Collaborate

Engage & Persist

Sketching & Drawing

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Core Skill

Pass-through is a short story about an unorthodox family dealing with loss and grief, two years after the death of Andrew, the father, son, and husband of the rest of the family. Pass-through takes place in a big, crumbling house in Vermont or New Hampshire over the course of two days in October 2023. The denizens of the house - a woman named Catherine, her two children and mother-in-law fight frequently as they try to collectively come to terms with the death of Catherine's erratic husband two years prior. They rarely talk about him and have not cleaned out his office yet at the start, but when they do a whole lot of unwelcome feelings and memories will be coming at the family very quickly. I focused on illustration and editing, while project partners Bridget and Zahra both took the lead in writing and editing each other's work. We all collaborated on the brainstorming and combined our styles of storytelling to craft this world.

This studio was difficult for me-- I was the only person in the whole group who had ever done OI before, that it was very stressful on top of the fact I didn't know anything about Bridget or Zahra before this whole thing started. Chris had noticed this, and was able to help me understand how to best be a good teammate to both of them-- I took his feedback to heart, even if it was difficult at times to input it into practice. I was a bit overeager to share and create at the beginning of the studio, and it was not giving either of them the chance to share their own ideas. This changed over the course of the studio, and we all learned how to work well with each other-- eventually bringing us to a point where writing and designing was easy.

Express

Collaborate

Concept development

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Sketching and drawing

The goal of our project was to add a lively feel to the corner studio and make it feel less empty, by creating a mural/art installation for NuVu. We began working this by sketching our ideas and surveying the NuVu students about what they wanted included in the mural. We then pitched our ideas to the C.E.O of NuVu, Saeed, and got feedback for next steps. One of the ways I contributed to this project specifically was doing lots of the survey and feedback work with the coaches and peers. We then came up with some strong conceptual ideas and got more feedback. Using the feedback we were able to iterate on the ideas and come up with a clear final concept. We then Lo-fi prototyped the concept using laser-cut cardboard and paint. After that we then made finalized Rhino files for all of the pieces, and then assembled and painted everything.



During the fall OI I grew by collaborating more with not only my teammates but also with the community. I was able to get lots of feedback on our project from NuVu staff and other NuVu students by doing surveys with them and using the feedback to change our ideas. I also grew in concept development when our group had to come up with a brand new idea for a mural. We had to change our concept a lot because of all the feedback we got, and in the end came with a really well thought out concept.

Express

Empathy

Physical Prototyping

Unerasable is a series of monuments celebrating the solidarity, defiance, and resilience that the queer experience holds. We do this by gaining individual perspectives from Queer People of Boston through interviews. We are using silhouettes aesthetically inspired by the work of Kara Walker. These stories that are small and unnoticeable, thus making these stories hidden. We are bringing them forward and making them Unerasable

Over the last couple of weeks, I have increased my skills in physical prototyping. We made our final by using a stencil laser cut out of cardboard, which we then spray chalked over. Our plaque was made by painting a board and then engraving it into the wood with the laser cutter. I grew in the ways I express, as well as experience empathy. I had to take multiple people's perspectives, with likely internal bias, and combine them all into one unbiased writing. I was also tasked with distilling how our client felt, and expressing that in street art. I have been challenged with rapid prototyping while our idea is also rapidly changing. I also greatly improved in time management due to our ideas changing many times, and us adapting with even less time. I think that this OI was very beneficial to my growth both as a NuVu student and as a community member.

Concept Development

Envision

Collaborate

Iteration

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Physical Fabrication

Persephone VR aims to offer open-source virtual reality hardware and software equal in performance to leading brands, with the added benefits of user replication and freedom of modification. The functional goal being used in development is the Oculus Quest Two, capabilities of note include inside out spatial and controller tracking, lens and screen quality, and ease of use. The current prototype includes a base headset with full lens focusing, accelerometer data, and two cameras for optical tracking. Future goals include optical tracking software, improved ergonomics, and higher quality displays.

I felt very successful in this studio and feel I grew both my physical fabrication and design skills as well as exploring a wide variety of concepts and approaches to solving problems. During the course of this studio I grew a much better understanding of the field of VR and the possible future scope of our development. I was able to work hand in hand with Hunter to effectively integrate my hardware development and his software development to create an interconnected system. We are both already considering how we will be moving forward with development and have a robust vision for the future.

Envision

Engage & Persist

Physical Fabrication

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Iteration

 Ever bored of your furniture and want to change things up, or are you looking for small lightweight furniture that can seat 20 people? Now introducing Modchair. Modchair is a kit that comes with twenty cubes, each with pegs and holes. The cubes can be arranged in any way you like! Have guests coming over? No problem, just assemble the cubes into a configuration that works for you. The cubes have an interlocking mechanism the uses pegs and holes designed to balance weight and provide a strong sturdy base. The cubes come in many materials ranging from leather to velvet and cotton, as well as a large variety of colors that bring your space to life!

 During this Open Innovation, I overcame many challenges and bumps in the road. I learned how to work by myself, how to keep myself on track, and how to manage my time well. Working by myself was something that I hadn't done before for a project like this. I wasn't sure if I was going to get the project done or if I had the skillset to even do it. But I focused on what I knew, and before long I found myself in a good position for final presentation. Another challenge I overcame was building the 1/3 scale cubes. It took more time then I planned for, and by the time I finished, I had one day left to do my renders for the design expo. I found that setting daily goals really came in handy this project and I now feel confident in working by myself.

Collaborate

Engage and persist

Writing

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Reading & Media Literacy

A Suit of Storm and Steel story about a person who was from a more 'modern' future who was frozen for over 10 000 years and ended up in the 'past' which is a mix of the middle ages, roman/renaissance and fantasy civilizations where he has to survive this new world. I created this story with my partner, who I had to discuss and debate many details and other parts about that would help build this world. This project was meant to basically play on some tropes of man out of time and genres like sci-fi, fantasy and apocalypses, otherwise, this story was written to essentially introduce readers to a world that was similar yet different from but otherwise was a story written for the sake of writing a story.

During the project I improved upon my collaboration and Engaging and persisting. This was especially important as this project was writing based and I had a partner to work with on this story and we had to share our ideas and workflow. As it turns out our strengths and weaknesses augmented each others as what I struggled with my partner was able to do really well and what Z couldn't do I could. Examples of this include the various edits to the writing suggested by Chris, an example of something which he helped with was pointing out how I had quite frequently written with a passive voice rather than an active voice, which I changed to and made a difference in the story flow.

Engage & Persist

Express

Concept Development

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Physical Fabrication

This project aims to help make the corner studio feel less empty. When the corner studio was previously the coaches area, there was a large amount of plants and greenery that made the space feel more alive. Our idea for a mural was to bring NuVu's values as well as organic shapes and flowers back into the space through a physical art installation made up of detachable plywood tiles.

The artwork depicts a student focused on their work, and we as the viewer watch them learn and iterate.

Throughout the course of this project we spent a lot of time iterating and discussing our ideas. However, due to our larger group size it was sometimes a challenge to settle on something everyone liked. So I had to learn how to lead in a way that incorporates and respects the other voices in the room as well as to know when I need to make a decision for the group. Additional I had to work with a style of art and process I'm not that familiar with, so I spent a large amount of time trying to find the best way to approach certain obstacles. I encouraged my group members to use their particular strengths to work on aspects of the mural, which helped us work well together and successfully create a final installation.

Collaborate

Engage and persist

Material exploration

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Iteration

Our project was to create a modular terrain board to play games such as Warhammer and DnD on. The purpose of the board was to be easy to build on your own with inexpensive but high quality materials like Styrofoam for bases, painted sawdust for grass, dirt for dirt, and more so it is cheap to make for small clubs like we are. The original plan was to make one big board that wasn't modular and was seven feet long. We had to later change to a much smaller board around 3 feet. We also had to make it modular to have a board that can be used in different ways.

I've always wanted to be able to make terrain boards, but I've never had the time or resources to do it, so after this OI, I now have the skills to push myself and collaborate with others to achieve my goals. One example is we had a lot of tedious work making grass and gluing it to cut and painted blocks. We had to make the board as cheap as possible so it is easy to recreate, so we had to make sure to use cheap materials and easy ways of using them.

Engage & Persist

Colaborate

Writing

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Iteration

Pass-through is a 3550 word illustrated short story about a dysfunctional family who is poorly dealing with the loss of the erratic father. The concept started very vague and narrowed down and shifted throughout the OI, largely due to feedback given by our coach and peers. Originally it was going to be a ghost story, but we got a lot of very strong feedback that ghosts were overused and unoriginal, so we completely removed ghosts and instead used a character reminiscing in a similar part of the story. We made diagrams of character relationships and feelings, an outline, and building layouts to help streamline the writing process, which was that one of us (me, for most but not all of the story) would write a passage or scene and the others would go through and change wording, remove details that were extraneous or untrue in-world, and all in all make it cleaner and flow better.

The main thing I had to learn about and grow on over the course of this studio is working with someone when you don't particularly like each other and your working styles are very different. This is a thing I've had trouble with in the past, but usually I've been able to just not interact with someone who bothers me. Being placed in a group with someone really forced me to mature in this way. My other main point of growth was in my writing. My writing partner gave me a lot of feedback on my writing, and while I didn't like, it was mostly really good feedback that made our project - and more importantly my writing in general - a lot better. I'm grateful for this experience, and I think I will look back on it as important.

Express

Collaborate

Iteration

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Material Exploration

For open innovation, I worked on a combat robot project. We decided to make this project to try to learn more and be creative in our designs, as well as show other people that they can make cool, complicated projects. We also made a video to show our progress. It works using a LiPo battery, an RC receiver, a brushed motor controller, and two brushed motors for the drive system. Our robot also has a flipper mechanism, which works using an Arduino and brushed motor attached to a snail cam to wind up a spring to flip. It is all organized using compartments for each component. The top and bottom plates are currently made of wood, but our next step for this project would be to order them in steel. The side plates were made out of 3d-printed TPU for shock absorption, and the parts that had to be stiffer were PLA. I think that over the course of this project, we improved at our goal of learning more about different materials, and CAD, and I think that our video shows our process well.

During open innovation, I grew at collaboration, expression, iteration, and material exploration. I grew at collaboration because this was my first project at NuVu where I worked with other people on the same idea. I grew at expressing our ideas because we had to explain our project to lots of different people and develop a concept statement to tell people about our project. I grew at iterating because during open innovation we went through lots of iterations very quickly, both for individual parts and the overall idea. I grew at material exploration because we used 3D printing a lot during this project. We cast our own urethane wheels, we used different thicknesses of plywood on the laser cutter, and we considered how some pieces could be made out of metal.