The Beth-el Center:
Reducing Childhood Trauma in Homeless Shelters
Design Project Portfolio
Improve Family Eating Habits
This was a project prompted by the assignments in the IDEO course Insights and Innovation. After research, interviews, and empathy experiences I determined that a well designed grocery store could engage children and teach them lifelong healthy habits.
When children act out at grocery stores (often out of boredom) it encourages parents to leave quickly, or leave the children at home.
When children are engaged (and better behaved) parents are more likely to choose healthy meals over “quick” processed meals. This not only improves eating habits but also teaches the children good nutrition for the future.
My solution is an app that allows children to scan bar-codes, play games, and learn nutritional facts about the food.
Revamping Diversity and Inclusion
One of the first things I was drawn to as a new employee was the different Diversity Networks and Women's Affinity Group. However it quickly became clear that few individuals, particularly new employees, had enough information about the different organizations which was resulting in low engagement.
I identified a need, interviewed other new employees, pitched the concept of the Diversity Board and created an event that continues to bring in new members to affinity groups every quarter. Due to the success of my project I am now leading the roll out of similar events at all 3 corporate locations.
Rosie River Boots: Fashionable Steel Toed Boots
I have experience in architecture, construction and manufacturing and as an engineer I wear personal protective gear almost every day. Despite my background I always feel uncomfortable walking through an office, giving presentation, or speaking to my clients in clunky and chunky men’s work boots.
In fields still dominated by men it is important for women to feel like themselves and have the confidence that comes from dressing professionally (as women vs wearing clothing that looks better on their mail coworkers).
Realizing this need Rosie River Boots is a business I started to design and manufacture stylish steel-toed boots for women. As the founder I use user interviews to understand what our users really want and need, designed a social media strategy, stared a blog focused on our community and designed our website.
I now have a team to help me design the boots and a manufacture to produce them. We are currently in the iteration process and receiving feedback from our customers/users.
Furniture Design:
A Herb Garden
I have a growing interest in furniture design. I designed this planter based off several examples I found on Pinterest and my own needs. I used my construction knowledge and source pictures to design the planter and draw up my plans and cut lists.
This was a great chance to work through design basics and experiment with construction techniques and the result was an extremely practical Herb Garden Planter.
Yale Design For America Studio
As president of DFA and Project Lead, I helped pick projects, and keep up communication between community partners and project teams. I help ensure that the students learn design thinking, while the community partners can walk away with a possible solution to their problem.
Responsible for organizing projects, mentors, community partners, weekly lessons, events across Yale as well as communication with the National Chapter of Design for America.
Throughout the last two years we have increased our membership, added a 6 part design professional speaker series. We also do workshops teaching design thinking in the New Haven area.
Reducing Childhood trauma at the Beth-el Center
This project was focused on reducing the trauma felt by the children in homeless children.
We decided to try two different approaches to making the children feel more comfortable in their new surroundings.
We designed a rechargeable night light that could be placed in every room. When a leaf is removed from the stem it lights up and can be used as a nightlight to the bathroom in order to reduce recurrent bedwetting.
We also designed a coloring book that could be used to distract the kids in the intro session while simultaneously teaching them who works on staff and what some of the rules of the shelter are.
Encouraging Veterans to Workout at the Errera Community Center
At the Errera Community Center Veterans are provided with services for everything from housing placement, job training, and group therapy to gym membership.
Many of the veterans we interviewed said that they found it difficult to keep up their physical health due to medication they were taking and this often affected their ability to maintain jobs. Yet they didn't take advantage of the gym membership.
We built a bulletin board to display in the main room of the center in order to bring physical fitness into the every day conversation.
We also built a point tracking system that would light up and drop a ball through a track and into a team bucket. This would make getting exercise points (an existing system) exciting and visible.
DFA Clothing Closet
Yale Design for America's (DFA) Social Justice team focused on re-designing the only actively running clothing refuge program in the New Haven area.
St. Paul and St. James church in New Haven runs the Loaves and Fishes program as well as Joan's Closet. Joan's closet distributes donated clothes for free to all those in need, without discrimination.
DFA's job was to re-design the interior and sorting process for the Clothing Closet. We focused on streamlining the layout and flow of the system as well as the efficiency of the backroom sorting system.
The partnership between the DFA team and the Loaves and Fishes program was successful in winning $20,000 from the Walmart Food Pantry Holiday Makeover contest which enabled DFA to successfully deliver a complete upgraded design.
Improving the Voting Experience - Coffee Chats
As part of Design for America Leadership Studio a team of 5 of us tackled the question "How can We Improve the Voting Experience?
As part of a three day challenge we devised a system that would allow people to feel more educated about candidates and issues in local elections.
The result was 'Coffee Chats', stands at local coffee houses that offer various coffee sleeves color coded to the topic of interest. Each month new quotes, facts, and election reminders would be printed on the sleeves with the goal of sparking thought and providing a feeling of inclusion in local government.
The comments/quotes/information would be submitted by local officials or members of the community, and the most popular (voted on) in each category (health, environment, education, local news) would be printed on the coffee sleeves for the following month.
Hang Time
As part of Design for America Leadership Studio a team of 5 of us tackled the question "How Can We Improve Living with Down Syndrome?" Throughout the 3 day design sprint we designed Hang Time, a wrist band that allows children living with DS to better express their emotions without the need of explicit words or phrases.
The wrist band has a large watch face type dial that when spun clicks into different sections that project a color on the watch face representing their current feeling.
The band interfaces with a buddy band that can be worn by another child in order to improve understanding and encourage interaction and play, or by a teacher. In addition the device will include tracking software that allows parents, teachers, and doctors to track pulse rate, temperature, and mark episodes of uneasy; helping to provide a more comprehensive idea of what is causing the individual to feel uncomfortable.