Digital Commons Network^™

The Akastral Voyager, Christian Rego

Theses

This project looks to depict a realistic interpretation of a space colony that places a great focus upon pastoralism. This is done in order to provide a more optimistic counterpoint to the prevalence of dystopian pessimistic themes common throughout a majority of science fiction. In essence, rather than being a warning of what the future may hold, it is intended as a possible direction that could be aspired towards. How might we go about portraying a kinder, more optimistic future that we actively aspire towards in the long term rather than seek to avert? Moreover, what sort of design opportunities …

Our Legacy, Kaishun Huang

Theses

Plastic pollution has become one of the most pressing environmental issues. Plastic bottles take up to 450 years to decompose in landfill. The other issues caused by plastic waste such as incineration, microplastic and many more are equally terrifying. This project means to create more social awareness. A call for more people to take action and make a difference. Serious overproduction of plastic waste and other Non-Degradable Substance overwhelms the world’s ability to deal with them. Uncontrolled waste production will cause great trouble for us and our children and grandchildren. This project is in three parts. An infographic introduces some …

Petsi: A App That Helps People Look After & Monitor Their Pets, Ruoyun Gao

Theses

When the pandemic first hit China in full force, almost everyone was forced to quarantine where they were at the time. But there were many people who were on business trips, visiting relatives and traveling in cities far from home. So a few months after the quarantine began. News spread that some pets died of starvation or depression at home alone because their owners were quarantined in other cities and could not return home. There were some enthusiastic people who helped neighbors feed their cats through the balcony, and volunteers who tried to enter the home to take care of …

Balanced Ar Glasses System Between Text And Image Information Helps People Get A Better Reading Skill, Libo Jiang

Theses

Nowadays, people prefer browsing images and videos on their phones rather than reading a book (Thain 2018). Even if they decide to read something, they are still heavily distracted by electronic devices. In my thesis, I’m trying to balance the visual and text information and help people to stay more focused while reading. My solution: Focus is an AR glasses system that recognizes the contents users are viewing and records users’ reading and image browsing time. And users have to earn image/video time by reading the text. The glasses block images/videos if they run out of image time.

Life Is A Die, Xiangyu Deng

Theses

Life are consist of uncertainty and certainty. The most functional way for people to deal with life is to try their best for certainty and to accept uncertainty. However, due to the consistently changing environment and fast increasing uncertainty, people are more and more unlikely to deal with life and its uncertainty. This project, Life-is-a-die, will express the personal thought to deal with life and release worries and fear through a poetic video. In this video, the designed metaphors, poetic story, sound effects, text, 3d elements, motions, visuals, motion, and textures will play a vital role to help people understand …

‘Meet New Vcd’ Immersive Art Gallery, Wenting Toby Xue

Theses

Students of the Visual Communication Design (VCD) program may have a relatively distressing question about how to explain some details of this program to others. Someone will always ask how to define and explain the VCD. Therefore, in the spirit of redefining the VCD program and creating a platform to more intuitively demonstrate the current success of VCD students in visual design. The curriculum of this program and related student works are mainly user-centered design as the primary starting point. Innovation and forward-looking are necessary. To better communicate the VCD project and expand its influence. According to the questionnaire and …

The Performance Of Biomimicry Architecture In Sustainable Design For A Mixed-Use Workplace In Shanghai (Sustainable Design), Weihong Liu

Theses

Abstract Sustainable architecture design is becoming more and more popular all over the world, especially in China. Active sustainable strategies play an important role in sustainable architecture design such as solar panels, wind turbines, and roof gardens. However, this Thesis will find some new passive ways to improve the sustainability of buildings by proving bionic technology. The thesis seeks to integrate living organisms into buildings to improve the sustainability of buildings and generate sustainable resources. This main focus is biomimetics. The technology used in the design of architecture sustainability. Bionics or biomimicry refers to artificial processes or systems that mimic …

Rethinking University Selection For Students Through Real Life Testimonials, Pranav Shinde

Theses

The university selection process for students is a complicated process owing to the amount of investment and dedication it takes to take such a big step. The average cost and the time spent is a big factors and it is important to make a choice that students will cherish and make sure to see out through the entire course. However, in the course of making this decision, students have to rely on internet-based material such as university websites, comparison websites, and data-backed of to entice students which always necessarily isn’t right. What if students had an easier way to communicate …

Gyri: Language Learning In The Context Of Your Life, Laura Woodrow

Theses

Many people want to reap the benefits of learning a new language, but your ability to pick up a new language decreases drastically as you age. Immersion is a successful method of learning a new language, much like children learn their native language. Current solutions mainly use spaced repetition through digital means, much like you would discover in a traditional classroom. However, mixed reality can be leveraged to provide an immersive learning experience to the user/s, creating a cognitive link between their environment and the language they are learning. Not only can this method of language learning create an immersive …

Interaction With Accessibility On Digital Gaming Platform, Thomas Scott Rothdeutsch

Theses

This project focuses on the designing an user-interface to solve these issues with these certain accessibilities could lead to a better, functionable platform that allows the user with disabilities to be able to play the digital games. It can be projected on projector or touchscreen technology, using its function to provide more availability to support the players to reduce their struggle interacting with an actual physical board and card games. These struggles include opening the packaging, losing pieces, instructions are confusing and constantly moving around to be on the right spot. The features with accessibility will include icons for the …

Open Museum：Make Art Accessible, Make Appreciators Becoming Creators, Collectors And Promoters, Zhenhua Yu

Theses

As a human activity that expresses emotional power, beauty, technical ability, or conceptual ideas, art has a long history and a large fan base. However, while people's interest in art has never waned, it has rarely increased. The lack of interactivity of art in comparison to other information on the Internet is a significant disadvantage, and the recent reduction in museum visitors due to COVID-19 has also hampered the growth of the art industry. My thesis addresses these issues and attempts to create new opportunities for the growth of the art world by combining art appreciation, art collecting, and art …

Ruminations, Maria Barbara Ileana Kane

Theses

Ruminations is an experimental exhibition which seeks to explore the integration of technology into traditional art. By combining traditional woodblock prints with augmented reality, Ruminations attempts to evoke empathy from the viewer regarding the topic of mental illness. Each AR experience illustrates, though imagery and animation, a different mental illness or psychological phenomenon. The viewer sees each experience separately over a printed background, expanding on the traditional frame and reaching into the world around us.

Intelligent Tutoring In A Vr Classroom, Harendar Pharswan

Theses

ITS(Intelligent Tutoring Systems) have played a significant role in today’s smart learning educational technology environment, where students are given feedback instantly at scale. However, the current, more practically inclined approaches de-emphasize the reliance on the problematic student model, i.e. student's motivation, emotional state and interest instead put more effort into the construction of theory-based user interfaces. Although research in ITS has produced many interesting theoretical insights, there are relatively few ITS which are regularly and effectively used. Through research conducted into current practices in ITS, gaps within the system have been noted. Specifically, the paper attempts to propose a solution …

Coffit: An Interaction Design Project For Remote Employees To Enjoy Casual Talks And Interact With Each Other In A Virtual Environment, Yifei (Effie) Wang

Theses

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has changed a portion of people’s way of living and forced a radical shift in working habits. Due to restrictions of non-essential travel and the need for social distancing, many companies have adopted a work-from-home policy for their employees; with some even allowing it to be a permanent move. The policy creates a number of benefits such as increased productivity, reduced commuting time costs, attracting the best talent from any location, and more. And yet challenges have appeared. Long-term remote workers frequently experience feelings of loneliness and isolation, as well as a decline in …

Inch - Unpacking Measurements, Pallavi Singh

Theses

While global efforts to close gender gaps have taken great strides in the past years, broad cultural views and social institutions still exist to place women at a subordinate level to men. It is a common scenario to trivialize a woman’s achievements or power in instances when she does not conform to gender norms taken as “a given” in a cultural context. A few elementary examples of such social inequality could include unequal pay at the workplace or menstruation in cultures where it is considered a defilement of a woman’s body instead of a female bodily process. In most of …

Personality Type Posters, Sabrina Awdi

Theses

Humans are highly visual creatures and have been responding to visual cues from the beginning of time for survival and information. Visual design is an important tool to use for to convey ideas through imagery instead of words or typed out information. Using design to help the person visually decipher and interpret information can serve as a solution in many aspects of life. I am using personality types to show introversion, extroversion, ambiversion, and empathy visually through the use of digital art (illustration) and graphic design. The goal is to evoke an emotional response from the viewer to be able …

Poster Design: Possible Future Living Space For Overpopulated Hong Kong, Rong Dai

Theses

According to the official statistics of China, Hong Kong’s limited land space has always struggled with overpopulation, and cheap cage homes quickly became an easy solution for many poor people. However, terrible and cramped living conditions not only make physical activities difficult, but also deprive residents of their basic housing rights. People can not envision what the living space will look like in the future, and they lack a sense of what a healthy community is. This project intends to visualize a possible future living space through illustration and information diagrams, giving the audience who live in overpopulated countries an …

“Onq”: Contextual Information Design, Sally Boniecki

Theses

There is a countless amount of entertainment media available to a single viewer, and the internet makes that media easily accessible. However, keeping up with the rules, objectives, backstory, or culture of each one is difficult, and confusion hinders enjoyment. My thesis, “OnQ” dismantles the barrier of information in broadcast sports, viewership of which has been declining for 10-20 years. By exploring the flow of information, user interaction, user multitasking, and graphic design via on-demand explanations and statistics on top of live video, “OnQ” takes existing multitasking behavior and integrates it onto the same screen as the broadcast. Instead of …

How To Help Students Who Live In Rural Areas Get Equal Education Resources., Shunjie Yang

Theses

With the development of China's economy, the imbalance between the east of China and the west of China appears. Developed cities like Shanghai and Shenzhen attract more people to work and live. As a consequence of the good economy, the education in those cities is professional. Students in those cities kept the best education resource. Unfortunately, students who live in rural areas or the west of China cannot share the same education re- source. The coming of the coronavirus exceeded the inequality of education resources since a lot of rural schools closed. That means students who live in rural areas …

Notifications, Ashraf Agili

Theses

The notification system is essential in our daily life. It grabs the user's attention to a specific situation that needs the user's action. Such as responding to an important message. However, the notification system can be less effective due to the limited features and frequently failing to display enough appropriate information. What if the notification system can allow users to respond, share and save notifications? The current notification system directs us to apps that divert our focus away, where there is no way to respond to all types of notifications within the notification. Long and unorganized notification pages created by …

Study Island, Xiran Wang

Theses

This thesis project is in providing a better distance learning experience for students. Distance learning can be considered a tangible and interactive learning experience. The disadvantage of distance learning is the lack of learning environment and interactivity, which may lead to problems such as inattentive students learning inefficiently. It follows the use of the Internet to create an interactive and interesting distance learning platform. Students experience a more real sense of effective learning efficiency, enhance communication between students, and better complete their learning plans with mutual help. Students also provide good contact information when they go home, enhancing communication between …

Mindful: Practice Empathetic Design To Enhance The Digital User Experience For People With Mental Disorders., Olivia Zhu

Theses

The fast-growing prevalence of mental health disorders has become a global challenge in recent years and necessitates a greater focus on providing treatment and care to people in need. Consequently, a positive recognition of the promise of mental health digital applications to promote awareness, expand access, and speed up diagnosis has been established. However, very little attention has been given to the characteristics of vulnerable psychiatric patients and the influence on their cognitive functioning, making it challenging for them to comprehend the web content. As a matter of fact, the design of a mental health website often plays a significant …

Seeing Slavery, Lulu Hamissou

Theses

This paper examines the resilience of Laura Clark, Carrie Davis, and Delia Garlic, three formerly enslaved women from Alabama whose memories and experiences during enslavement were part of a large slave narrative project called Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936 to 1938. The design exhibition, Seeing Slavery, visually communicates and portrays the accounts and portraits of the three women. Printed and embroidered fabrics visually communicate the narrative stories of these women, while their portraits are made from screen printed acrylic glass.

Following an introduction, a literature review details the history of the three slave …

Toys Are For Adults, John Wippler

Theses

This paper explores the concept of toys, what they are and for whom they are made. The paper also provides a brief history of designer toys and pop culture, and how pop culture helped fuel the designer toy industry. The psychology of collecting is also referenced, and a direct correlation is made between the act of collecting toys and toy popularity.

The book I wrote is also mentioned and is a vital part of the purpose for the thesis. The book is an introductory guide to resin toymaking and is integral to the expansion of the designer toy community.

Modern Tarot Deck, Caitlyn Childress

Theses

The Original Rider-Waite tarot deck has since been reimagined through numerous tarot decks with the intention of modernization and implementing personal interpretations. Through varying versions of the monumentally historical deck, the Major Arcana, a vital part of the traditional tarot deck, has transformed meaning through replacements and substitutions of visual design elements. Existing modern adaptations of the Original Rider-Waite deck have not addressed race and gender perspectives native to the original deck. I recreated the Major Arcana twice, with both groups of cards tailored towards the same user group with ease, learning, traditional meanings, and experience in mind. After creating …

Using Characters To Narrow Culture Gaps, Xiangyu Han

Theses

There are a lot of different cultures around the world. It is hard for people with various cultural backgrounds to understand each other. Language is the most direct expression of cultural barriers. With the different structures of languages, communication becomes unsmooth. People can get to know each other better if we narrow down the gaps. The research here discusses the possibility of building a connection between language characters through the graphic. This work will use Chinese and English as an experimental. Images and pictures are the most visual information for people to read. And languages are the most direct information …

The Artemis Project: Exploring Mass Communication Utilizing A Visual Exploration Of Influential Imagery., Brooke K. Collins

Theses

Society struggles to have difficult conversations. Polite silence is often preferred to dredging up uncomfortable topics. This silence is deafening as the majority of Americans do not consider topics such as The American Sex Trafficking Crisis. In a post-pandemic world, how do we initiate difficult conversations in both digital forums and public domains? The Artemis Project seeks to visually explore this gap in conversation, undergoing an optical investigation of utilizing design and illustrative practices as tools for mass communication. This project conceptualizes the development and application of imagery to introduce a conversation, facilitating understanding and empathy. In short, The Artemis …

Pun Monster: How To Effectively Maintain Fitness And Improve Socialization, Yue Yuan

Theses

With the global outbreak of the COVID-19 in 2020, national governments have introduced policies of home quarantine and closing public places, and following social distances. As people spent more time at home, lifestyles changed dramatically, people spent more time looking at their phones and computers, and eating habits changed. This has brought about weight gain and increased anxiety and stress. People have started to do fitness activities at home, but have encountered various problems such as lack of motivation to exercise and lack of peers to supervise each other. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the key factors …

Two Moons, Chuhan Peng

Theses

People may think that they can better understand the world through convenient technology in this Internet age. The fact is that even though we can search almost everything on Google, we still live and are confined to a small world. What's worse, big smart data will provide you with "privately customized" information services based on your specific situation. People gradually become accustomed to a voice and are more inclined to think that the world is what they see. This has also led to the fact that people of different social classes and cultural environments may be very different, and they …

Underwater, Yuan Zheng

Theses

This thesis seeks to highlight the importance of work-life balance to our mental health. By experiencing an imbalanced life from the first-person view, this thesis focuses on using an abstract visual style to present the character’s inner world and the desperation for relaxation.