Social Anxiety Short Term

The Goal: To create a better understanding of what it’s like to live with a social phobia and help distinguish social phobias from general shyness.

To do this I created a poster-book that provides a quick glimpse into what it is like to experience social anxiety. This is done through illustration and playful type. I tried to design this so that if someone just quickly opened it and skimmed it, they would still get the very basics. But if someone did want to know more, I also included some detailed text.

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My short-term project addresses the difficulties of educating adult women in Afghanistan, specifically, teaching them how to read. Life under Taliban rule has largely stripped them of human rights, including the right to an education, and because of this acquiring literacy has become more difficult. While the combined efforts of Prime Minister Karzai and the U.S. Government have done some good routing the Taliban from parts of the country, not everywhere is free, and even then remnants of fundamentalist thinking remain. 

However, despite these difficulties, people still have the chance to learn. It is not unheard of for literate women to teach other women how to read, sometimes in secret. The goal of my short-term project is to facilitate learning by creating a toolkit that allows women to practice even when not with a teacher.

The result of my project is my final prototype. It is designed to match the material of the burkas that many of the women have to wear. This makes it easily concealable within clothing, and that coupled with its light weight makes carrying it or hiding it easy. The kit comes in two parts that can be packaged together in a cloth.

The first part is a cloth wrap that holds dry erase crayons, pencils, a small magnifying glass, chalk, and sharpeners. The second part is a binder which contains a practice folder and a booklet. The practice folder is a cloth folder with acetate sewn into it. People can then take practice pages from the booklet and insert them into the folder, which allows them to use the dry erase crayons to practice over and over. The booklet is designed to contain a number of stories, poems, rhymes, et cetera that apply to different reading levels. The booklet provides help with pronunciation and syllables, and as a person completes each booklet, they may progress to a new level with slightly harder stories and so on. This helps keep them in the area of proximity, where they feel like they are succeeding, and that feeling helps motivate them to challenge themselves.

Sustainable Forest Management

My short term project focuses on deforestation in the Borneo rainforest. There are many aboriginal tribes living there that still depend on the resources for shelter, food, medicines, clothing, tools, and other cultural uses.

I used the Forest Stewardship Council’s current labeling system as an entry point. In doing so I was able to manipulate and refine an existing system. The existing system is as such, “Logging companies must follow the Indonesian government’s rules: no logging of endangered species or any tree under 50cm in diameter. The idea is to leave the forest healthy enough to regenerate so it will be productive and profitable well into the future.” The current labeling system is horrible. The tags are small, there is no oversight, the labels are often dismissed, and there is no connection to the local communities.

The iconographic system and toolkit I created for local communities and the Forest Stewardship council to provides a reconstruction of sustainable forestry labeling system based on use and species, addressing important resources for communities. This iconographic identification and forest protection system physically implemented on the land doubles as a subtle advocacy campaign. The toolkit will consist of stencils, tree bands, paint, instruction manuals (catering to FSC), and warning signage for those logging.

I am quite satisfied with the final outcome of my short term system. In terms of next steps and moving forward, I need to experiment with actual materials. I realized that when creating a stencil set for numbers, the alphabet needs to be modified to account for counters and negative spaces. Hierarchically I need to draw more attention to the fact that “THESE TREES CAN’T BE CUT DOWN IF LABELED”. Although I’m satisfied with my iconographic labeling system, I now realize I could have (and will) brought more attention to the fact that the trees can’t be cut down. I look forward to physically constructing my bands, labels, and signage.

These are photographs of the set of tools I made for helping adults who learn how to read get the opportunity to practice. Specifically, my project is aimed towards adult women in Afghanistan, who have very limited options for education. Teaching women in this situation how to read requires one-on-one instruction between parties who are already literate, who in most cases, are often women, since men are not allowed to be near women who are not in their family. My project aimed to making something that was low cost and easily manufactured. One of the most important aspects was the importance of being able to hide these work materials, which is why they are small and bound in the same fabric that is very popular in burkas. Because they are a similar color and light weight, it gives women the opportunity of concealing them within clothes or laundry.

The tool kit is in the form of a cloth in the same form of a burka. It is sewn up, very light weight and loose, and the only materials it needed for construction were simply needles, thread and fabric. Pockets inside hold a variety of tools learners can use to practice their reading and writing skills. Those tools are: Pencils, sharpeners, dry erase crayons, chalk, and a small magnifying glass for emphasizing certain words.

The binder is made out of nothing more than some cardboard, glue, and fabric. It encompasses the entire “book” and “practice book” side of this project. Essentially, it houses the content.

Inside the binder is a small fold-out booklet that can be easily removed. It consists of a back of fabric sewed around the edges to two rectangles of acetate. Papers from the “book” section can then be taken out, slid into this acetate cover, and used for practice.

The “book” in the binder is something easily changed out and used. It is held in place by simple metal clips, which makes it possible for one book to be exchanged for another as the user’s reading level progresses. Taking out sheets so that they can be put into the practice folder is easy, and putting them back in is easy, too.

All in all, this combination serves to give a low-cost collection of tools, booklets, and practice materials. It covers the major needs for a learner who isn’t supposed to be learning, including being hidden easily because of its design, and being light-weight enough to be unobtrusive. Any person could use this to easily practice when their teacher is not available, and the content provides incentive to do so.

The last three pictures are direct screenshots of the way the content inside the booklet is set up, and the ease of which the papers might be used for practice.

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