Spring is here

We have tons of news!!

This spring, the Drexel Design Research for Health Lab joined Rebuilding Together Philadelphia to start the home visits for the Second Story Collective in their Intergenerational living efforts, and our first visit took place. These visits consist of home assessments and sharing of history to assist our community elders in living longer in their homes. https://www.secondstorycollective.org/

This Summer, Dee Nicholas will travel to Boston for the Design Research Society to present the Paper: Intergenerational creative spaces, co-living, community: Design for longevity. Nicholas, Diana Susan; Singh, Tasha; Deshpande, Tanaya; Prabhakar, Alisha; Wenrick, Rachel; Allen-Handy, Ayana. As part of DRS 2024 Paper Track 2: Design for Longevity (D4L): Project Your Future Self through Service and Technology. 

In addition, she is chairing a session she proposed at the same conference with over 40 submissions from around the world on Evidence-based practices and care: Reimagining Care Through Evidence: Design Research, Patient-Centered Solutions, And A Culture Of Care For Healthy Societies.  Nicholas, Diana Susan (1); Afzali, Minou (4); Aksamija, Ajla (2); Coleman, Nora (6); Mazzi, Angela (5); Sanders, Elizabeth B. -N. (3); Oygur Ilhan, Isil (7) Organization (s): 1: Drexel University, United States of America; 2: University of Utah; 3: The Ohio University; 4: Swiss Center for Design and Health; 5: GBBN Architecture; 6: Emory University School of Medicine; 7: University of Cincinnati. The Design Research Society is the world's longest-standing, multi-disciplinary society for the design research community. The DRS's goals are to promote research and study into the design process in all its fields and to support the interests of the design research community.

Also, Professor Nicholas' Intergenerational project Garden Fresh Home, a fresh produce growing unit for urban families was chosen for a $3,000.00 National Science Foundation (NSF) Icorps Propelus Session for the regional program April 4-26 2024. Garden Fresh Home team Shivanthi Anandan, Diana Nicholas. Team URBN Steamlab, Diana Nicholas, Shivanthi Anandan, and entrepreneurship fellow Michael Oguntuase (Drexel CCI Master's Student). https://new.nsf.gov/funding/initiatives/i-corps

Finally, Her new collection, at the Lived Places Publishing: The Human Centered Design Studies collection, has been launched; this Collection seeks work revealing lived experiences globally and locally at all scales driven by human-centered design. This collection will include course readings on health, justice, poverty, and technology situated in our challenging and complex 21st-century environment. Check it out here: https://livedplacespublishing.com/page/design-studies

Our Students have been busy too: DSRE Student Micah Lockman-Fine was involved in multiple shows this spring, Most notably the movement and fashion performance featured in the 2024 Numinous Magazine Surrealism Runway Show (April 2024). This fashion-based performance explores the linked futures of bodies with technology. Translated algorithmic codesign processes become embodied movement practice, locating human experience, desire and error inside technology and locating technological processes inside the body. Credits: Concept and research by Micah Lockman-Fine (Stoop Kids); co-choreography by Micah Lockman-Fine and Lu Donovan. Micah also Co-curated Slow-Burning Rapture (January 2024) and The Bird Ethic (November 2023) at The Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education (co-curator Kristina Murray) and had Sculptural pieces included in William Way Galleries' 18thAnnual Juried Art Exhibition.

Sepha Sugrue will show her Design Research Thesis, Support for women who are psychiatric service users with narrative Needlecraft, at the Drexel Emerging Graduates Conference in April Josepha Sugrue D.S. Nicholas, Design Research Program.