Categories
PORTFOLIO Research

RESEARCH STUDY: Practices of Repair & Green DIY – SFU

Simon Fraser University, SIAT, PhD Studies, Summer 2012 – Fall 2013

At the Everyday Design Studio we conducted two different studies of green practices: the practice of everyday repair and the practice of green-DIY. These two studies show the range and differences between practices of sustainability. The Everyday Repair Study was conducted prior to me coming to SIAT. The Green-DIY study, which I was part of, aims at understanding the motivations, objects, tools, and skills used by green enthusiasts (individuals who create projects that support a sustainable lifestyle).

We were mostly interested in understanding the underlying practices of green enthusiasts, using green blogs  as an entryway to observe how people make green projects. We narrowed the results to 5 Web sites: Crafting a Green World, Green Upgrader, Instructables, Planet Green, and Simple Organic.

We then looked at the study data with a framework of Theories of Social Practice differenciating between three practice elements: Competences, Material, Meaning. It showed that in Green DIY practices meaning plays a stronger role than competences, for instance, often enthusiasts are willing to learn new skills if that will enable them to make a sustainable project. More on those studies can be read in the article below.

We published this article on this project:

Wakkary, R., Desjardins, A., Hauser, S. & Maestri, L. (2013) A Sustainable Design Fiction: Green Practices. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI). 20, 4, Article 23 (2013). (34pgs)

Categories
PORTFOLIO Teaching

STUDIO COURSE: Portfolio Design Studio Workshop – SFU

Together with Markus Lorenz Schilling I taught a studio course on Portfolio Design at SIAT, Summer 2013. Undergraduates and graduate students took the studio class.

See our initial course proposal for the course outline mapped to a design process as a PDF HERE or in the images below. And here are slides from our first two sessions: (1), (2).

 

Categories
PORTFOLIO Teaching

BA DESIGN STUDIO COURSE: Capstone Team Mentoring – SFU

In the Spring term 2013 I mentored a project team in their capstone project. I met with them every other week and tried mentor them throughout their design process.

 

Categories
PORTFOLIO Research Teaching

CLASSROOM RESEARCH: Design Activism & HCI Education – SFU

Simon Fraser University, SIAT, PhD Studies, Fall 2012 – Spring 2013

Design activism has a recognized role in design disciplines such as graphic design, sustainable design and architecture. Yet, it has less prominence within HCI (Human-Computer Interaction). Although, design activism has been present in HCI work, it has not been articulated as such. For instance, sustainable HCI and Sustainable Interaction Design are well-known research areas in HCI that involve design activism. In a paper published in 2013, we present two case studies that show design activism in the classroom as examples from which to learn. We highlight themes and observations to encourage future articulation and practice of design activism in HCI and HCI education.

Hauser, S., Desjardins, A. & Wakkary, R. (2013). Design Activism in the HCI Classroom. In Proc. of CHI EA’13. ACM, NY, USA, pp. 2119-2128. (9 pgs, alt.chi)

One of our Case Study is the course Change Lab, which Audrey and I took as participant observers. Audrey and I also co-authored a book chapter, in which we share our experience of that.

Desjardins, A., Hauser, S., McRae, J. A., Ormond, C. G., Rogers, D., & Zandvliet, D. B. (2015). Harnessing Youth Activism with/in Undergraduate Education: A Case Study of Change Lab. In EcoJustice, Citizen Science and Youth Activism (pp. 349-361). Springer International Publishing.

Project in collaboration with Audrey Desjardins and Ron Wakkary at Simon Fraser University, SIAT.

Categories
PORTFOLIO Research

RESEARCH STUDY: car2go EcoScore, Before-After-Control-Impact Study – SFU

Simon Fraser University, SIAT, Course on quantitative research methods. Instructor: Professor Bernhard Riecke

I got the chance to collaborate with the carsharing company car2go in Vancouver. I conducted a Before-After-Control-Impact (BACI) Study investigating the impact of car2go’s Eco-Score on members driving behaviour.

The Eco-Score monitors the efficiency of the members driving style by measuring the accelerations, the breaking maneuvers, and the overall driving style for the most efficient fuel economy. It calculates Eco-Scores and presents them to the driver. The displays in the cars show how efficient the driving style is by showing percentage values of the three categories acceleration, evenness of driving, the vehicles roll-out. Each value is illustrated with a picture of a tree, which gets bigger with better values.

Here is the final class paper of this work.

Categories
Craft, DIY & Making Design PORTFOLIO

GRAPHIC DESIGN: Zimt Chocolate Packaging – Vancouver

My good friend Emma makes organic, raw, vegan, fair-trade chocolate. Her companies name is Zimt. I did some work on her logo and also re-designed her packaging. Honestly, this is the best chocolate in the world! You have got to try it! Buy it at Whole Foods in Canada or online: www.zimt.ca

Categories
PORTFOLIO Research

RESEARCH STUDY: Emergency Management Center Vancouver – SFU

Simon Fraser University, SIAT, PHD student work, Research Assistant, Spring 2012, Summer 2012

In my first three terms as a Ph.D. student at SIAT I had a cooperative Research Assistantship with Dr. Brian Fisher and Dr. Ron Wakkary. I worked in the field of Interaction Design and Visual Analytics (VA) for Emergency Management.

We observed the entire planning process of the emergency management planning of the City of Vancouver for the “Celebration of Lights” event in the summer. We looked at the process from a design perspective and then looked into discovering and articulating challenges that could be addressed in future research. We collected and documented a lot of data to the Visual Analytics group at SIAT.

I worked in collaboration with SIAT student Sara Salevati on this project.

Categories
Design Information Systems PORTFOLIO

INFO VISUALIZATION: Emergency Management – SFU

Simon Fraser University, SIAT, PHD student work, Research Assistant, Fall 2011

In my first three terms as a Ph.D. student at SIAT I had a cooperative Research Assistantship with Dr. Brian Fisher and Dr. Ron Wakkary. I worked in the field of Interaction Design and Visual Analytics (VA) for Emergency Management. Through ethnographic observations during the GreyCup activations of the Vancouver Emergency Operation Center (EOC) I started prototyping a VA tool for Situational Awareness with the consideration of integrating social media as a source of information. The tool presented scenarios of how to present and interact with situational reports that are pulled together through gathered information from multiple sources, including social media.

We presented a poster about this research at ISCRAM2012 (Integrative and Analytical Approaches to Crisis Response and Emergency Management Information Systems).

Calderon, N, Hauser, S., and Bartram, L., “Addressing Situational Awareness Analytical Systems: an Information Visualization Approach,” In Poster abstracts of the 9th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management 2012 (ISCRAM 2012). Vancouver, Canada.

 

Categories
Design PORTFOLIO Teaching

VISUAL DESIGN PROJECT: vvvv 360° Projection – HfG + Cocoon

vvvv development and 360° VJ performance with and for Cocoon Club Frankfurt, HfG Schwäbisch Gmünd -Interaction Design, Summer 2011.

Project guidance: Sabrina Hauser & Andreas Brendle | Project partner: Ivo Schüssler, Eno Henze, Ömer Erol

Students: Roman Grasy, Markus Lorenz Schilling, Jan Barth, Armin Kröner, Patric Sterrantino, Sofia Hnatiuk, Marcel Müller, Antonio Krämer Fernandez, David Abele, Phillipp Hogg, Adrian Abele.

 

(Music in the video: Tree Elves – Fortitude – Original Mix)

I initiated and guided this project of developing new visuals for the 360° projection wall system of the Cocoon Club in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. The clubs unique realtime-system is build on a network-setup with 21 projectors and 22 computers running an early version of the VJ System IRIS which is based on vvvv, a graphical programming environment.

During a three-month time period, the project team created 20 different patches (vvvv-applications) in several workshops and implemented them into the clubs system. Each patch has different parameters which can be controlled in realtime using IRIS.

Finally, the group performed on a friday night event as VJs at the Cocoon Club showing their results.

Categories
Information Systems PORTFOLIO

IMPLEMENTATION: Schedule- & Roomplanning System – HfG

Hochschule für Gestaltung (HfG) Schwäbisch Gmünd. February – July 2011. Lead of the project.

This project was done during my employment at the HfG. The school was in the need of an efficient schedule- and room-planning system. An academic assistant had been doing all the scheduling and planning in Adobe inDesign without any software helping with logic, issues etc! It was a very nerve-wrecking job to do over the summer. I felt I had to put my information science skills to use and help out.

I did a thorough research of different software options and settled for a collaboration with a company that had a product for high schools. It fit best with all the needs and wants we had at the HfG in terms of scheduling lecturers and Professors that are only available at certain times, because they are working in industry half of their time. My information science skills were extremely useful for this project. I lead this collaboration.

The implementation and all the work towards it took about 5 months and turned out to be a great success. The system is still in use.

HfG schedule with new system
HfG schedule with new system