Browsing by Author "Lesley-Ann Noel"

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HBCUs: A Considersion
(05-2022) Umrani, Elijah; Chandra Cox; JMark Scearce; Lesley-Ann Noel
This project makes use of different storytelling techniques such as film, motion graphics, and illustrations. These stories will focus on three cornerstones that shape the foundation of Historically Black Colleges and Universities: Academic Excellence, Community, and Culture. The objective of this project is to illustrate and educate young students who may be unfamiliar with the purpose of Historically Black Colleges and Universities and why they are still being utilized in modern day education past their initial founding. By no means is this a defense for their relevance but a showcase of how HBCUs help shape and prepare students, particularly students of color, to receive a high level education.
Nice Folky Things
(05-2022) Sibiran, Gilberto; Tania Allen; Marc Russo; Lesley-Ann Noel
As a child of American immigrants, I often struggled with understanding my identity when it came to the lack of representation in the media that I consumed as a millennial second-generation Latin American. The stories that influenced the media and defined my generation lacked characters that looked like me and were largely inspired by stories from Western European and far removed from the stories that may have included people like me. By examining folk stories from countries of origin not often represented in mainstream American culture remediating them for a detached population - Nice Folky Things, explores the identity and culture of second-generation Americans through cross-cultural folk stories examination. This is an Auto-ethnographic study based on my own experiences as an American-born, second-generation Latin American who has, and still often feels, detached from my family’s heritage, and ostracized by my surrounding mainstream American Culture. Walking the line between contradiction, authenticity, and honoring heritage - this project is meant to be both an examination of my personal experiences, and authentic taste, as well as a larger examination of how media has, and can, re-shaped personal identity.
The Social Design Toolkit
(2021) Pinkston, Russel P.; Traci Rider; Lesley-Ann Noel; Christian Doll; Tania Allen
Designers are instigators of change, and the decisions they make can impact people’s lives in unexpected ways. The ideology behind social design is that designers have a social responsibility to create positive change by prioritizing people in their decisions. However, the commercialization of design practice often puts several degrees of separation between the people who design products, the people who make them, and the people who consume them, leading to design which elevates the designer’s process above people’s needs. There are several human-centered methodologies in existence across a range of disciplines (from cultural anthropology to design thinking), but these usually operate independently of one another, and each has its own unique constraints. The Social Design Toolkit offers a hybrid workflow called participatory design thinking that provides opportunities for these methodologies to overlap, placing human experience at the core of every design decision. Herbert Simon defines design as “courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones” (Simon 111), and social design is a holistic way of embracing cultural difference and reducing the social gap between the creators of culture and those who experience that culture. It is through this that we make design accessible and strengthen its output for everyone.
The Social Design Toolkit
(2021) Pinkston, Russell Paul; Tania Allen; Christian Doll; Lesley-Ann Noel; Traci Rider
Designers are instigators of change, and the decisions they make can impact people’s lives in unexpected ways. The ideology behind social design is that designers have a social responsibility to create positive change by prioritizing people in their decisions. However, the commercialization of design practice often puts several degrees of separation between the people who design products, the people who make them, and the people who consume them, leading to design which elevates the designer’s process above people’s needs. There are several human-centered methodologies in existence across a range of disciplines (from cultural anthropology to design thinking), but these usually operate independently of one another, and each has its own unique constraints. The Social Design Toolkit offers a hybrid workflow called participatory design thinking that provides opportunities for these methodologies to overlap, placing human experience at the core of every design decision. Herbert Simon defines design as “courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones” (Simon 111), and social design is a holistic way of embracing cultural difference and reducing the social gap between the creators of culture and those who experience that culture. It is through this that we make design accessible and strengthen its output for everyone.