Driving Question: How might we produce a product or concept that contributes to a more sustainable fashion future?

What were your goals for this module? How did you achieve them?

Across Africa, traditional prints are integral to feelings of belonging to a group, defining identities, and showing who you are. For generations, cultures around the continent have traditionally made textiles. Using my brand, I hope to show homage to these cultures and disseminate the stories behind their textiles while also using fashion as a catalyst for change to encourage more women to engage in more physical fitness.

For this project, I designed two collections for my activewear brand, Jarabi Fitness, paying homage to traditional African textiles and celebrating African culture and heritage. The designs included West Africa Kente prints and Dashiki prints. Using my platform, I also created blog posts detailing the cultural significance of the prints.

What did you learn about yourself or about your creative process or about your medium?

I learned that my creative process tends to veer towards putting hours of work in on one day when I feel motivated, as opposed to stretching my work out over time. Once I feel a jolt of motivation, I’m able to get a lot of things done.

Driving Question: How might we produce a product or concept that contributes to a more sustainable fashion future?

What were your goals for this module? How did you achieve them?

I made a magazine-like platform that showcases my process through creating the sketches, from my research on sustainable fabrics, why I chose the points from the fashion manifesto and finally each design allocated to the material they are made from. One of my main focuses for the module was to make sure that people embraced using sustainable materials in their designs and creations. I also wanted to include the theme of simplicity, not that trendy.

I guess I could say I was able to learn new art skills like making art sketches and a bit of digital art. I think I have a good understanding of what sustainable materials are best for the fashion industry, which makes sense, because combining sustainability into my designs was my main focus for the summative assessment.

What did you learn about yourself or about your creative process or about your medium?

I got to learn how to work with digital designing through Illustrator and Photoshop. However, it’s still a growing skill for me so I wasn’t able to showcase it for my final product, but I hope to continue improving on it. Making digital art made me realize that there is more to just drawing and painting-basically all the physical work-that can also be expressed in computers which is cool!

I also learned that it’s helpful to look at others’ work for guidance.

Driving Question: How can we think critically to effectively inform citizens in a media manipulated world?

Summative Assessment: You can find their final product on Instagram.

What were your goals for this module? How did you achieve them?

Our goal was to change the narrative behind protest art being seen as performative and vandalism. We want to show the impact protest art had on protest movements, so we decided to create an Instagram page where we showed examples of its impact and us breaking down the narrative.

What did you learn about yourself or about your creative process or about your medium?

We learned key social media skills on how to present an idea on a platform such as Instagram and how social media can be used to inform people on important matters.

Driving Question: In what ways can the philosophy of decentralization and blockchain technologies be catalysts for disruption and efficiency within the current modus operations of the business world?

During their Panama term, Che and Scott elected to develop a game that gamifies the backend of Blockchain to simplify and educate users on how blockchain really works.

The game concept they developed is Metaminers, which aims to have users build a blockchain together with their friends. Users add to the chain by playing minigames, receiving rewards for completing entire blocks. Unlocking blocks leads to a chest containing rewardables that can be used to help solve problems easier in the future. As part of their process, Che and Scott spent quite a bit of time developing a wireframe of their product including graphics and other assets, examples of which you can see below. For their smart contract, they chose to mirror the inherent ethics held by founder Satoshi Nakamoto during the creation of Blockchain.

Click the image caption to view their site:

Maria decided to tackle two topics at once: 1) most people have a misunderstanding of economic issues and 2) most game companies are greedy, spamming their “free” products with exclusive content. Their solution was to “create a multiplayer game owned and updated by the players where gamification is used not to make customers spend money, but to solve issues with the economic system.” In their project, the game is owned by the community and the community decides.

Driving Question: What are the unique properties of a meal/dish from my culture and how can I share that with the world?

Project Description: This module was about exploring my culture and highlighting our unique characteristics. They could be from language or family to religion and traditions. I was looking for a dish that is important to me and represents a big part of my culture. My final product for the project is a video explaining the importance of my dish, pan de muerto, and how to do it step by step.

Project Reflection: “I enjoyed learned about my culture and the origin of many of my traditions. Baking pan de muerto and recording the process was challenging and exciting at the same time. I learned how to communicate in a simple and interesting way.” -Marily

Driving Question: How can I address some of the present threats to global health while promoting human rights and social progress?

Project Description: My project is a policy brief about the Malaria situation in Congo. It includes its nature and magnitude, the most affected populations, the socio-economic consequences, and the potential solution to reduce the burden. The policy aims to convince the finance Minister of Congo to invest in solutions for Malaria.

Project Reflection: “I enjoyed hearing from my peers how the health care systems function in different countries. A challenge was writing in the concise and precise way required for the policy brief.” -Sofia W.

Driving Question: How might we collaboratively implement a design-thinking process to meet the needs of the community we serve?

What were your goals for this module? How did you achieve them?

For this module, we all had a common goal, create a fun product for young people that will help them connect with themselves, so we produced a notebook with a lot of cool stuff in it.

What did you learn about yourself or about your creative process or about your medium?

I enjoyed researching and designing the driving questions for the journal. It was really insightful for me because I was basing what we had learned from the interviews and shaping it into something our users could interact with. I like that we were able to refine our product based on the feedback we got. At first, I thought that it would be hard to change all our work for the comments, but it turns out that it was beneficial. It made our vibey journal better.

Driving Question: How might we collaboratively implement a design-thinking process to meet the needs of the community we serve?

What were your goals for this module? How did you achieve them?

Our goal was to improve effective communication. We worked as a team, and we upheld our working team agreement, which was to be respectful and honest to all group members.

What did you learn about yourself or about your creative process or about your medium?

We learned the core concepts of the design thinking process and how to apply it to other areas of our lives. We learned efficiency and developed a specialist level of teaming and collaboration 21st-century skills.

Instagram Link: https://www.instagram.com/thiink.about.us/

Driving Question: How might we collaboratively implement a design-thinking process to meet the needs of the community we serve?

What were your goals for this module? How did you achieve them?

As a group, our main goal was to develop a summative product that tackled our chosen issue – the lack of youth involvement in politics. We believe that our Instagram page’s have been effective in doing that, as it’s a medium present in teenagers’ lives, so we can spread politics and share important things with them in an easier way. The other goal was to create a pleasant work environment, with an equilibrated and smart distribution of work. By scheduling weekly meetings and creating a full value agreement at the beginning of the module, we managed to count each other accountable and create a safe work environment in which everyone felt comfortable to contribute

What did you learn about yourself or about your creative process or about your medium?

We were able to learn the design thinking process through our module and later, apply it in our summative project. We searched through multiple creative ways to solve our problem but finally agreed on making an Instagram account with the independence of choosing a state of the world to focus on and post about. I personally learned that I can listen to my teammates and agree collectively on a subject. I have become more open to discussing others’ ideas and have a different mindset when approaching these projects.

What did you learn about yourself, your creative process, or about your medium?

We were able to learn the design-thinking process through our module and later, apply it in our summative project. We searched through multiple creative ways to solve our problem, but finally agreed on making an instagram account with the independence of choosing a state of the world to focus on and post about. I personally learned that I am able to listen to my teammates and agree collectively on a subject. I have become more open to discussing others ideas and have a different mindset when approaching these projects.

What did this project mean to you?

This project meant us learning about our generation and the issues we face and think of ways to make our generation aware the issues.