Digital Commons Network^™

Flip: An Interaction Design Project For Helping People To Break Echo Chamber, Rong Zhao

Theses

Social media constantly instills you with the things you like and the things you are willing to believe in, even disinformation, creating an echo chamber in which users will never have other opinions. People are controlled by algorithms so that social media platforms ensure we only get a single side of every story. The personalization of social media minimizes people's view of the world and causes the division of society. My thesis explores the interaction methods to encourage people to be exposed to multiple perspectives about things by reading the same story from different sources. To solve the problem, I …

Strange Weather We're Having: Save Your Town Together, Today, Ben Mclauchlin

Theses

We don’t talk about climate change with our friends and family and that’s a problem. The systemic harm of climate change will continue to impact us if we continue to avoid addressing what we can do to help. Strange Weather We’re Having is a semi-cooperative board game designed to cultivate conversation, inspire joy, and spread awareness about what you can do to help against climate change. This game accomplishes this through the use of collectively-supportive game mechanics, vibrant visuals, and dialogue designed to spark hope and delight. Players become residents who are susceptible to different stressors caused by climate change. …

Ressentir: A Multi-Layered Visual Filter For Enhancing Cinematic Experience, Anirudh Srinivasan

Theses

Watching any digital content without audio is going to be monotonous, as one vital component of cinema is lost entirely. Removing audio will significantly affect cinematic experience and make movie-watching extremely boring for someone who cannot hear. Audio, in a movie, is comprised of dialogs, music and background sounds. One must realize that removing audio would take away, not just sound but also emotions attached to scenes. At times there might be only background score, which does not necessarily mean that these scenes are unimportant. There are obviously instances where music alone would get across the message. This thesis explores …

Concretization Of Depression, Jing Zhou

Theses

Depression is a common mental disorder, but many people cannot understand the pain experienced by depression patients. Even after having a certain understanding of depression, it is difficult for us as normal people to empathize with the true inner feelings of depression patients. However, some people not only fail to understand the depressed patients, but they also speak slanderously and scold these depressive patients for their overly emotional actions. For these reasons, I want to show the true feelings of depression patients or the pain experienced as a depression patient through motion graphics. Motion graphic is an effective way to …

Athena: A Digital Educational Experience For Visual Learners, Adrianna Petrus

Theses

Athena is a design system for an online learning experience that uses motion graphics and information design along with succinct narratives and engaging web page browsing to help visual learners comprehend complex information. This system will leverage several theories, such as Pictorial Superiority Effect, which suggests vision is the most powerful pathway to the brain,(1) as well as Dual Coding Theory, explaining that two senses stimulated at once will increase comprehension.(2) Conveying content like “Marketing Ethics” in an effective way can be difficult. Visual education can bridge the pathway to these topics in an interactive way that incorporates animation, audio, …

Allstory: An Assistive Application For History, Shiyan Sun

Theses

When learning history, students have difficulty remembering large amounts of history and don’t know explanations of some proper nouns, which makes them not have an in-depth understanding of history and easy to fail in the test. As an important subject, an auxiliary app is needed to help students digest the knowledge they have learned. It will use different function to break the barrier, allowing students easier to learn and love history.

Carppet – An Ar Tour Guide System In Autonomous Car, Ming Hui Lin

Theses

Over the last decade, modern transportation systems have evolved to a considerably larger scope and higher complexity, brought by a wave of innovation in technologies and a revolutionary shift in how mobility is perceived and realized – giving rise to a strong orientation towards services. This thesis imagines a time when cars can drive fully autonomous. Drivers no longer need to drive. So, what else can we offer passengers during the time when they are sitting in the car? The purpose of this project is to introduce a concept of mainly using Augmented Reality and AI recognition to create a …

Helps Tourists To Customize Travel Plans Easily With Local Experience: Dotrips App, Shenyu Zhang

Theses

Traveling with group tours can no longer meet the needs of tourists. In-depth tourism has become a new choice for Chinese tourists, especially middle- and high-income groups. Outbound travel, tourists need to find far away from the hustle and bustle of the city and to deeply understand the cultural heritage and folklore origins. Pursue a personal experience of natural beauty and artistic style or a bold exploration of the way of life and the essence of life. The rapid development of the tourism industry and the proliferation of user-shared content have made the problem of information overload in the field …

An Interactive Memorial For Healthcare Workers Who Lost Their Lives During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Tianjin Zhang

Theses

COVID -19 started spreading in the U.S. at the beginning of 2020. During 18 months of trauma, more than 3,600 U.S. health care workers perished on the frontline in the first year of the pandemic. We are losing our guardians who fight against the disasters and save human beings' lives. With deeply in pain the lost, survived people desire to remember and perpetuate the history. However, there is less data support to track health worker deaths in the nation, limited places to gather for the vigil, extend heartfelt condolences and remember the deceased. We want to know what health care …

Honeycomb: A Digital Family Calendar Designed For Families With Young Kids, Jiahua Li

Theses

Calendar is important to families with young kids because it helps young kids build confidence and independence and establishes healthy habits. However, the traditional calendar is not designed for young kids and it is not easy to understand for them. To solve the problem, I designed an interactive digital calendar— Honeycomb family calendar, to helps families with young kids on creating a calendar and reading a calendar. This project is presented in an interactive mockup showing how it works. The goal is to makes the daily events on the calendar easy to comprehend by young kids and provides a fun …

The Scene- Interactive Video Scene Controller, Haena Lee

Theses

In modern society, people spend much time watching videos to meet their emotional and social needs. Movies and TV shows increasingly contain violence and sexuality to catch the eye. In addition to this trend, the current age-based rating becomes more and more lenient than the one in the past. As a result, the content rating system does not provide a clear standard about the level of graphic intensity anymore. This situation prevents a particular group of viewers from fully enjoying the video contents: parents and highly sensitive people. Whenever these two groups watch movies or live TV, they need to …

A Mobile App That Helps Asthmatic Patients Monitor Air Quality In Real Time, Jiani Su

Theses

Asthma is a chronic disease that cannot be cured. Every attack of asthma is a physical and mental destruction to patients, bringing pain and economic burden to patients, and seriously affecting the quality of life and happiness index of patients. But the vast majority of asthma cases can be completely controlled with appropriate treatment and intervention. Investigations at home and abroad have found that the self-health management level of asthma patients is still at a relatively low level, and more than half of asthma patients are in a state of out-of-control.

Currently, there is no online software that can effectively …

The Racked System: A Historically Based Interactive Roleplaying Experience, Will Truran

Theses

“History repeats itself” is a saying we are all too familiar with, but why is that true? As we look at our modern society we can see that pain persists and hate crimes are on the rise, particularly those of antisemitism and those holding anti-Asian ideologies. The Racked System aims to address this by introducing a new method of learning about our past so that we can apply its lessons to our future. Classroom settings require students to memorize dates and data that often capture hard to comprehend facts, like that six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. It …

Chek And Hava, Komal Ashfaq

Theses

Chek and Hava is an absurdist romantic comedy about using your boyfriend to rebel against your parents. While remaining light and easy to watch, it is additionally meant to have three intentionally designed layers:

1. The surface level story revolves around Hava bringing home her boyfriend Chek- an unemployed artist, that she knows her wealthy demigod parents will disapprove of. Her parents ultimately force Chek out of his carefree life and into a corporate career, accepting him and deflating Hava’s rebellion. She finally breaks free by exiting the system of their beliefs and trying to form her persona independently rather …

Oit: A Ux Design Project For Better Decision Making In Generative Design, Yunsheng Zhou

Theses

New technology, such as AI and Machine learning, grows fast and plays a crucial role in improving efficiency and reducing the repeated working load in our daily lives. In the Architecture and Engineering area, AI is widely used in generative design. Generative design is a design exploration process. The software explores all the possible permutations of a solution, quickly generating design alternatives. However, the problem is that the intelligence systems can generate thousands of solutions that difficult for users to distill. This situation even reduces the efficiency of the working flow. The project's approach is to help users make better …

What Is Depression?, Megan Wade

Theses

“What is Depression?” is a book design that investigates how simple graphical forms can be used to communicate a complex idea. It explores the principles and elements of design and how they can be abstracted to illustrate emotions, and it experiments with pushing the boundaries of what educational book pages can look like. Education regarding complicated subject matters such as depression are frequently overlooked or misunderstood within our society. People who are not affected by depression have a difficult time understanding what it feels like to suffer with the symptoms and emotions of the disease. This thesis investigates how to …

Augmented Reality Application ‘Finder’, Yiran Li

Theses

Children are always curious and excited about the world, but there are often accidents around them. According to some previous studies, each year in the United States, more than 2,200 children – or six kids a day – die from an injury at home. To deal with this situation, parents usually set simple life safety rules for their children and be consistent about enforcing them in a reasonable manner. At the same time, they try to reduce the possibility of psychological harm to children when correcting errors. As a result, parents desperately need a way to watch and improve their …

Exploring Historical Events Through An Interactive Timeline, Parsuree Vatanasirisuk

Theses

Learning history in school commonly takes the form of reading from textbooks and memorizing dates, places, and names. However, students have an array of different learning styles, and not everyone is good at learning by memorizing. Young students tend to lose interest in the subject and are not inspired to seek more information about what interests them in the material when they’re outside the classroom. Learning history is not only about knowing names and dates; it is more about understanding the relationships of events that occurred in the past and how they relate to and affect others. That’s why schools …

Safeskin: A Blockchain System Of Products’ Lifespan Development To Help The User Find Safer Products, Ru Li

Theses

Due to the escalating demand for cosmetics skincare products and a growing number of beauty products putting people’s health at risk by counterfeits or using chemical ingredients in order to give a better skincare result, people start to have more concerns about the quality of cosmetics and skincare products. Today, many companies strive to make the transparency of the ingredients by labeling on the packaging and knowledge their customers about the benefits of the ingredients they are using. However, the consumers unable to find out how does the product being produced by the original company, and being transferred to the …

Challenge: An App To Help Users To Leave Their Food Comfort Zone., Jieting Qian

Theses

We are living in an environment with diversified culture and too many choices in front of us make us overwhelmed. Trying something new and having new experiences is important, but a lot of people refuse to leave their comfort zone. In the long run, leaving our comfort zone will also help us gain new/refreshed experiences and realize a new self in the future.

People do not want to leave their comfort zone because of various reasons, but when some of us want to there may be mental barriers in front of us. People are hesitant to make the decision at …

Matter: Creating An Action Loop Of Mindfulness, Mriganka Gupta

Theses

In the past, radical innovation changed the way we live our daily lives without causing a change in fundamental human behaviour. Our “social suite” of behaviours - something that has evolved within us over centuries had mostly remained consistent in the early days of this innovation. Today, modern technology has slipped into our lives without any friction. Products are now designed to blend in with our homes, so well that we almost forget they’re there. And this has caused a concerning change in human behaviour - to the extent that people now think of computer behaviours as analogous to human …

The Best Snowboarding Buddy: Snowpes System, Peiwen He

Theses

The mountain ski resorts are huge places, while the maps are difficult to read and remember. Due to the difference of languages and map signs across countries, it's difficult for people to locate themselves on a map. In addition, it can be difficult for a snowboarder to keep contact with their crew. It also makes asking for rescue take longer. For the snowboarders whose ears are occupied, it's dangerous when there's someone behind them closely. For novice snowboarders who snowboard alone, it is not easy for them to learn new tricks so that they may give up. The Snowpes system …

Epilogue To Resonance, Robert Arthur Stone Iii

Theses

Epilogue to Resonance is a body of photographic work that focuses on how the resonance of imagery can be used as a tool for communication. This thesis expounds upon that idea, reflecting on photography as a medium to convey emotional affect and thought in a non-verbal form. After situating the photographic project within the historical moment of the 2020-21 coronavirus pandemic, this thesis goes on to analyze historical, psychological, and philosophical groundings as they relate to the processing of thoughts in the mind. This is accomplished through research into concepts by Thomas Nagel, and Stephen Kosslyn, and through interviews with, …

Using Colorthink And Online Teaching, Robert Chung

Articles

The author taught many years of color reproduction-related courses to college students in print media and graphic communication programs. He used to think that hands-on lab assignment was only possible in-person in laboratory settings. His recent online teaching experiences proved him wrong. This document describes a lab assignment, Using ColorThink, in an online course, administered by Wuhan University, in the summer of 2020. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, no one was on campus. All eleven students were spread out across many provinces in China. As an adjunct instructor, located in North America, the author was able to connect with his …

Voicer: A Sign Language Interpreter Application For Deaf People To Better Communicate With Others, Yezhang Wang

Theses

In the past two decades, the rapid development of technology has made our daily life has changed dramatically. Everything has become easier and more convenient. However, while we can already communicate with people anywhere in the world in real time, most deaf and hard of hearing (HOH) people still need the intervention of a sign language interpreter to carry out their daily studies and work. Undeniably, Internet technology and smartphones have also significantly changed the lives of deaf people. But the barriers between them and the hearing world still exist. A significant number of studies have pointed out that cultural …

Healthway: A Personal Health Record System For User To Manage Their Own Health Condition, Jie Zhang

Theses

The 21st century is the era of the Internet, big data, but also the era of AI. The vigorous development of AI and Internet technology has also injected fresh blood into the traditional medical industry. Today, the Internet affects every aspect of the medical and health industry. For example, medical providers can use the Electronic Health Record System (EHR) to quickly obtain the necessary information and data to assist them to make disease diagnoses. The remote consultation and consultation of medical staff also require the help of the Internet, especially the 5G Internet. In this context, the demands of individual …

Utilizing Digital Literacy In The Creative Writing Classroom, Sam Meekings

Journal of Creative Writing Studies

This paper will examine contemporary approaches to utilizing the pre-existing skills and knowledge of students in order to reconceptualize the process and reception of writing. Using social media platforms in the Creative Writing classroom presents a range of possibilities for experimenting with character, voice, structure, tone and world-building. This paper will share examples and exercises from a range of resources, and discuss ways of using the technical, formal, and cross-platform innovations of online applications to extend lessons beyond the classroom. Consideration will also be given to the problems inherent in using social media platforms for storytelling.

Looking While Reading I, Ii, Iii, Sarah Minor

Journal of Creative Writing Studies

This article introduces the term “visual essay” by tracing the genre’s history through the concrete poetry movement and the rise of the lyric essay. In describing the aims of visual essays, Minor distinguishes between “illustrative” and “non-illustrative” shaped texts, and suggests connections between “non-illustrative” examples and the aims of “Intersectional Form,” a term coined by scholar Jen Soriano.

Address Practices Of Deaf Undergraduate Students And Faculty: A Study Of Language, Identity, And Community, Brenda Nicodemus, Maicol Formentelli, Keith Cagle, Jay Pittman

Articles

The members of a community have conventionalized linguistic structures to convey both the content of a message and the social status of the interlocutors. Crucial in the codification of interpersonal relations are address terms, which are determined by pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic norms related to the language system, the local communicative event and the broader social context. The study examines the usage of address terms (direct address, reference, introductions) at a bilingual university that uses American Sign Language (ASL) as language of instruction and socialization, and English in teaching/learning materials, email correspondence, written announcements, inter alia. Based on interviews with Deaf …

2021-2022 Undergraduate Bulletin, Rochester Institute Of Technology

RIT Digital Archives

No abstract provided.