Writer's Block: Card Game for Rapid Essay Ideation
ENGS 12: Design Thinking | Project #6: How Might We Spread the Benefits of Design Thinking Throughout Dartmouth Curriculum & Culture?
At Dartmouth, we write a lot, and nothing is harder than starting an essay. Students are perfectionists, and procrastinate for fear of “bad” ideas. Writer’s Block is a set of three games designed to spark creative ideas quickly and collaboratively, through Design Thinking methods baked into gameplay. Each game builds on the last, leaving players with new insights, questions, and ideas for further writing. This is an accessible and fun addition to any writing curriculum, and we plan for teachers, students, peer-tutors, and writing centers alike to be able to spark joy in essay creation with Writer’s Block.
Slide Deck Excerpts:
Mock-Up Advertisment Graphics for America in One Room Conference
Engineering Sciences 12: Design Thinking | Project #4: Reframing a Harmful Belief for a Series of Advertisements
CupCycle: Cup Washer for Recycling Prototype
Engineering Sciences 21: Introduction to Engineering
In 2018, Americans recycled only 8.7 percent of plastic waste. Non-recycled plastics have destructive consequences to both planetary and personal health, such as micro-plastic pollution in the oceans and human blood, respectively.
As a consequence, maximizing effective recycling is essential. The largest barrier to recycling plastics is “recycling contamination,” which causes entire streams of recycling to be diverted to landfills. At Dartmouth, waste totals 7,500,000 pounds annually, and according to the Dartmouth Dining director, “contamination is the #1 reason things don’t get recycled.” Each year, Dartmouth purchases about 400,000 plastic cups, and only 14% of those cups are recycled.
To combat the problem of recycling contamination, food containers must be cleaned before they are recycled. Although this is easily achieved in households, it’s inconvenient to clean plastic food containers in public dining areas before recycling; at Dartmouth, students are too rushed for this extra step, and often have no trust, no education, and/or no motivation to recycle. As a result, Dartmouth Students need an easy and fast way to clean smoothie cups in order to reduce recycling contamination, decrease the amount of plastic entering the environment, and re-instill trust in the recycling system.
To solve this need, our group created CupCycle, an effective and efficient smoothie cup washer that reduces recycling contamination by cleaning and separating #1 plastic cups for Casella. The user, students, clean plastic cups with the washer; the purchaser, Dartmouth College, buys and installs these devices at to-go dining locations, motivated by financial incentives to properly recycle cups.
Slide Deck Excerpts:
Submission for Creature Skateboard Design Contest
Graphics for Lighthouse Creative Group
Graphics for Jones Media Center
