Design Thinking Education
As an undergraduate, I worked for a design thinking collaborative, called Design Bloc, as a TA. We ran workshops for students, faculty, hackathons, and businesses. I continue to run workshops whenever I can. We also managed classes held in our space and ran an undergraduate user research class. I was hired by Wayne Li (shown bottommost leftmost in the photo above) in a cohort with Risha Parikh, Taft Weber-Kilpack, Eric Kim.
During this time, I received some design thinking training with Stanford Design School's University Innovation Fellows program with the cohort. We completed a capstone project you can find here. I also received mentorship from Wayne Li.
Below are some of the projects and efforts I am most proud of.
University Innovation Fellows
I was sponsored with a cohort to complete a capstone project to become a University Innovation Fellow. At the completion of the project we flew to Stanford's Design School and underwent further training on site. Our capstone project focused on a class showcase for classes run out of Design Bloc.
Assisting Design Bloc Classes
During classes, I helped facilitate small group discussions and guided further research. I also graded assignments when necessary.
Designing for Better Transportation
One of the research projects I assisted with was in collaboration with MARTA Army, a non-profit dedicated to improving public transport in Atlanta. The end goal was to design three new bus stops that would be placed in Atlanta's West Side Provisions District. I assisted in technical workshops with students and showed them how to machine prototypes.
Art & Design
In collaboration with the High Museum of Art in Atlanta and a nearby high school, we created a small art exhibit in tribute to Yayoi Kusama by teaching students design thinking processes to generate designs.
Ideating and Designing for Education
As a fellow in the Sustainable Undergraduate Research Fellowship, we were responsible for designing an educational exhibit on sustainability for the new Kendada "net-zero" building on Georgia Tech's campus. I lead the team in a design thinking process to find what students would prefer and to ideate for the eventual exhibit. The final design was a "water clock" that displays the usage of water in the building.
Design Thinking for Interns
To introduce the concept of design thinking to fellow interns at Siemens, I asked company management if I could run a workshop for the fellow interns, who had primarily engineering backgrounds. They agreed, and I ran a two hour workshop with all the interns in my cohort.
P.S. Design Bloc
Renovating a dining hall into an innovation space
During my undergrad, I worked on a design innovation space as a member of an organization known as Design Bloc. We turned an old dining hall known as Woodruff into what is now known as Create-X and Design Bloc. The renovation required replacement of whiteboards, fixing tables and chairs, adhering pegboards to walls, and a ton of cleaning. The space is currently used as a classroom and design research space. It is also used by the entrepreneurship program at Georgia Tech.