current landscape of entomophagy in Canada from gauging Canadians' acceptance of insect consumption to investigating how behavioural change strategies can encourage regular insect consumption. The research comprises a comprehensive literature review to expand our knowledge of global entomophagy practices, consumption barriers, and behavioural change; expert interviews to gain insights into the present state of entomophagy in North America; and an online survey to examine Canadians' consumption patterns.
The outcome of this project is behavioural change strategies that encompass rebranding insects, fostering safe spaces, nurturing aspiration, leveraging media influence, and introducing targeted education. In essence, the study enhances our comprehension of the barriers to entomophagy adoption in Western countries and lays the groundwork for future research and initiatives aimed at promoting insects as a viable supplementary protein source. By promoting sustainable food practices, entomophagy can address global food system challenges such as hunger, food waste, and food insecurity, thereby contributing to a more sustainable future for all
An inclusive approach to art appreciation through visual-taste cross-sensory design by exploration with Kandinsky’s Grey Circle
Get PDFCross-sensory translation enables people with diverse abilities to perceive and experience art through sensory modalities other than vision alone. While it is not difficult to find museums or art galleries that are beginning to incorporate auditory, tactile, olfactory, or even gustatory senses into their curatorial practice, findings from recent work on cross-modal correspondences have not been applied to the challenge of “translating” a specific visual artwork to taste sensations. This project seeks to explore a more inclusive approach to artwork appreciation by transforming visual experiences into tasting experiences, thus expanding the perceptual dimensions of artworks for a broader audience. First, this study synthesizes prior work on plastic semiotics with empirical findings from research on cross-modal correspondences to produce a conceptual model that suggests how a sensorial reading of a painting can inform a chef’s “translation” from visual cues of an artwork into a culinary experience. Then, this study practically examined the validity of the conceptual model through interviews and a co-design session with culinary professionals, seeking to understand how they recommend translating Wassily Kandinsky’s painting Grey Circle into a culinary experience. The research findings show how the interpretations of the specific painting through taste modalities echoed the cross-modal mappings from visual to gustatory experiences suggested by the conceptual model. Finally, the study tests the extent to which people can perceive the properties of the given painting through a gustatory experience by hosting a tasting session. The result reveals that participants can receive the intended interpretations mediated by the curated foods’ properties, which are designed to reflect and afford the sensorial expressions in the painting. Furthermore, the gustatory experience also helps visitors dive deeper into the artwork to a certain extent
Still Life with… Arrangements of Vibrant Things
Get PDFStill Life with… investigates an ontology of vibrant things; a conceptual framework that recognizes all matter as active and fluid non-hierarchical elements in relation and orientated to an open futurity. I am positioning the objects in a still life, and the still life itself, as vibrant things. My work seeks to engage with a vibrancy that, despite its not always being perceived, can be found in our relation with things, and between things: in arrangements comprising multiplicities of active and vital participants — human, non-human, object, place, affect, event — interacting in relation.
I am situating a theoretical framework for vibrant things in Bill Brown’s “thing theory” and Jane Bennett’s “vibrant matter,” while aligning Sara Ahmed’s queer phenomenology with research-creation to form a methodological framework for working with vibrant things: what I am calling a “research-queeration” methodology. To experience the vibrancy and animacy of the world involves an orientation to things' thingness — the ability of objects to act, produce effects, and to form fluid relations. To orientate oneself to vibrant things opens up possibility, potentiality, and different ways of being in the world. I aim to see what this renewed form of engagement can reveal about an ontology of vibrant things, about how art can participate in this shift as a special mode of relation to matter, materiality, and things.
My practice-based research endeavours to register arrangements of vibrant things as generative fluxes that are orientated to an open-ended futurity. Objects, assemblages, place, and time are investigated through photography, assemblage, video, prose, and installation. This exegesis examines how making comes to matter in a relation of theory, methodology, and the writing and practice of artists who engage with an energetic materiality. The combination of an art practice together with philosophical and theoretical inquiry forms an interdisciplinarity of media and an interdisciplinarity of thinking and making: an arrangement of objects, materials, artworks, and media together with philosophy, theory, literature, and art — an arrangement of vibrant things
MIXING RICE-A Support paper for an MFA thesis exhibition
Get PDFMIXING RICE is an Artist in Community project was undertaken in the Riversdale Business Improvement District Saskatoon from October 2021 to March 2022 with the curatorial objective to link local Asian and artist communities in Saskatoon through a visual art exhibition. By partnering local artists with Chinese-Canadian restaurant owners based in the Riversdale neighborhood in Saskatoon, this project aimed to introduce Chinese-Canadian restaurant culture to a broader public by immersing both restaurant patrons and interested arts viewers in a physical and visual feast of Chinese culinary excellency. Furthermore, this project aimed to increase visibility for the Asian communities in Saskatoon. The project took the form of a physical exhibition presented in the selected Chinese restaurants in Saskatoon, in addition to an online website that documented the exhibition to disseminate the work more broadly.
This support paper examines my research process that led to my exhibition centered onAsian cuisine. I reflect upon the community engagement generated through the exhibition with local artists, restaurant owners, and the audiences. Additionally, the paper is my vehicle to scrutinize how community-based curatorial practice can open dialogue through exhibitions and establish frameworks for future decolonial practices in the curatorial field
‘She is not alone!’ Afrofuturist Wearable Devices for Speculative PTSD Treatment in Kenya
Get PDFThis research explores speculative wearable technology to reimagine Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) treatment for female-identifying domestic abuse survivors in Kenya. The speculative wearable devices are envisioned to aid in continuous monitoring of PTSD associated with domestic abuse as well as aid in self-directed PTSD treatment. The development of the wearable devices employs mixed methodologies that combines Health Design Thinking, Design for Wearability, Speculative Design, and Modular Design to imagine the form, functions, wearability, and design of the wearable prototypes. Drawing design inspiration from Kenyan culture situated within Afrofuturism and Africanfuturism frameworks, aims to convey symbolism of empowerment for female-identifying domestic abuse survivors and in a much larger context highlight the importance of raising awareness of domestic abuse in Kenya
More than Knots and Cords
Get PDFMore than Knots and Cords is an exhibition supported by this thesis paper, that explores the possible friction that could generate incorporating a traditional artisanal material, which is made following ancestral production techniques and has a historical past, into an industrialized environment in a contemporary installation. This possible friction could be caused by the fact that materials and the environment where they will be installed come from different cultures and represent different spaces and times: past and present, traditional and contemporary. This could extend to even how materials are made, craft or art.
Through autoethnographic research, the materiality of Peruvian alpaca fibre and the history of ancient Peruvian textiles, this thesis explores alternative views of the past to confront the official history told from a western perspective. The distorted facts in which the official history is based create confusion in the search of an identity and a better understanding of a society. Through literature review on recent theoretical frameworks like new materialism, active matter, and systems view of life, a convergence is found with traditional views of the world like the Andean cosmovision, a confluence in the way they perceive materiality, sustainability, and ethical respect of the environment. This is seen as a convergence between old and new, traditional and contemporary.
The concept of knot is introduced, which could represent tension or conflict, pact or agreement. In the exploration described above, some knots are untied, while new knots are created in an ongoing process.
The exhibition presents the khipu, a pre-Hispanic artifact made of knots and cords, as a symbol of resistance, a metaphor for the decolonizing effort. The exhibition also includes an educational component to explain the Andean cosmovision to the broad public and to show labour during the creation process, which includes experimentation with some pre-Hispanic techniques rescued by archeologists