Collaborators:
Milly Lee, Dharma Dailey
Role:
Activity Coordinator, Website Lead, Presentation Lead
Time Period:
Mar. 2023 - Jun. 2023
Tools:
Adobe Illustrator, Canva, Wix
Introduction
The Interactive Media Design Cohort of 2023 was tasked with taking on the project of Dear Digital Equity a platform developed by the 2024 cohort as well as Dharma Dailey, a University of Washington Professor. This project took the form of a multifaceted website, pointing to various different examples, resources, and individuals to help people learn more about digital equity on the local, state, and international level.
The cohort class of 2023 were to create "toolkits" or the set guidelines for future collaborators on the project to use. I, alongside my teammate Milly, were assigned to the "Design Awareness" track, which was to be able to encapsulate all of the work our cohort did over the quarter, as well as create an overall story of how we as designers relate to the concept of digital equity.
Digital Equity as Design
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We asked students to create personal Design Postcards about their work with DDE and how they felt both designing it as well as digital equity as a concept
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This activity was inspired by Dr. Cindy Atman and her Dear Design Workshop. ​
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We compiled the postcards and showcased them on a webpage, a presentation, and a DDE Exhibition.
Full Webpage
Presentation and Exhibition
Presentation
Our cohort did a full remote presentation on the work we did with Dear Digital Equity at the Washington State Digital Equity summit in June 2023. This comprised of us recapping on what Dear Digital Equity was, followed each track presentation the toolkit they curated throughout the quarter, and finishing of a personal connection between us as designers and digital equity.
Our in-person exhibition also showcased the same work we presented but in a more visual way. We used our concept of personal design postcards as the main design of the exhibition.
In addition to this, we also recapped all of the work put into Dear Digital Equity, from the previous cohort as well as the next steps on where Dear Digital Equity will be taken towards in the future. .
Capstone Exhibition
Final Takeaways
The onboarding process regarding an existing project is so important to do effectively because it sets the tone of the work you will continue to do on this project. Since we did this in the context of a class and had to divide our roles throughout 26 students, and 3 outside stakeholders, we had to take a lot of initiative to be able to understand both the project as well as what we needed to do.
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As well as working within much smaller teams required us to be very diligent with communicating on joint efforts of the project. Especially with my track, which required communication with every track in order to be able to encapsulate all of the work we've done throughout the quarter.