Future Experiences Pt.2 - Outcome
My individual project is called S.U.T.E.C., which stands for safe, urban, technologically advanced, environmentally friendly and communal living. S.U.T.E.C. provides a safe space for women who are beginning new lives in Cities in the Global South. Sustainable and environmentally friendly, S.U.T.E.C. is a refuge created solely for women that incorporates all of the essential amenities they might need to ensure a sheltered and comforted stay until they gain confidence and independence. This includes: a communal kitchen, toilet, showers and a shared garden.
Future Experiences Pt.2 - Context
Our discovery stage research centered on self-sufficient and clean energy in rural Africa for which our team designed a model village of the future. Driven by my desire to design for the vulnerable I focused my project on women; who are often disadvantaged in the Global South. I wanted to take the values of clean energy, self-sufficiency, exchange and community from a rural context and translate them into the urban environment and cities to develop spaces for females to gain their independence.
Future Experiences Pt.2 - Insight
Informative engagements with experts from the Global North & South provided key input to drive my project. Understanding their lived experience gave me a deep insight into a context I did not have access to and informed my conceptual focus on women who felt unsafe living alone in urban slums. In particular I was drawn to their feelings of dread in the long distances they had to walk to access basic facilities such as toilets. As they constantly have to fear violence, especially at night.
Future Experiences Pt.2 - Develop
Creating a 1:100 scale model of the building for exhibition allowed me to understand the complex intricacies of the potential spaces and environments that the user would interact with and navigate, such as stairways and bathroom facilities. Further iterative developments gave me insight and feedback to drive decision making and consider my final outcome from a human centered perspective. The model contains a shower room, courtyard garden, bedrooms, solar panels and the roof-top water heating system across three stories.
Future Experiences Pt.2 - Impact
Starting a life in the city is not easy in some places in the Global South and many people end up living in slums. There the living conditions are often very bad; especially for women. I wanted to add value to the lives of these women, to improve their standard of living whilst allowing them to maintain a sense of community; formed with the other occupants of the house. These spaces would be founded through charity organisations as a framework with local governance thereafter so that they could be self sustained by the women living there.
Self Initiated Project - Outcome
For my self initiated project I chose to focus on understanding the experience of children with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) in primary education; with the goal to develop an increased awareness and empathy of the condition. My insights aim to inform and inspire decision making of the experts in the field, and through co-designed workshops, develop interactive public facing exhibitions and a specialised awareness weak that focuses on familiarising the lived experienced of ADHD for others. I am mostly concentrating in creating these for educational institutes so that teachers and students can learn about the condition.
Self Initiated Project - Context
I chose to focus on ADHD due to strong misconceptions and the lack of public awareness of the condition. This image shows a compilation of the way different people have visualised ADHD often resulting in a negative perception despite the numerous positive qualities to it. My research entailed desk and user research, I mainly focused on the way teachers deal with ADHD in their class, how they are informed about the conditions and next to the general facts about ADHD. I also looked at what the positive and negative aspects of ADHD are and how they affect people.
Self Initiated Project - Insight
Through Your Child’s Eyes is an inspirational example by understood.org that has inspired my project a lot. It is a virtual tool aimed to make people understand what it feels like to struggle with different learning disabilities. https://www.facebook.com/Understood/videos/2226693820690305/?v=2226693820690305 . This virtual tool shows one way of making people understand the struggle people with ADHD face every day which then helps create more empathy for them.
elf Initiated Project - Develop
Within the discovery phase of my project I conducted two online questionnaire surveys to gain a broad understanding of the world of ADHD within the school environment. I focused on the experience of children with ADHD whilst in school and what teachers are taught about the condition. I collated and synthesised the data from this and visualised it into in several infographics to drive my next stages of concept development. This helped me to understand how students struggle in school and the frustrations they deal with on a daily basis.
Dissertation
My dissertation investigates the value of secrecy and hidden compartments through an exploration of pockets and spaces used to hide secrets or personal possessions; from the 17th Century to the present day. I present how the perception of privacy and secret keeping has changed and evolved by examining the technological advancements that have helped us hide secrets over time. A lot can be learned about society and the economic situation of an era by understanding what people had to hide at the time.