Background

I'm not afraid of starting over. My life is constant change and I welcome it with adaptability, flexibility, and resilience. I enjoy being uncomfortable when things get challenging, because I know I'm growing. I'm always investing in myself and with my education.

Every year I revisit and reflect with the things I've been studying in my life. I want to understand what makes me a better human being, a collaborative designer, and an informed researcher.

See what's in my head.

Neri Oxman

"When I came to MIT, there were four rubrics: science, art, design, and technology. And as you entered your degree, whether it was a master's or a Ph.D., if you were a citizen in one domain, you were a traveler in the other."

— Neri Oxman

Description

Neri Oxman is an American–Israeli designer and professor at the MIT Media Lab, where she leads the Mediated Matter research group. She is known for art and architecture that combine design, biology, computing, and materials engineering.

What I'm Learning

As a previous pre-med student turned digital content marketer turned UX designer, I was very happy to learn about this woman.

My mother's career is a mixture of strategic business, entrepreneurship, and healthcare. My father was an engineer at Boeing and naturally gifted with the arts.

I always thought my myself as a combination of them both, and seeing Neri Oxman's breakdown of this process for the first time really made me feel connected, because it just made so much sense to me. I thought my thinking was categorized as "misfit" but I'm happy to see a professor outline what was in my head in such a clear manner.

Lusine

Description

Lusine is the stage name of Jeff McIlwain, an ambient/IDM musician. Effortlessly blurring the lines between techno, electro-pop and experimental composition, the Texas-raised/Seattle-based producer’s arrangements are meticulously constructed, but also filled with emotion and soul. Balancing focused programming with washy, less concrete sonics, he plays with the unexpected by drawing from slight variations on the same idea.

What I'm Learning

Music construction and deconstruction. I started playing the piano when I was six years old. Recently rediscovering my love for this instrument makes me appreciate the fundamentals of classical piano theory. His music also helps me reach a "flow state" as I'm designing, only expanding my creative process. I want to explore and translate what I learn on piano (analog) to Ableton (digital) this year.

Designing Universal Knowledge

By: Gerlinde Schuller (2008)

Description

Who is collecting the world’s knowledge? How is it structured and designed? Who determines the access of knowledge?

Designers and researchers from different fields have set standards for the classification and design of complex data collections and thus exerted an enormous influence on how knowledge is communicated. This facilitates knowledge transfer, but it also increases the danger of manipulation. Along with these aspects, the book also explores the possibilities of “universal design” and presents new approaches to visualizing complex information.

What I'm Learning

The author examines collections of knowledge such as archives, encyclopedias, data collections, and libraries that make knowledge accessible worldwide. This book helps me understand building design and internal systems from a human historical timeline POV with data visualization graphs. The A-Z format...I'm literally a kid again.

Designing Design

By: Kenya Hara (2007)

“White can be attained by blending all the colors of the spectrum together, or through the substraction of ink and all other pigments. In short, it is "all colors" and "no color" at the same time.”

— Kenya Hara

Description

Hara, born 1958, is a Japanese graphic designer and professor at the Musashino Art University. He for instance designed the opening and closing ceremony programs for the Nagano Winter Olympic games 1998. In 2001, Hara enrolled as a board member for the Japanese label MUJI and has considerably molded the identity of this successful corporation as communication and design advisor ever since.

What I'm Learning

White as a design concept. Lately I've been wearing a lot of white. I appreciate the color and study the psychology behind it.

In advertising, white is associated with coolness and cleanliness because it's the color of snow. You can use white to suggest simplicity in high-tech products. White is an appropriate color for charitable organizations; angels are usually imagined wearing white clothes.

Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature

By: Janine M. Benyus (2009)

Description

Biomimicry is rapidly transforming life on earth. Biomimics study nature's most successful ideas over the past 3.5 million years, and adapt them for human use. The results are revolutionizing how materials are invented and how we compute, heal ourselves, repair the environment, and feed the world.

Janine Benyus takes readers into the lab and in the field with maverick thinkers as they: discover miracle drugs by watching what chimps eat when they're sick; learn how to create by watching spiders weave fibers; harness energy by examining how a leaf converts sunlight into fuel in trillionths of a second; and many more examples.

What I'm Learning

Where to start? I'm very much fascinated by this book. Being someone who studied medicine, both Western and Eastern, and also as a yoga certified teacher, I really love the idea of blending nature with our man-made creations and technologies. Healing from the inside out.

Also reminds me of a book I read in my high school environmental science course, The World Without Us by Alan Weisman.