Team Homemade Pride: Reframe

In light of recent talks with the case manager at the Montrose Center for the Rapid Rehousing Program, we have truly been made to reframe or die. While we originally thought that we would be designing to give users autonomy over their own spaces to grant authority and development of identity, we learned that there are greater needs at hand. Janise, the case manager, told us that many of the current youths in the rapid rehousing program are either pregnant, have children, and do not have their GEDs. With this contradicting the steadfast underlying assumption about gender and identity and … Continue reading Team Homemade Pride: Reframe

Team Tools for the Homeless: REFRAME

This week, our team met to reframe our project! 2 key insights that are driving our design process forward are: There are many short-term solutions to water scarcity (boy scout troops, volunteers, etc.), but few long term solutions in Houston Limited access to water affects the homeless in ways more than just dehydration, most notably affecting hygiene (ability to brush teeth, wash hands, shower, etc.) and while Star of Hope hands out hygiene bags, many of the items are unusable without water During this meeting we also established a few overarching short and long term measures of success based on … Continue reading Team Tools for the Homeless: REFRAME

ºººboxWaterººº reFrame

Blog post 2/24 Insights This past week, we continued to gain information about water consumption, this time focusing specifically on Rice’s own water usage. Allison conducted an excellent interview with Rice sustainability director Richard Johnson and compiled many insights for us to use as inspiration regarding specific water usage data at Rice, including that Rice uses a quarter of a billion gallons of water every year! Furthermore, Rice gets water through 3 different meters: domestic, irrigation, and emergency, and some of them have more narrowed down meters across campus, which could supply specific data for us to use in our … Continue reading ºººboxWaterººº reFrame

Team Design Journal: REFRAME

After a fruitful immerse phase, we sat down and synthesized the results of both our personal, 1-1 interviews with other studios as well as the survey we sent out to a variety of national projects. The first key insight we gained from this research was that studios have a problem with recruitment/retention, as many students lack a fundamental understanding about what DFA does, and many students who are part of the organization end up dropping quickly when the workload becomes too much. Secondly, it seems that DFA studios have problems recruiting community partners, as many partners do not know how … Continue reading Team Design Journal: REFRAME

Team Writing Utensil: REFRAME

This week we focused on reframe! We worked to scope down our problem and problem space to a specific How Can We from our research insights. The key insights that will be driving our design process forward are: Speed can be acquired, but comfort and durability is essential to achieve that. The ability to put on and remove the device as well as change out the writing utensil in current solutions requires fine motor control that the users most likely do not have. Necessary to help users pick up and choose a writing utensil to work with. We came up … Continue reading Team Writing Utensil: REFRAME

Hermann Park : REFRAME

This week we finally had the opportunity to meet our community partner Hermann Park Conservancy! Although, we almost got lost on the way,  we were on time for our meeting. Julia McGowen, who is the Marketing and Communications Manager of Hermann Park Conservancy, introduced us to David Renninger, Director of Operations and Doreen Stoller, the President of Hermann Park Conservancy. During the meeting we were able to observe three different perspectives, but a unified definition of sustainability. HPC defined sustainability as balancing  health, social, economical and environmental benefits. They explained that the community has been part of keeping the park … Continue reading Hermann Park : REFRAME

Dish Drop ReDesign: REFRAME Community Studio

This is the last workshop in the UNDERSTAND phase of the design process. During this studio we will be synthesizing our key insights and deciding on how exactly we are going to narrow the problem before we build. The primary results of this studio should be creating a testable how can we statement. In other words, a question that identifies a user, behavior, and place with a measurable action associated with it. Further Research Key Insights Dish drop areas get emptied out very frequently during meal times as employees rotate to each dish disposal area. During this time, the cart … Continue reading Dish Drop ReDesign: REFRAME Community Studio