JV_2016

My Pink Pants

Every now and then I muster up the courage to wear the only item of pink clothing in my wardrobe: a pair of light pink pants. Even in a liberal environment like Harvard, wearing pink pants as a man ra

pink pantssplit

pink pants

gendered color coding of pink vs. bluesplit

gendered color coding of pink vs. blue

Ketla – a (very) light news app

Our challenge this week was to design a light news app for semi-literate populations in India who only have access to low-end technology. Because these populations are semi-literate, there is a need t

Kingpin folding chair

For this assignment, we had to rethink a skymall product. I chose this oversized chair. Before This was accompanied by the same kind of uninspired advert text that Gale pokes fun at in his 1900 arti

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The Best French Fry

As mentioned in my team members’ posts, our team’s goal was to find the best bagel, bar and fry combo in Cambridge. We also wanted to play with this idea of using emojis to create a concise and descri

Look mom: I sewed!

Two days ago was the first time that I’ve ever used a sowing machine and it was awesome! The whole class used diagrams from this YouTube video. Here’s a picture of me sowing: Smooth…. Here’s the fro

What I’ve Got: A Staple-less Stapler

A staple-less stapler you say…. I have a terrible habit of impulse buying. Especially when I get this irresistible urge to go onto Amazon after one too many beers. The things that I buy are not just i

Google Cardboard and Emotional Design

I am absolutely in love with my Google Cardboard, which by now is pretty worn and tattered but is fortunately still useable. It’s clunky, it’s ugly and at first assembling it as not as obvious as yo

Google Cardboardsplit

Google Cardboard

emotional designsplit

emotional design

Reversible Sequin Sneakers

We decided to design a shoe for young urban creatives, men and women alike. At first we played around with the idea of the shoe being similar a blank canvas, representing opportunity, creativity and

Halfway Mark

With Spring Break right around the corner, we just finished another practical: making a simple drone in SolidWorks. Here it is within SolidWorks: And here it is with some rendering: I’m really happ

Midsemester Reflection

This course has really helped me see and reflect on the emotional aspects of design. It’s been awesome having all of our experiences in this course framed within the context of human emotions, by look

What I’ve Got: Teavana Tea Maker

I, like many a South African, have two things in common with most people in the British Commonwealth: a love for beating the English at their own sports (has anyone been following the cricket recently

What I’ve Got: The Vrse App

I’ve recently been getting really into VR. Really into VR, especially with my new Sunnypeak headset, a huge improvement on the Google Cardboard. It’s cheap, more portable and more comfortable than th

Vrse appsplit

Vrse app

Sunnypeak VR headsetsplit

Sunnypeak VR headset

What I’ve Got: Eero Wifi

Okay, I admit it will likely be many years before I am even in the position to consider buying Eero’s wireless router, so no, I do not have one of these. After reading Don Norman’s Living with Compl

What I’ve Got: Sleep Cycle

Sleep cycle seems like a product that shouldn’t work: the premise of the app is that, by measuring your sleep cycles, knows when you’re in the lightest phase of sleep and can wake up at just the right

What I’ve Got: The most popular program Microsoft has ever made

The blockbuster video games that get churned out today by game studios are a feat of engineering, art and business, requiring years of work by literally thousands of developers, artists, musicians, so

What I’ve Got: Red Solo Cup

GOur built environment is chaotic and disorganised: there are thousands of companies selling permutations of the the same product in almost every industry imaginable. But sometimes a particular form

What I’ve Got: Never-Ending Games

What is the meaning of a game like Super Mario? It’s easy: save Princess Peach by going through every level jumping on everything you can see. Finishing Mario is easy: finish every level. But what abo

What I’ve Got: Beats Headphones or How to Reverse-Engineer Desirability

These are the Beats headphones that came “free” when I bought my new Mac laptop. I was excited about the laptop and asked to not have the headphones to pay less for the laptop. But the South African i

What I’ve Got: Chirps by Six Foods

There is an inherent paradox in the way we treat animals: we eat pigs, wear cows and love dogs. There is this weird structure of belief that makes it morally repulsive to eat some animals and to treat