Digital Commons Network^™

Trēfolio: Protecting Trees Through Emotional Connections And Greater Awareness, Surudhakeerthi Sivakumar

Theses

Trees are being burned, degraded, and logged at astonishing rates. 80% of the world’s forests are already destroyed. It is estimated that within 100 years there will be no rainforests left. Urbanization, Mining, Fires, Logging, and Agricultural activities are all to blame for this destruction (Vidal 2017).

The first step in solving this problem is to raise awareness. Each tree is unique, and every tree has an interesting story to tell. When people realize this and start building a personal connection with the trees around them, they will naturally develop a protective instinct towards the trees they like. The goal …

Rover: A Virtual Reality Puzzle Game About Creating An Experience That Helps The Player Rediscover Something About Themselves, Like Dream And Family., Shengjie Liu

Theses

With the development of virtual reality technology, VR is currently replacing old systems and modifying practices and processes in many fields, such as automotive, healthcare, training and psychological therapies (Salanitri et al., 2018). Amongst these fields, the industry of games particularly enjoys an increasingly mature technique in virtual reality technology. It is in no small part because such technology provides an immersive experience during the games, and it in turn enhances players’ comprehension upon the affections incurred in the games. Encountered with such an emerging visual carrier, many products and programs await creation. Throughout this project, motion patterns and visual …

Understanding Culture Through Traditional Chinese Fairy Tales: A Study On The Effects Of Chinese Fairy Tale Characters On Audience Perception Of Culture, Bochuan Li

Theses

Classic of Mountains and Seas is probably one of the most ancient books about geography. The history of this book dates back to the Zhou Dynasty (1134 BC to 256 BC) or even earlier. Classic of Mountains and Seas is structured with 18 fascicles and has remained generally unaltered since the Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368). This book is not a narrative; it details descriptions of locations in the mountains, seas, lands, and wilderness. The descriptions are usually about medicines, monsters, and geological features. Many of the descriptions are very mundane. Chapters follow the same pattern, and the whole book consists of …

Augmented Reality: Will Burtin - The Past Becomes The Future, John Edward Koegel

Theses

This thesis work concentrated on imperative historical content, extensive design research, and Microsoft HoloLens technology (microsoft.com/en-us/hololens). Archival content and technology were brought together to effectively develop a viable augmented environment in which to enrich archival experiences with the potential to be accessible by anyone, anywhere, at any time. For the first time since the original exhibit installation in 1971, viewers can now visit the AIGA Exhibit,

The Communication of Knowledge (http://library.rit.edu/gda/designers/will-burtin). The exhibit presented a summary of pioneering American graphic designer Will Burtin’s innovative design career which has now been regenerated in its original scale and dimensions to demonstrate how …

Evolution Of Garamond: An Interactive Timeline Demonstrating The Evolution Of Garamond, Yeseul Son

Theses

Typography is an essential subject that every visual communication design (VCD) student should learn to be a professional. The knowledge and skill of typography can be required in any type of VCD project such as in branding, interaction, or motion graphics design. In consequence, even when VCD students focus on specific fields, polishing their knowledge and skills of the subject can help them become thriving practitioners. This thesis aims to pique their interests in typography, which could help motivate them to self-study the subject, by illustrating the evolution of Garamond: a name of typeface that is descended from letters designed …

Système, Trupti Pomaje

Theses

In today’s throwaway world, the rate at which and the amount of goods that are getting discarded has developed an alarming situation. Electronic industry has evolved rapidly since the invention of transistors in 1947. From these days onwards, efforts have been taken to make the products more efficient in terms of their performance, reduce design and production cost and have higher profit margins. However, this has led to products being designed in a way which makes people want to dispose them early, in turn making them part of waste after usage. Electronic products contain certain materials and components which are …

24 Jie Qi Journey: Learning Jie Qi Culture And Living A Healthy Life, Yuqi Xiao

Theses

This project aims to explore new ways to spread traditional culture of Jie Qi and to teach a healthy lifestyle according the theory of Jie Qi. The project provides comprehensive design solutions through a website to remedy the problem of ineffective learning of complex knowledge from books and lack of communication. The website creates a virtual visual environment through interactive design that offer users a playful journey through an introduction of Jie Qi.

Jie Qi is a historic and significant invention. Based on observations of the sun’s movement integrated with natural phenomenon, starting about 3000 years ago, the ancient Chinese …

Heymoe: Leveraging Virtual Robot And Game Mechanics In Mobile Prototype Application Design For Chinese Language Learning, Boxiao Gong

Theses

With the growth of internet technology, individuals currently have a better experience in using interactive systems like desktop computer software or mobile device applications than ever before. Moreover, using mobile phones in learning activities is becoming increasingly popular. However, the learning applications today do not fully meet the learner’s needs, especially for young adults who have some interest but lack fundamental knowledge in their study subjects. Combining mobile phone technology and game elements could make it possible to solve this problem. In this way, the limitations of location and the sometimes boring nature of the learning activities could be efficiently …

The Graphic Design Archive: Generating Higher Levels Of Scholarship Through A User Experience Approach To Scholarly Image Database Design, Jenna Shay

Theses

Innovations in the user experiences of digital image collections have taken image-based searching from the realm of basic one-way searches and sorts and delivered users a new world of dynamic and interactive explorations that offer mechanisms for higher-level cognitive functions such as comparing, analyzing, sorting, sharing, designing, and creating in an intuitive environment. While innovations in image search functionality often occur first in non-academic applications (e.g., social media), image archives meant to amasse and preserve visual information for the ages would benefit by adopting and adapting search innovations.

Students and scholars that access image-based archives of information to gather resources …

Uses And Gratification Of Posting Selfies On Social Media, Amanda Kearney

Theses

Selfies have become an easy and instantaneous form of self-expression and communication. Posting selfies to various social media platforms has become wildly popular and socially accepted in the digital age. This study investigated the motivation behind posting selfies to Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat using the framework of uses and gratification theory. This study also compared differences in gratification sought from individual social media platforms. A cross-sectional survey shared on Facebook using a snowball sampling method recruited participants who post at least one selfie per week (N = 156). Factor analysis revealed five gratifications for posting selfies to social media: attention …

Team Queue: A Mobile Application Which Provides A Third Party Stage For An E-Sports Service Provider, Mengying Wang

Theses

E-Sports, known as electronic sports, professional video gaming or pro gaming, refers to the use of video games for sports. In today’s a growing economy, there is a continuous strengthening of the E-Sports industry; E-Sports has officially become a kind of sports. Believe or not, E-Sports has an incredible market share in the gaming market. In 2017, E-Sport the grew of 41.3 % over last year, which equates up the value of $696 million (NewZoo, 2017).

According to 2017 Global E-Sports Market Report (NewZoo, 2017), day, worldwide, there are E-Sports games held every day. It also reported that 67 million …

Catpanion: A Ui/Ux Ios-Based App Design To Support Cat Adoptions, Chenchen Ji

Theses

Homeless and abandoned cats are becoming an issue in urban areas around the world: a majority of them may carry illnesses that may lead to infectious diseases. Once back in the wild, cats may also harm the ecological equilibrium of urban areas as they are known to be hunters of birds and smaller mammals.

The popularity of online cat-related material has ballooned over the past decade. Within the confines of social media, cat-related matters have gained an enormous amount of attention. Due to the increase in cat enthusiasts, celebrities occasionally help post information about cats and have even helped ask …

Hangout! A Comprehensive Outdoor Activity Planner & Information Sharing Platform, Yani Qu

Theses

Hangout! is a mobile social-activity app, encouraging users to connect with friends and family. Users can specify their preferred leisure activity, whether that may be camping or caving, kayaking or surfing, running or rock climbing—whatever type of fun they are looking for. Combining a GPS location and a user’s history of outside recreational experiences, the app provides news about the area in real time, along with any emergency notifications for issuing caution.

As the name implies, Hangout! is an application celebrating the recreational places you frequent and the people you socialize with. High-quality imagery and video helps bolster a high …

Oliver's Rumination: A Short Video Game About Failure, Shaemus Spencer

Theses

Studying and working in a creative field requires designers and artists to produce consistently high-level, novel work. In some cases, taking risks to pursue new concepts, methods, or products is highly valued. At the same time, not all companies, students, or individual artists have the resources to risk should their exploration fail. What remains is a crossroad: creative professionals and students are rewarded for taking risks, but are often unable to do so because the possibility of failure carries too much weight.

Changing the way creators see failure could revolutionize the way they work. By accepting and incorporating failure into …

Velleity, Yiyun Chen

Theses

The work Velleity is an installation of photographs presented on the gallery wall along with a photobook, which explore the process of self-reflection and self-discovery. This experimental work is a form of meditation, which reveals itself through the process of walking photographing, and repurposing into a work of art. The photobook, with its textual references and adaptation of color, develops the concept of the images and text as the language to describe the seemingly unexceptional moments of everyday life. Visualizing the experience as a person navigating different cultures, social expectations, and realities, ponders my displacement in the past and present, …

Piggy Pennies: An Interactive Piggy Bank To Help Children Learn Money Management, Yao Tong

Theses

Wealth management skill has turned out to be one of the most crucial skills for every young people. A good habit of wealth

management would bene­t people on a larger scale in wealth growth and life quality. In this case, it would be most bene­cial to educate people as early as when they are still children. Children usually do not understand where money comes from and how to spend it by nature. However, multiple challenges arise when parents realize the importance of the education of money management skills and teach their children. These challenges include but are not limited to, …

A New Platform For Knee Surgery Patient Rehabilitation, Motivating Mirror: Providing An Interactive Experience To Knee Surgery Patients To Assist Them With A More Effective Rehabilitation., Yu He

Theses

There are many tools for knee injury patients to use for rehabilitation. Both Physical Therapists and Occupational Therapists work with patients on rehabilitation to help them recover, bring them back from illness or injury. For knee surgery patients, they will go through rehabilitation including CPM (Continuous passive movement) and exercises assigned by PT (Physical Therapists) to improve recovery.

CPM is a passive motion that a machine forces patients to do, and along with and after that, patients need to be active to do other exercises themselves. Lots of patients run into trouble when rehabbing. Some of them refuse to do …

Think And Stop: Share Your Knowledge To Help Others, Unez Akbar

Theses

Often, individuals develop habits that do not seem to have an adverse effect initially. However, these habits may lead to critical problems in the long run. It is important to create awareness about these critical problems as unawareness would lead to major challenges in the future.

"Think and Stop” is a social responsibility campaign that focuses on creating awareness amongst people about everyday facts.

The campaign would share some existing facts on specific topics such as eating disorder, harmful effects of wearing heels every day and excessive use of mint.

This thesis investigated how big these problems could become if …

Vrent: A New Interactive & Immersive Rental Space Experience, Wenhan Lin

Theses

According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, there are more than 18.2 million college students in the United States, including both out- of-state students and international students (Drew, 2013). While trying to find a space to live is a difficult process for anyone, it is especially painful for international students. Housing agencies are also tasked with providing accurate information to potential tenants coming from different cultural backgrounds, which can be challenging on their part. This project sought to not only solve this problem, but also enhance the experience of house- hunting for international students.

The overall purpose of this …

C H R O N O S P A C E Living In The Moment: Metaphorical Motion Design, Guan-Huei Wu

Theses

Live in the present. People often put too much emphasis on their past mistakes or planning for what their future may hold. We are living in the present and should focus on “The Now.” The present is the key to our future. Everything that happened in the past has shaped where people are now in the present.

People try to erase all the bad experiences and save only the good ones. However, everything that has happened, both positive and negative, provides some intrinsic value to people. The past is unchangeable. The future is untouchable. The present is what you can …

Ancient Chinese Tombs: Western Han Dynasty Chapter, Yaling Zhang

Theses

The study of history is one way of preserving human culture. In China, a country with thousands of years long history, a vast number of historical events have been recorded in different literary works, including history books, fictions, biographies, and so on. However, we still need evidence to support or verify those literatures.

One physical evidence are antiques excavated from tombs of different dynasties. The ancient tomb mirrors a micro society of a certain dynasty. This project presented in this study is a 3D environmental design, comprised of four 3D scenes in high quality rendering to show the architecture and …

Moodboard: A Digital Solution For The Work-Life Balance In An Advertising Agency, Shalaka Shantaram Haldankar

Theses

The long working hours prevalent in the advertising industry is a well-known fact. It has become a common practice in agencies for quite a while now, leading to work-life imbalance for employees. The advertising agencies follow this practice, not because of its effectiveness, but because that’s what everyone else does. They completely ignore the fact that short breaks from work can increase productivity. A common belief of the industry is that the more nights/weekends you spend at work, the more productive you are. Research proves such work stress affects your personal life and health.

The goal of this thesis is …

Food Watch: Helping People To Live A Healthy Life, Jiaqi Yang

Theses

Food is one of the great pleasures of life. However, due to cultural backgrounds and physical conditions, the same food is not suitable for all consumers. Peanuts, dairy products, and wheat can be deadly for people with food allergies. These consumers must carefully check the ingredients of all of their food.

This article outlines a system that combines product labeling and mobile technology to help those with food allergies and food intolerances easily manage their diet and protect their health.

With this new system, a user with dietary restrictions only needs to scan a label barcode with a mobile phone …

Pixel: Building A Dyslexic Child's Mind, Aparna Natraj

Theses

One in five students, or 15-20% of the population, has a language based learning disability. Dyslexia is the most common of the language based learning disabilities. Dyslexia is mainly a problem with reading accurately and fluently — Accuracy being identified as Letter Recognition and Fluency as Word Recognition.

This thesis looked into various educational applications that help dyslexic children and identified that they rely heavily on intensive instruction in phonetic code and the learning method employed by these applications do not create a lasting impact. The proposed solution integrated the symbol mastery method of learning to create a new digital …

Vu: Integrating Ar Technology And Interaction Into An Event Planning App, Yun Liu

Theses

Planning a social event can be expensive and time consuming. To minimalize the risk of event problems, the organizer can consult professional event planners. However, a consultant can also be costly. Therefore, purchasing decor, food, and other items, without

knowing if they look right or fit the venue, is a guessing game, and the game could be an expensive one.

If the original plan cannot be completed efficiently, then modifying or improving these works are likely to cost extra time and funds. However, testing the revised plan may also increase the likelihood of risk in future.

By integrating Augmented Reality …

A Comprehensive Branding Strategy For The Vignelli Center For Design Studies, Hui Xu

Theses

This project presents solutions for Vignelli Center for Design Studies that address the question about the ineffective use of digital resources and lack of communications with users though the website. The results provide design solutions for both web and mobile users, aiming to improve the user experience and creatre an lasting impression on the audience.

This project creates a comprehensive branding strategy that enables the Vignelli Center to expand its reach and build a powerful connection to both existing and future audience. It also builds a consistent brand system across different platforms. Furthermore, this project demonstrates the importance of utilizing …

Reborn Of The Beauty, Ting Hsuan Tsao

Theses

Nowadays, 3D techniques play an important role in the reproduction of history and culture on screen. Modeling and 3D visual effects, using technical tools and other computer methods to achieve high returns from the movie industry, have become prominent in today’s technological trends.

Taiwan has always been identified as a province of China. The island nation, however, has its own unique culture and history. With the growing number of people emigrating to Taiwan annually, the opportunity to share our story has grown as well. In this regard, the 3D technique offers useful ways to bring the past back to life, …

Space Journey: Encouraging Astronomy Education And Space Exploration Through An Interactive Experiential Design Installation Of An Astronaut Training Program, Maria Gabriela Sanchez Angulo

Theses

Space journey is an interactive experiential design installation that explores the field of Astronomy and astronaut training programs, to encourage younger generations to follow scientific and astronomy education. This project explored, the boundaries of the interactive user experience along with projection design to learn, discover and experience using a gesture-based interface creating an immersive experience.

Astronomy as a scientific field, has always had a significant impact on the worldview, it explores the wonders of the universe and its countless celestial objects, through its multiples researches, it has been used to solve unknown questions about the evolution and it has been …

Paleo Journey: An Interactive Paleolithic Cave Art Experience. Using The User Experience (Ux) Design Process To Develop An Interactive And Immersive Paleolithic Cave Art Exhibit Suitable For Children Between Five (5) And Seven (7) Years Old., James J. Parrillo

Theses

Most European caves containing Paleolithic cave art paintings (dating from approximately 10,000 – 50,000 years BP) are no longer accessible to the general public, and their visitor centers often require lengthy travel for tourists. In addition, the interactivity associated with these exhibits largely focus upon computer screens, and not a tactile interface. This Thesis project seeks to create a prototype of a tactile interface on a mock cave surface using projection mapping and motion tracking.

In developing this exhibit, the user experience (UX) design process was used as a methodology for defining, researching and co-designing for a particular user segment. …

Virtual Notes: Projected Note-Taking System Design, Yiran Lu

Theses

Currently, traditional devices such as paper, notebooks and textbooks, and electronic devices such as computers and tablets, are the most common media people choose to take notes on. However, there is no device designed only for note-taking with full functionalities. The project Virtual Notes is designed for people to have a much better, effortless experience on taking notes. Implemented with projector, sensor and camera, Virtual Notes offers users a projected note-taking platform. With Virtual Notes, users can take notes on desks, paper or even textbooks without actually leaving a single mark.

The thesis project is undertaken independently and engaged in …