Who are we?

Medha Gupta – I’m a sophomore at Sid Richardson majoring in Neuroscience and CAAM. This is my second semester on a DFA project and my first semester as a team lead! Outside of DFA you can probably find me in Coffeehouse working or binging the latest season of Grey’s Anatomy.

Elise Gibney – I am a returning freshman at Wiess studying Electrical Engineering with a focus on Neuroengineering. This is my first semester with DFA. I am excited to put my newfound health to good use in the community! I can also be found singing with the Rice Chorale or expanding my encyclopedic knowledge of musical theatre.

Christian Carr – I am a senior at Duncan majoring in English and Political Science. This is my second semester in DFA. When I’m not at DFA, you can find me making duct tape art (check out my insta @ductology )

Liseth Perez – I am a senior at Martel majoring in Psychology and minoring in Global Health Technologies. This is my first semester in DFA and I am really excited to use my previous design knowledge on a new project! Taco Bell is one of my favorite things, my O-week group name this year attest to it (Taco Bellbottoms).

 

Why are we working together? What are we working on?

We’re Team Thread Together, a team of four students in the Rice University DFA studio! The Community Cloth is a nonprofit organization that empowers refugee women to become part of Houston’s economy through their artisanal work. We are currently working on narrowing down our problem space to best determine how to increase community engagement for the Community Cloth. We hope to do this by sharing the stories of these female artisans with existing and potential customers.

 

What have we done so far?

As a team we have gone through the Community Cloth’s social media presence and website to better understand their current strategy for customer engagement. We have also begun to look into what organizations with similar missions such as RefuSHE and MataTraders do to connect (thread together ;)) their artisans and customers.

 

What questions do we have?

What does increased customer engagement look like? Who exactly are our community partner’s customers and what specifically is the ultimate goal?

How would we measure an increase in customer engagement?

How do we tell a good story? How in-depth should the stories about the artisans be? What does being an artisan mean to these woman?

What leads existing customers to choose these products over others?

What is the Community Cloth’s presence in the Houston artisan community?