Knot, Just Craft It

The thesis aims to explore the intersection of traditional crafts and modern design by modernizing traditional Chinese crafts like knitting and knotting. The objective is to preserve the aesthetic, cultural, and utility values embedded in these crafts while creating a series of home-scaled furnishing designs that offer a self-making experience. By applying traditional crafts to modern daily life, the thesis seeks to give new life to the essence of traditional crafts and create new life experiences that are accessible to more consumers. The focus will be on creating modern designs that incorporate traditional knotting and knitting techniques, while also offering a DIY element that allows consumers to participate in the making process. The self-making experience will be an essential element of the project, allowing consumers to learn and participate in the making process while also creating a deeper appreciation for the artistry and skill required in traditional crafts. The resulting home-scaled furnishing designs will offer a unique blend of tradition and modernity, preserving traditional crafts\u27 essence while offering a fresh and contemporary perspective. Overall, the project aims to demonstrate the relevance and value of traditional crafts in today\u27s world while creating new opportunities for consumers to engage with and appreciate this ancient human-making wisdom

The Efficacy of Tele-practice on Expressive Language Outcomes for Adults with Aphasia

Access to skilled speech and language intervention can be difficult for individuals residing in rural areas as well as for individuals with complex health and mobility issues. Telehealth (including therapy and rehabilitation) can provide effective services in the context of one’s home, allowing clinicians to reach a wider population of individuals. Purpose: To determine whether tele-practice service delivery produces positive expressive language outcomes that are comparable to direct service delivery for adults with aphasia. Method: A variety of databases were searched utilizing systematic inclusionary and exclusionary criteria. Research focused on adults over the age of 18 with a formal diagnosis of aphasia who engaged in telehealth intervention. Various research designs were identified and analyzed. Identified articles included a total of 235 participants. Results: The identified studies supported the implementation of tele-practice as a means of providing individuals with aphasia access to services that produce positive expressive language outcomes. Several studies indicated that tele-practice produces similar outcomes when compared to traditional direct therapy. Several studies also included qualitative data regarding patient satisfaction and quality of life, much of which produced positive outcomes. Conclusion: The chosen studies were found to largely support the inclusion of tele-practice as an effective option for producing positive expressive language outcomes for individuals with aphasia. Potential limitations include variability in treatment times and programs, assessment tools used, clinical training of individuals providing treatment, small sample sizes, and variable patient characteristics. Future research should focus on implementing research designs using larger numbers of individuals to increase generalizability.https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/csdms/1003/thumbnail.jp

Photo mementos: designing digital media to represent ourselves at home

We examine photos in the family home as examples of mementos, cherished objects kept in memory of a person or event. In a ‘memory tour’, we asked participants to walk us through their family home selecting and discussing significant mnemonic objects. With each personal narrative we recorded memento location, i.e. the room, place within the room and any nearby objects. Although photos were not the most popular mementos, when chosen they were highly significant, and often unique. These photo mementos were usually not representational but symbolic, where only the owner knows their many layers of meaning. Photos from different times in the person’s life were strategically placed in different rooms. Their location afforded different functions, e.g. photo mementos in family spaces reinforced family bonds, photo mementos in personal spaces were for immersive reminiscing, whereas those in public rooms had an aesthetic value and to spark conversations with visitors. Finally photo mementos were rarely isolated: they were clustered in displayed albums or stored with other memorabilia in boxes or drawers to represent a stage in life. We explore the implications of these findings by designing potential new home photo technologies, looking at how new designs might support the types of behaviours observed. Through four conceptual designs we examine how photo technology might integrate into the practices and aesthetic of the family home. The concepts led to a set of concluding considerations that need to be taken into account when designing new forms of display technology that are part of a larger domestic photo system

Z-Cube: Mobile Living for Feminist Nomads

Homes proclaim our social standing and reflect the trend of the times. This project seeks to explore and redefine the relationship between modern homes and modern women who strive for mobile life styles. Modernism and globalization have brought us a new way of living that could have never been imagined before— our workspace and homes are no longer limited to a specific unit but have extended to the entire globe. The physical changes compelled by modernity have also complemented the changing role of women. Since the beginning of the 20th century, modern women have expanded their lives outside of their homes and are playing a much more active role in society. This project is designed for the modern feminist nomads—young women with international background living away from their home country—who are passionate about what they do professionally and proud of the women they are. The project will allow these women to determine what home means to them, and also allow their artifacts and concept of home to travel with them and, through the process, shape who they are. This project is a series of 5 different scales of designs: the Z-Cases, the Z-Cubes, the Z-Units, the Z-Communities, and the Z-Global Business Model. This series of designs is developed to better aid the life on the move for the feminist nomads, by making traveling , moving, and adjusting to a new community a much easier process

Transformasi analisis konfigurasi desain smart office desk untuk kebutuhan work from home

The work from home concept has become a common work system to reduce the rate of spread of COVID-19 cases. The adjustment of the portion of working in the office only below 50% in the next few years. Unfortunately, the impact of working from home is the flexibility of working time. There is no dividing wall between work time and personal time. Increased workloads and work delays often occur which ultimately affect the performance of workers. The work desk design development could be alternative solution. Referring to the trend of furniture design in the next few years, smart furniture design is becoming a trend that is in demand and needed to improve the quality of life. Smart furniture includes the application of intelligent systems / controllers to furniture designs in the form of sensors and actuators that are tailored to user needs. Research was conducted on the configuration analysis of smart office desk designs for the needs of working at home. The results are recommendations for the layout of user detector on the desk, the process of integrating the desk and the user detector, the final design, the design requirements and objectives in the development of a smart office desk

Exterior and interior design of two mobile homes

Two mobile home designs were created for efficient and spacious solutions for livability in limited spaces. This was achieved by the planning and coordination of space, exterior and interior materials, furnishings, and lighting. Spaces were planned for the anticipated living activities and storage requirements of a typical family in one phase of the family life cycle. Mobile Home I was designed for a typical family with two small children. The exterior had fir siding and vertical windows. The interior included an L-shaped kitchen with dining area, living room, three bedrooms, and one bathroom. Open planning, light colored wall materials, and furnishings of simple design were used. Mobile home II was designed for a beginning family. The exterior had cedar siding, vertical windows, aggregate panels, and an asphalt shingled roof with an overhang. The interior included a U-shaped kitchen, living-dining area, two bedrooms, and one bathroom. Light colored wall materials, windows, and furnishings of simple design enhanced the spaciousness

Mindful interactions

Mindful Interactions illustrates how we’ve become addicted to our smart-phones, and how its use in our everyday life affects our physical, social, emotional health and wellbeing. This design study proposes four product designs that make us aware of using apps, and compel us to reconsider their use during bedtime, mealtime, on-the-go and at home. As our pocket sized devices continue to evolve, the outcome of this thesis becomes a case study for rediscovering and applying the “human” in human centered design

Making A Martian Home: Finding Humans On Mars Through Utopian Architecture

A renewed public and state interest in space exploration in recent years, coupled with technological advancements in rocket science and architectural systems, has made design and engineering initiatives for Martian living tangible and urgent. This article traces the practice of utopian architectural design of a home on Mars. This home has been described by its architects as a ‘place for people’ and for ‘all of humanity’. Off-Earth habitats have traditionally been designed with emphasis on the functionality of surviving extreme environments. New designs for Mars aim to make human-centric homes in which people can be comfortable. However, when confronted with the known realities of the Martian landscape, such designs reconfigure the place and form of the human. The Martian landscape requires that a home shelters the human body from hostile elements through totalising closed loop architectural systems. In such extreme architecture, the human form is configured as a calculable body, and becomes ‘erased’. This article ethnographically traces how the human is imagined in such design practice and asks what happens to the idea of the human through informed design thinking as architects meet space scientists. It traces how utopic motivations to build a space ‘for all humanity’ are challenged through the material and practical reality of making design choices and exclusions. The ethnography follows the figure of the human as it is imagined as an emergent Martian lifeform which confronts the problems of the different gravity, light, radiation, and terrain that a life on mars would entail. Considering how the concept of ‘living’ might be possible in a future Martian habitat involves the practice of imagining radically alternative forms of life. By tracing how these are imagined, contested, and considered this article asks how practices of conceptualising radical alterity relate to understanding oneself as connected to the enduring idea of being human

Packing innovation for food - attractive for eyes, easy to carry and environment friendly

One purpose of cognitive ergonomics is to present products in such an innovative way that the customer brain is influenced during the shopping in supermarkets and retail. Packing innovations can increase a longer shelf life for fruits, vegetables and at home use. The design of the packing however makes the product virtually enjoyable. Our potential consumers can be educated from start of their life to love brands for a life time. Some designs may make known food products friendly, sensual and bond with personal connection. New laws in EU for lifting in retail demand appropriate shelves solutions and EU laws for environmentally friendly products force industry to develop new products that will reduce the use of plastic shopping bags. This paper discussed the use of a new packing material and technique as a packing solution for some products like eggs and champagne

Hospice Home Immersion Project: Advancing Medical Education

The University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine (UNECOM) Hospice Immersion project was piloted in 2014 in southern Maine. It was designed and implemented as an experiential medical education learning model whereby medical students were “admitted” into the local Hospice Home to live there for 48 hours. Until this project, palliative and end of life care education at US Medical Schools and specifically UNECOM were accomplished through traditional medical education methods. The Hospice Immersion project utilizes qualitative ethnographic and autobiographic research designs, whereby a unique environment or “culture” (Hospice Home) is observed and life experiences of the medical student before, during, and immediately after the immersion are reported by him/her. The purpose of the Hospice Immersion project is to provide second year medical students with firsthand experiences of living in the Hospice Home for 48 hours to answer the question: “What it is like FOR ME to live in the Hospice Home?” The results focus on the students’ common themes that include 1) Unknown Territory; 2) Support; 3) Role of Staff; 4) Role of Immersion Learning in Palliative and End of Life Care; 5) Facing Death and Dying; and 6) Clinical Pearls. This project humanizes dying and death, solidified student realization that dying is a part of life and what an honor it is to be a part of the care process that alleviates pain, increases comfort, values communication, and human connections. Students report new found skills in patient care such as the 1) importance of physical touch; 2) significance of communication at the end of life for the patient, family, and staff; 3) the value of authenticity and sincerity that comes from being comfortable with oneself, which allows silence to communicate caring; 4) connection with and awareness of the person (rather than their terminal illness) and their family; and 5) the importance of speaking with patients and their families about end of life plans in advance. Although this is a time intensive experience for the faculty member and the Hospice Home staff, the depth of learning experienced by the students and opportunities to advance medical education in death and dying are well worth the efforts