is it "goodbye" or is it "until we meet again"?

Sometimes I think my heart's too soft for it's own good.

CAAS Conference

My team and I are participating in the CAAS (Canadian Association of African Studies) conference hosted by Carleton University this week with our project. The topic is: Communicating Social Innovation; Co-developing New Products for the Disabled. Two of our friends from Uganda will be arriving tomorrow, so it will be nice to see their faces again.

For the roundtable discussion, we hope to cover:
1. How to improve communication in the co-development process?
2. How PWD’s (people with disabilities) in Uganda are not only looking for mobility aids, but also a way to gain more economic independence through the use of better mobility aids.
3. Communicating through physical prototyping and the branding of ideas. How to sustain innovative ideas and commercialization of such ideas.

I need to go do some prepping, but I hope I'll be able to share the good insights with you in a few days time!

driving in Seattle

My friends and I were driving in the city, lost, at night looking for a park and made a quick right turn into a small street. Once we turned, the road fell below us. We were at the top and it was so steep you couldn't even see the ground underneath. It really did feel like being at the top of a rollercoaster right before you plateau a bit and then plummet to other depths. I had my arms raised for the ride.

Notebooks

I've given many of my notebooks away to classmates because I make way more than I can use. They are mostly wallet sized, but I have a few that are a bit bigger that won't fit in your pocket. When I see postcard sized print media or paint chips, this is the first thing that comes to mind. "What will it look like as a notebook?" And then proceed to crop it in my mind. So these are the ones I have left:

^These are two different colours.

^to protect your notes!

^medium sized

^Transmediale,                                            ^KDDI studio

                                                                                                ^white cardstock, different sizes, x 20

Dean's award

My team and I won this year's Dean's award for Innovation through Collaboration!

Carleton Community Engagement Event

Our team participated in the Carleton Community Engagement, which was an event relating to projects that address accessibility within the university. Here's the blurb on the Carleton industrial design website. I've clipped it into this post because I'm not sure how long it will stay on the id-carleton site.

The School of Industrial Design, the READ Initiative and the CanUgan Disability Support Project display student design work done for people with disabilities in Uganda at the second annual Carleton University Community Engagement Event. The School has a long history of working on accessibility related projects and has a close working relationship with the Research Education Accessibility and Design initiative as well as community partners such as CanUgan. (Bjarki Hallgrimsson (SID), Alyssa Wongkee (SID), Dean Mellway (READ), Navin Parekh (CanUgan Disability Support Project)

http://www.id.carleton.ca/2013/04/15/carleton-university-community-engagement-event/

dumpling

Sometimes I just want to be wrapped up like a little dumpling. It's so tight and cosy in there.

nooo

We had a symposium today, presenting our seminar topic on crisis. We had guests on the panel, but they were not given a background on our seminar and we presented first. It was brutal...for all the wrong reasons.

maybe I should get that portfolio up...

Takeaway cards

I convinced my team to make takeaway cards for the exhibition, but most people saw the pile of cards and were too scared to take them, even though I put a sign that said, take one! I'm still convinced, however, that this is a good idea..

Final presentation, slides

The final presentation is a ten minute run with a small panel and classmates behind them. We presented as a group and then branched off into our individual projects. First starting with the tricycle, then my tool adaptation for livelihood, the solar panel charger, and lastly the rollator. With the limited time, I needed to be succinct so I chose to focus mainly on the final design decisions made and the reasons for those choices and concluded with it being open to the future, just as I had intended its design to be.