Digital Commons Network^™

Women In Santa Eulalia, Guatemala Through The Concepts Of Rootedness, Community, And Migration., Helen Hobson

Maya America: Journal of Essays, Commentary, and Analysis

This essay explores the experiences of Maya Q’anjob’al women in the villages of Santa Eulalia in Huehuetenango, Guatemala. Women from eleven communities participated in group interviews during the four months I spent conducting fieldwork in 2024, thus building upon my findings from 2022 and 2023. Questions focused on their daily lives, their connections to people and places, strategies for generating income, and the impact of migration on their lives and the community. Two broad themes emerged from the interviews. The first relates to their relationships to the land and community, and how this rootedness supports a wholistic (Indigenous) sense of …

Living Experiences Of Indigenous Health Practice: Belizean Maya Communities And Belize Migrants, Kristina Baines

Maya America: Journal of Essays, Commentary, and Analysis

Belize Maya communities, like many indigenous communities around the world, have long experienced challenges to maintaining health as they interface with an ever-expanding globalized model of development. This essay explores the relationship between traditional ecological practices and health in the context of a holistic understanding of what makes healthy bodies, healthy communities and healthy lives. Using the author’s Embodied Ecological Heritage (EEH) framework and a phenomenological lens, the essay shares how sensory experiences become embodied through everyday practice, promoting health and general wellbeing. This grounded theory, developed in and with Maya communities, helps us understand ways to consider and support …

Nature Naturing In And As Place, Edward S. Casey

Duquesne Studies in Phenomenology

In this brief article, I single out two distinctly different kinds of natural place, attempting to show how these not merely contrast with each other but display larger patterns or tendencies that are also found in many other sorts of place. This is to take one integral step to a larger ecology of places provided by the natural world and from which human and nonhuman beings draw life and motion that sustain and support many ways of existing on earth. Without such places, we—and every other form of life—would perish or would not even exist to begin with. It is …

Enfrentando El Patriarcado: La Voz, El Espacio Femenino Y Lo Sobrenatural En Mexican Gothic De Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Raquel Macias Del Valle

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the crossroads of gender, space, and the supernatural in Mexican Gothic (2020) by Silvia Moreno–Garcia, examining how the novel challenges patriarchal structures through its protagonist, Noemí Taboada. Utilizing feminist theory, spatial analysis, and studies on the supernatural, this research demonstrates how Moreno–Garcia constructs a narrative in which female expression and connection are central to reinstating the feminine self as a subject. The novel presents High Place, the ancestral mansion of the Doyle family, as a space that embodies patriarchal control. Drawing on Gastón Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space and Marc Olivier’s Household Horror, this study examines how …

Best Integrated Writing Fall 2025 - Complete Edition, Wright State University School Of Humanities And Cultural Studies, Tracy Smith, Kristie Mckiernan

Best Integrated Writing

Best Integrated Writing includes excellent student writing from Integrated Writing courses taught at Wright State University.

Sustainability Without Sacrifice: Rethinking Convenient Eating For Young Professionals, Teresa E. Michael

Masters Theses

Young professionals want to eat more sustainably– but life gets in the way. Between long hours, limited budgets, and an overwhelming stream of content, sustainable choices often fall apart in favor of convenience. This research explores that gap between values and behavior, asking: How do young adults actually make food decisions, and how can we help those decisions become more sustainable without demanding perfection? To answer that, I grounded my work in a literature review focused on food literacy, convenience culture, digital media, and behavioral psychology. I also conducted three case studies of food-tech companies (Too Good To Go, Misfits …

The Ultra Dilemma: Understanding The Impact Of Ultra-Processed Food, Cassia Elizabeth Brenning

Masters Theses

Ultra-processed food dominates the market, making up an estimated 73% of the national food supply and costing 52% less than healthier, minimally- processed alternatives (Ravandi et al). With such a large supply, there is a great demand to sell these products to consumers. Major food corporations rely on misleading labels, heavy marketing, and industry-funded research to manipulate consumers into buying more of their products. While these products are cheap, quick, convenient, and delicious, they are not components of a healthy diet.

This thesis argues that the best way to tackle the issue of ultra-processed food is by redirecting focus from …

Homemade For Change: Addressing The Barriers To Home Cooking Among Emerging Adults For Better Health, Finances, And Well-Being, Sarida Smitthimedhin

Masters Theses

This study investigates how a visual approach—combining design, photography, and illustration with nutrition—can encourage home cooking. In today’s fast-paced society and overabundance food culture, many emerging adults struggle to prepare meals at home. This study examines how food industry practices and cultural trends shape the eating habits of emerging adults by exploring the reasons behind the decline in home cooking and its adverse effects on health, finances, well-being, and the environment.

Although research indicates that most adults recognize that home cooking is the healthiest choice, they often do not practice it, citing time and lack of cooking knowledge as their …

Latino Economic Inequality In New York City: Income And Snap Recipiency, 2013–2023, Oswaldo A. Mena Aguilar

Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies

This Latino Data Project Report analyzes trends in the economic well-being of Latino households in New York City between 2013 and 2023, focusing on household income and participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). The findings reveal a paradoxical pattern: although median Latino household income increased over the decade, economic inequality within the Latino community widened substantially. Income gains were unevenly distributed, with higher-income households pulling further ahead while the lowest-income households experienced stagnation or decline. Over the same period, Latino households fell further behind all other racial and ethnic groups in the city. Additionally, Latinos consistently exhibited the …

Guest Editors’ Introduction, Maurits Bastiaan Meerwijk, Nicolo Paolo P. Ludovice

Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints

This introduction examines the historical evolution of health messaging in the Philippines, tracing its roots from early twentieth-century colonial public health campaigns to contemporary pandemic responses. It argues that health messaging, initially termed “medical propaganda,” has consistently served as a tool for persuasion and governance, intertwining communication, politics, and medicine. The introduction highlights how visual technologies and simplified narratives have been used to normalize biomedical authority, often obscuring complex realities. It concludes by emphasizing the need for a broader epistemic repertoire to navigate health knowledge in an era of misinformation.

Philosophy Of Culinary Arts: Reading Truth Through Language And Taste, Devi Dwi Purwanto, Aji Prasetya Wibawa, Syaad Patmanthara

Bulletin of Culinary Art and Hospitality

The development of Natural Language Processing (NLP) technology has transformed the way we analyze and understand culinary arts through a digital approach. NLP enables the transformation of empirical and sensory culinary knowledge into structured data that can be analyzed computationally. This technology opens up opportunities to explore the relationships between ingredients, techniques, and flavors in culinary arts, as well as to represent culinary reality in a more organized form. This study aims to identify how NLP can represent the relationships between ingredients, techniques, and flavors in culinary arts and their impact on the structure of culinary knowledge from an epistemological, …

The Effects Of Music Participation On Sense Of Belonging Among Elementary Students With Traumatic Experiences, Jamie Lynn Mckoy Hill

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The unexpressed perspectives of children have long been dismissed in elementary music education. Daily agendas, curriculum, and administrative expectations direct the day-to-day functions of the classroom and negate the instructor’s assessment of students’ needs. As a result, students who have experienced trauma (various forms) will feel disconnected from the classroom and have a low level of engagement. Music educators must adapt their planning and execution and infuse empathy and flexibility in their teaching to allow all children room to grieve previous traumatic experiences. This historical research investigates the student perspectives on what music participation means effects on elementary students’ sense …

Animals In Entertainment: Ethical Considerations, Industry Regulations, Incidents, And The Future Of Animal Performers, Kendyll Conlisk

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

Some of our favorite films, theatre productions, and live performances involve animals. A Dog's Purpose, Annie, Barnum and Bailey circus; the list is endless. But have you ever wondered, "How do they train them?" and "Is this benefiting or harming the animals?" Animals in entertainment have a long history dating back to ancient civilizations. Research done by World Animal Protection found that three out of four tourist animal attractions involve some form of animal abuse, and up to 550,000 animals around the world suffer due to these cruel attractions for human amusement. This does not imply that all animals used …

Designing For Interprofessional Collaboration: Integrating Data And Communication In Health Care Teams, Tzu-Ling Huang, Ko-Chiu Wu

IASDR Conference Series

As holistic health care gains momentum within medical systems, interdisciplinary collaboration has become crucial to improving the quality of patient care. In practice, however, cooperation among professionals is often hindered by fragmented information, differences in professional language and logic, system discontinuities, and the lack of structured processes. This study investigates the needs and challenges of information integration and task tracking in interdisciplinary teams through qualitative interviews and a card-sorting method with seven types of healthcare professionals— physician, nurse, medical social worker, clinical psychologist, dietitian, physical therapist, and dentist. The findings highlight issues such as insufficient information integration, fragmented goal-setting and …

Reimagining Speculative Design For Inclusion: An Narrative-Based Prototype For Civic Participation, Sandy Claes, Gitte Vande Graveele, Erica Bol

IASDR Conference Series

Speculative design has the potential to foster civic reflection but often remains inaccessible to broader audiences due to its cultural and conceptual complexity. This paper presents a research-through-design (RtD) exploration of how speculative design can become more inclusive by embedding reflection into the narrative experience itself. We redesigned INWARDS, a policy-oriented speculative artefact, by segmenting one of its films and integrating plain-language prompts at key narrative moments and reframing participation as introspection by triggering lightweight, personal reflections. The resulting prototype was deployed in a semi-public setting to explore spontaneous engagement beyond design- savvy audiences. We contribute (1) a design-led exploration …

When Clinics Meet Chatbots: Sociotechnical Reflections On Ai Implementation In Primary Care, Cai-Ling Wang, Yuan-Chi Tseng

IASDR Conference Series

AI-powered chatbots hold promise for enhancing chronic disease self-management in primary care; however, their real-world implementation often reveals hidden socio technical complexities. This paper presents a reflective case study of a chatbot designed to support diabetes self-care, deployed in a community-based clinic in rural Taiwan. Despite initial enthusiasm from stakeholders during co-design, the two-month field implementation yielded minimal patient engagement. Drawing on the Technology–Organization–Environment (TOE) framework, we identify critical barriers across three domains. Technologically, the lack of robust digital infrastructure required manual data entry, undermining the scal ability of personalization. Organization ally, integration with existing clinical workflows imposed additional burdens …

Mapping The Potential Of Smart Packaging For Sustainable Transition In The Fashion Industry., Mariapaola Puglielli, Martina Spinelli, Silvia Barbero, Erik Ciravegna, Ludovica Rosato

IASDR Conference Series

This paper investigates the role of smart packaging technologies as enablers of sustainability and circularity within the fashion supply chain. The study aims to map the current state of digital packaging solutions across industries to identify their potential applications and benefits in fashion. The fashion industry represents a heavy burden in terms of environmental impact produced by the intensive consumption of raw materials and the substantial volume of waste generated across product life cycles. Moreover, the globalised and fragmented nature of the fashion supply chain enhances complexity and hinders transparency, making circular transformation particularly difficult to manage. The paper is …

A Smart Interaction System For Mandibular Rehabilitation Training, Zixuan Yang, Hyejin Lee, Leheng Chen

IASDR Conference Series

Tempor omandibular disorder (TMD) severely impacts patients' quality of life, while traditional rehabilitation treatments are often costly and lack compliance. Therefore, this study proposes an interactive home-based mandibular rehabilitation training system that integrates force sensing and computer vision. This system monitors mandibular motion and applied pressure in real time, providing patients with visual feedback and guidance. Incorporating self-efficacy theory, it designs personalized training plans to enhance compliance and sustainability. The study first established a medical paradigm centered on autonomous coordinated mandibular movement and resistance training and constructed a self-efficacy-oriented interactive experience model. Technically, a flexible pressure-sensing cuff and the MediaPipe …

Let's Explore Food: Designing Interactions For People With Dementia To Express Food Choices, Rising Lai, Niels Hendriks, Andrea Wilkinson, Sara Laureen Bartels

IASDR Conference Series

This study demonstrates how participatory socio-material design can enable people with dementia (PwD) to articulate food preferences. Grounded in Furst et al.’s (1996) food choice process model, an action research methodology involving thirteen sessions with eight residents in a Flemish dementia care home developed and tested engaging materials across two phases: group interactions to assess material appropriateness and individual sessions to refine facilitation strategies across varying verbal communication capacities. Interactions and materials were evaluated on two interdependent dimensions: socio-material function (how artefacts co-constitute meaning) and validity and feasibility (intention-outcome alignment and interpret ability). Findings yield three design principles: contextual conciseness, …

Study On Active Health Service Design And Participation Willingness Of Older People: Types And Motivations, Yiming Song, Gengchen Cao, Ke Mu, Hongzhou Wang, Ziqi Cai, Yanlin Yin, Chao Zhao

IASDR Conference Series

The aging trend has brought unprecedented challenges to the social health security system, while active health services also offer opportunities and challenges for older people to maintain their health independently. This study focuses on designing active health services for older people and their level of participation. Through methods such as user journey mapping and potential grouping analysis, it reveals the differences in types and motivation mechanisms of older people's participation behavior in active health services. This study first identified three types of active health services based on interview data from 10 elderly users: prevention-oriented, disease management-oriented, and self-care-oriented. Then, it …

A Study On The Teaching Modular For Food And Agricultural Education Based On Circular And Sustainable Design Thinking: An Example Of Dapi Elementary School In Yunlin County, Ya-Wen Su, Shang-Chi Chiou

IASDR Conference Series

By combining circular and sustainable design thinking and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), this study aims to re-conceive primary school based food and agricultural education and focus on creating low-carbon sustainable campus. Existing food and agricultural education stresses on the production process of food, while the connection with resource recycling, waste disposal, and global sustainable goals is often neglected. Taking Dapi Elementary School in Yunlin County as the example, the course content and practical experience in food and agricultural education are analysed to further construct a teaching mode with circular design as the core. It covers the complete …

Sustainable Design Through Tradition: Insights From The Cuia Craft Of Amazonian Women, Andrea Bandoni, Nacional De Belas-Artes

IASDR Conference Series

This article examines the work of Amazonian women artisans who, in collaboration with the cuieira tree (Crescentia cujete), create the traditional cuias of Santarém. These vessels are distinguished by their black organic lacquer and intricate carved motifs, which give cultural value to objects primarily used as containers. The study seeks to inform design methodologies that foreground environmental responsibility while demonstrating how ancestral knowledge can inspire sustainable practices. It also underscores the central role of women in preserving and transmitting this heritage. To address these aims, the research employed a mixed-method approach: a literature review on sustainable design; a historical analysis …

Co-Creative Digital Twins: Circular And Sustainable Service Design In Smart Agriculture, Lisi You, Meijun Liu, Biyu Zhu

IASDR Conference Series

Smart agriculture promises higher productivity and resource efficiency, yet most implementations remain technology-centric and overlook systemic issues of stakeholder inequality, process opacity, and rural marginalization. This paper introduces Co-Creative Digital Twins, a novel framework that fuses digital twin technologies with value co-creation principles to enable circular and sustainable service design in agriculture. We first review the evolution of agricultural technology—from mechanization through precision farming to digital twins—and situate digital twins within circular-economy and participatory design literatures. We then present a mixed-methods study comprising industry pilots (“Adopt a Cow” and Infarm), rural fieldwork in Inner Mongolia, and a low-cost edge-device prototype …

Uncovering The Role Of Silence In The Thinking Shift During Design Collaboration: From The Perspective Of Six Thinking Hats, Chu Liang, Ying Hu, Ziling Liang, Jing Qian, Yunxiang Shi, Yiming Bai

IASDR Conference Series

Silence in team collaboration is often viewed as a challenge, as it can indicate either a lack of engagement or moments of deep thinking. This inherent ambiguity can leave team members uncertain about how to interpret and respond. Although previous studies have associated silence with some passive behaviors in design collaboration, the nuanced role of silence during thinking shifts remains insufficiently explored. Building on the six thinking hats, this study confirmed the relationship between silence and thinking shifts and identified specific types of silence corresponding to four distinct shifts of thinking hats. Qualitative analysis further revealed the roles of different …

Towards The Legibility Of Ai: Moving Beyond Ai Fiction, Franziska Pilling

IASDR Conference Series

For viewers, science fiction serves as a vital source of images and representations of science and technology. Films heavily influence our views on technology and have contributed to the confusion surrounding what AI technology signifies. This research also draws on science fiction and techno science in contemporary films, as cinema and television serve as practical litmus tests for social unease and yearnings. From alien invasions that paralleled Cold War paranoias of the 1950s to contemporary anxieties about creating artificial intelligence that renders humans redundant. This paper provides an ontological overview of AI technology, explores the challenges AI presents, and suggests …

Rediscovering Handmade Doburoku From The Perspectives Of Brewing, Storage, And Sharing Within The Community: Through Interviews With Elderly Women In The Senboku Region Of Akita Prefecture, Yi Qianyi, Hironobu Aoki, Akira Ueda

IASDR Conference Series

This paper focuses on doburoku, a traditional handmade alcoholic rice brew that has long been prepared in households in the Senboku region of Akita Prefecture, Japan. Through interviews with elderly women, it aims to clarify what meanings the brewing, storage, and sharing of doburoku within the community have held for local residents’ lives, and in what specific ways these practices have contributed to the making of everyday life in the region. The findings can be summarized in the following three points: (1) The brewing of doburoku was a planned practice aligned with the rhythms of daily life, with its preparation …

Muse (Multispecies Sensory Engagement): Enhancing Emotional Bonds With Microorganisms, Logan Shockey, Elena Sabinson

IASDR Conference Series

This paper introduces MuSE (Multispecies Sensory Engagement), an interactive silicone bioreactor designed to create emotional bonds between humans and kombucha SCOBY microorganisms. Guided by a More-than-Human-Centered-Design (MtHCD) and Research through Design (RtD) framework, this project applies the concepts of exposure therapy and embodied cognition to biology-based HCI, using an auto-ethnographic approach to explore how sensory interactions can shift human perceptions of less relatable life forms. MuSE translates the microorganisms health into sensory cues, creating opportunities for users to engage in caretaking and build empathy through light, movement and touch. Our RtD process results in two contributions: a design exemplar that …

Designing Information Interventions To Support Infant Feeding Autonomy In Multi-Generational Families, Jiayu Wu

IASDR Conference Series

Maternal autonomy is often constrained when social, cultural, and familial dynamics influence infant feeding decisions. In mainland China, the widespread promotion of breastfeeding has intersected with multi generational caregiving structures and medical authority to produce a rigid "breast is best" narrative, frequently leaving mothers with little space for negotiation or emotional support. This study explores how information design can serve as a medium for rebalancing feeding-related decision- making within Chinese families. Through a research-through-design process, the study draws on qualitative interviews with mothers and family members and narrative content collected from Xiao hong shu (Rednote), a popular social media platform …

From Gaze To Choice: Integrating Wearable Eye-Tracking Technique Into Customer Journey Map To Explore How Visual Cues Impact Consumers' Decision-Making Processes In Sustainable Beverage Packaging., Yu-Ting Huang, Tseng-Ping Chiu

IASDR Conference Series

In recent years, visual perception has gained growing attention in consumer marketing due to its pivotal role in purchase decision-making. As a core element of marketing communication, visual information not only affects consumers' initial attention and product recognition but also shapes their subsequent choices. However, how sustainable product packaging effectively conveys a clear and compelling sustainability image in cluttered retail shelf contexts remains a significant challenge. This study combines eye-tracking technology with customer journey maps (CJM) and semi-structured interviews to thoroughly examine consumers' visual responses and decision-making processes regarding sustainable beverage packaging in convenience stores. The findings reveal that consumers' …

Integrating Emotional Design Into Green Product Strategies: A Case Study On Chair Furniture, Jia Hui Gu, Muskan Dhanked, Sungpil Lee

IASDR Conference Series

Despite increasing attention to sustainable consumption in product innovation, the adoption of green products remains constrained by practical challenges. Previous studies have shown that emotional design plays a positive role in enhancing product experience, increasing purchase intention, and motivating sustainable consumer behavior. This study aims to explore how emotional design can be integrated with the 3R principles of Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle to strengthen user intention toward sustainable actions. Using the IKEA ODGER swivel chair as a case study, a mixed-method approach was adopted, including a literature review, user journey mapping, and a Likert-scale questionnaire to evaluate the perceived importance …