Digital Commons Network^™

Industrial Tenderness, Elbert Girón

Masters Theses

Industrial Tenderness surveys the relationship between visual language, cultural expression, and diasporic practices through the design of functional sculptures. These designed objects seek to communicate cultural legibility, or intuitive cultural belonging, to Mexican-American peoples by challenging legacy notions of design language. Through a proposed design language framework and designed objects, Industrial Tenderness seeks to affirm a pluriversal practice of industrial design.

Legacy industrial design confines design language to a heavily prescriptive canon, resulting in a stark monocultural language that is unrepresentative of perspectives outside of a legacy dominant white eurocentricity founded in thinking from the Bauhaus and Ulm schools. Through …

Repair Rolodex: Exchanges, Changes, And Patchwork Parables, Ethan Howard

Masters Theses

This book is an index of nine exchanges with strangers whom I met online through email Listservs or by word of mouth. In these transactions, I offered to repair broken things for a trade-in-kind payment. Through the brief relationship between owner and designer, each interaction suggests that an object is almost never entirely obsolete despite its perceived obsolescence.

At the core of these trades is a grassroots protest of the landfill and a critique of our global capitalist commerce system. The apparent desire for and nature of these trades demonstrates that stories make our objects meaningful. Each interplay studies peoples’ …

A Part Apart, Spenser Atlas

Masters Theses

I am fascinated by connections. Things that click, snap, slide, and hold. I care about the ways in which objects meet, looking for answers in the space between. What binds one thing to another?

I believe the world is presented to us in pieces. It’s hard to say how it all comes together. It's easy to believe things are shapeless and detached from each other. Connection is a bridge, a way of linking one thing to another that reveals interdependence, and eventually moves outwards to express a correlation between pieces, once assumed to be discrete and isolated.

This work is …

Food, Drink, Time, New Year And Cloth, Jian Li

Masters Theses

My project uses traditional Chinese calligraphy culture and my own family stories to create five daily use products to help my user find a sense of belonging to Chinese culture and also introduce my culture and stories to all audiences.

As an international student who came to the US, I have often struggled with a lack of cultural identity and belonging. This is a common issue faced by many who choose to leave their homes and venture to new places. However, I believe that we can overcome this by creating products that generate an emotional connection with their users.

The Meaning Of A Choice, Julie-Louise Zeitoun

Masters Theses

If you are disabled or disadvantaged, you will be dismissed and stifled. Few people will actively care for your struggles. As a person with autism, I was deeply fearful of the persecution I had faced throughout my life; it was a fear that followed me with terrifying determination. I desperately wanted to blend into society. So I designed myself to be devoid of any weakness, and productivity was the way I chose to conceal any difficulties I faced. It was a way to measure my success — a way to measure my normalcy.

Standard medical textiles are generic, cumbersome devices. …

Knot, Just Craft It, Qingxian Xu

Masters Theses

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 …

Making That Carries Over, Jae Nam

Masters Theses

This thesis investigates the making and building of a motorcycle.

A Preliminary Guide To Building New Futures In The Narragansett Bay, Maximilian Werner

Masters Theses

Water, the Ocean and its coasts, estuaries, tidal zones, and waterways are fundamentally necessary to the existence of all life on earth. About half of the world’s population (3 Billion people) live approximately 120 miles from a coastline. The oceans themselves shelter half of all life and sequester about 30% of global carbon emissions – some two gigatons a year. Although they occupy only 0.2% of the seafloor, seagrass ecosystems absorb as much as a tenth of all the organic carbon absorbed by the ocean every year. However, only a fraction of Narragansett Bay’s eelgrass beds remain, having been compromised …

Postindustrial Playbook++, Maxwell Fertik

Masters Theses

There is no such thing as an undisrupted ecosystem. Every inch of the planet is impacted by industrial development and its chemical legacy has mutated the soil and water. As a response, this thesis is designed to promote abundant over extractive resources and visualize a post-industrial reality. It consists of a series of objects, writing and design research on the relationship of industry and ecosystem.

In many ways it is a playbook++, laying out possible strategies or “plays’’ for making do with what exists around us amid collapse.

Japanese knotweed (Reynoutria japonica)(ي'ڑ*), a plant that grows in the most degraded …

Moving In, Moving Up, Moving On : The Adaptation And Preservation Of Chinese Diasporas Through Food, Jieqi Yao

Masters Theses

Moving In, Moving Up, Moving On explores the processes of Chinese culture and space in America of adaptation, assimilation, and preservation that underlie food changes. As Chinatowns across the US have evolved and residents have relocated, former centers of Chinese cultural identity have progressively transformed into restaurant districts with increasingly diverse populations and space gentrification.

The thesis argues that food is central to preserving cultural memory and reducing the generation divide. In the context of the Chinese diaspora transformation, culture has changed food in different spaces, and it gives people more choices to acquire and exchange information and values through …

Freedom Is A Leaky System: Living Together In The Mess, Calgary Haines-Trautman

Masters Theses

Litter is upsetting.

People upset by litter often misunderstand its sources. Those for whom state power has worked look for simple solutions that seek to surveil, fine, and punish culprits.

Reality is messy.

The path of trash from hand to landfill requires a series of successful transfers between receptacles and responsibility. Wind, accidents, and spills in automated systems complicate trash’s path from here to away. Out of this complexity, leaks accumulate—visible issues without clear causes or responsibility.

Leaks are unavoidable.

There is an irreducible gap between the world as it is and our models of it. In this mismatch, …

Memories Unboxed: Connecting People With Stories Of Our Possessions, Megan Tzu-Hsien Chao

Masters Theses

We constantly fall into a cycle of consumption that involves acquiring, retaining, and relinquishing items, whether we need them or not. Even though we are influenced by popular media to declutter more as we acquire new things, the root of the problem will still exist if we continue to neglect the reasons why we own things in the first place and why we hold onto them.

Why is it less stressful to make a list of possessions we enjoy having than to make a list of things we need to throw away?

This thesis hopes to relieve people of making …

Disoriented: Navigating The Nuances Of Communication, Ann Dinh

Masters Theses

What happens when you lose your language?

With this loss comes emotional and cultural implications, moments of incompleteness, along with a power struggle. Within immigrant communities especially, there are issues of communication and comprehension between generations. U.S.-born children of immigrants must deal with both a generational and cultural gap, gaps exacerbated by both distance and time. All of this is compounded by the challenges of assimilating to Western culture. In confronting the loss of language, this thesis aims to develop new informal methods of communication, ones less reliant on established language structures, ones that can help interact with future generations.

Ready Made, Made Ready: Everyday Objects For Everyday Emergency, Dara Benno

Masters Theses

What does it mean to adapt to a changing world?

Climate change is altering the world as we know it. We live in a chronic state of emergency. It’s easy to slip into a downward spiral of despair or ignore what we know to be true in order to carry on with our day-to-day responsibilities. By facilitating a complete recognition and heightened awareness of the common threats brought on by the climate crisis, we can begin to make the mental shift toward living in a new normal.

Ready Made, Made Ready rejects a dissociative attitude and seeks to shift exceptionalist …

Extended Reality Interface, Neil Nelson

Masters Theses

My thesis project at Rhode Island School of Design looks at how we interact with technology, specifically augmented and virtual reality. I explore these ideas through the development of novel hardware. I am interested in human centered design and specialize in ideation and rapid prototyping.

Sobremesa, Charlie Herbozo-Vidal

Masters Theses

In order to understand the social and political issues faced by the Peruvian community in the present day, it is necessary to get acquainted with one of the most significant moments of its history: The “colonial Knot” – The systems put in place after the arrival of European colonizers to the American continent. By crafting a communal experience centered around the mealspace, a key element in Peruvian Identity, I hope to bring awareness to the social tensions, violent structures and remnants of colonial rule that persist to this day. In developing an uncomfortable experience, I am researching whether exposure to …

Breaking | Grounding | Growing: Expanding The Rhode Island Gardening Reentry Programs As A Pathway Towards Stability, Juliana Soltys

Masters Theses

What happens to the over two million people incarcerated in U.S. prisons and jails?

Changing in sentencing laws and policies have created a cycle of imprisonment, racially isolating and oppressing BIPOC communities. Reintegration and reentry programs are an avenue to break the cycle of recidivism. Through my work, I have developed hands-on, structured opportunities for justice-involved adults to rebuild a life for themselves by increasing the accessibility of gardening reentry programs. This project creates a space for mentorship and support for Rhode Island’s formerly incarcerated people with the goal of helping them to develop vital life skills through growing and …

Sub Sequence : Building A Participatory Infrastructure, Aaron Wright

Masters Theses

What might it look like to make the nebulous quality of air pollution visible?

There is a lack of infrastructure that has been constructed in response to the contaminants produced from the Port of Providence in Rhode Island. Air quality surrounding the Port is impacted by air pollution from legacy industrial sites – diesel trucks, marine vessels, oil and gas storage and distribution, asphalt and cement processing, metals recycling, natural gas and utility services, and large heating plants.

The thesis sets out to investigate, question, and iterate upon the possibilities of collective environmental action and accessible information through an individual’s …

We Got This..., Julian Wellisz

Masters Theses

Working nonstop? Not sleeping enough? Feeling alone in your deadlines? Are you struggling with work-life balance?

Know that you are not alone. Since the covid-19 pandemic began reports of loneliness, mental health issues, and burnout have increased.

It’s quite possible that you are opting-in to an individualistic culture of overwork. If you go to RISD that's almost certain. This is true for students and teachers alike.

While these current systems work for some (primarily those at the tops of their respected hierarchies), for the majority of us there are better ways of being. Providing social and emotional support and creating …

To Be Seen To Be Heard: Embracing Social Anxiety In The Workplace, Jingxuan Chen

Masters Theses

Social anxiety has become the third most common mental illness in the U.S, but there still is a lack of public understanding of this issue as it often goes unspoken. Through my research, I found that social anxiety is deeply entangled with environments, situations, and interpersonal interactions; especially within unfamiliar, uncomfortable, and unsafe situations.

Workplace exacerbates social anxiety as people are constantly being evaluated by others, exposed to new situations, and required to perform well, which leaves no room for people to share the unspoken and seek support. Guided by the questions of what social anxiety is and how it …

Material Illumination, Lauren Mikaela Glenn

Masters Theses

Design exists as a field within the domain of material, accompanied by art, engineering, and craft. Working in material allows the designer to develop material fluency, a language that is composed of matter in space. Material can be used to communicate - it can also be used to think. By engaging the body and its senses in the act of making one can connect the space around the body to the space of the mind, allowing ideas to exist in objects and thinking to happen through interaction with material. Through the documentation of a process of making in wood, glass, …

Attuning The Viewfinder, Ian De Silva

Masters Theses

As there are many mobile apps designed to pull your attention, these interactions have become a kind of normalized addictiveness, such as doom scrolling.

I am working on the topic of attention and a meditation app using augmented reality because I want to understand how this technology can be useful from beyond the screen and into a physical space.

Vulva Gazing: Power And The Gendered Body, Aaliya Jamal Zaidi

Masters Theses

How does a gendered gaze determine what we feel shame about?

In patriarchal society, the male gaze is normal. Within its sights, the vulva, the external female sexual and reproductive organs, is viewed negatively — censored and ignored, or labeled with euphemisms and slurs across cultures. The modern western medical canon upholds and reinforces this view of the vulva, through a combination of disinterest and omission. This cultural aversion leads to a personal aversion. For people with vulvas this manifests in a lack of information about their own bodies which leads to shame, pain and even death.

Vulva Gazing is …

A Fleeting Landscape: Resurrecting The Edges Of The Estuary, Vrinda Mathur

Masters Theses

A Fleeting Landscape invites the city dweller to experience a mixed media microcosm of the marshes and discover what has been obscured through the encroachment of urban development.

From the salt marshes of Rhode Island to their tropical counterpart in the Sundarban (pronounced: shundar-bon) mangroves of India, wetlands are the world’s natural barriers. Fighting against extreme weather events between land and sea, the edges of this fragile ecosystem continue to shrink and degrade as anthropogenic stressors (infrastructure development, unsustainable land use, and aquaculture) increase. In a 2022 report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) persuasively argues for the protection …

Inside The Bubble 2.0, Sunny Yuqing Ma

Masters Theses

As a designer, I use speculation to observe. I use design to express. I want to hit people's souls directly. I want to create unexpected sparks through relaxed storytelling.

Katti-Batti : A Digital Tool For Young Adolescents To Transgress The Limitations Of Gender Socialization Through Empathy & Friendship, Chetan Dusane

Masters Theses

The genesis of this project lies in the personal experiences that led me to believe that the culturally learned and perceived gender roles, norms, and expectations limit a person’s health, educational, professional, economic, and social abilities.

The work began by finding the evidence connecting the learned, perceived gender roles, norms, and allied cultural expectations to the ability to think freely. The research revealed the limiting effects of gender roles and norms on self-identity, personal belief systems, and a place’s culture. The study further led to uncovering the link between limiting personal belief systems and cultural environment to the lack of …

Living Objects, Katie Tzu Hua Huang

Masters Theses

Sometimes, I find myself sunk into my memories, during daytime when the sun illuminates through the seam of the shutters in my room, or at midnight, when the world is in deep silence.

The sound of flipping books brings me back to the time when my mom sat in the living room quietly, with a cup of hot black tea as always. At the time when she read, I always found a stream of light illuminating the table, covering her face partially. One page, two pages, and three pages; as she kept flipping, the repetitive sound made the quiet afternoon …

Ars Technica, Bayan Mashrequi

Masters Theses

It’s easy to forget that we are living in an age of wonders, where the ability to perform feats that would have seemed divine miracles to our ancestors, has become mundane and routine to us. Even for people who are practitioners of this Modern Magic, the artificers and the sorcerers, the wonderfulness of the endeavor becomes difficult to appreciate most times.

Ars Technica serves a two-fold purpose here: for the uninitiated and the novice, this book aims to inspire and enable students, engineers and tech aficionados by highlighting the connection between mythology, literature, history and folklore with the wonders of …

Kitsch Study And Chinese Kitsch Market, Jiaqi Ellie Liu

Masters Theses

From the old industrial age to the new information age, the accumulation of capital has led to the monopoly of the assets and technology of large enterprises, and the pressure of the middle class is increasing day by day.

At the same time, informatization has led to a substantial increase in the next round of energy and material needs, and therefore human needs for thinking, physical and emotional needs have also increased. Kitsch can meet the thinking and emotional needs of the public. Therefore, it has become the mainstream contemporary aesthetics.

Kitsch art & design are easier to be loved …

Distilling The Narragansett Bay, Parker Ives

Masters Theses

My thesis is an investigation of material vernacular and a celebration of process and material. I am manipulating locally sourced materials to pull out unexpected qualities in order to distill a unique identity associated with a place and the things that give that place its character.

The resulting work focuses on distilling the Narragansett Bay through the lens of three categories. Reminiscence, Impression, Composition. These works fall into the categories of being reminiscent of a place, impressed upon by a place and composed of a place.

This thesis is not a conclusion of this area of inquiry, rather it seeks …