My name is Azat, I am an Interaction / User Experience Designer and I am in my last term of my 5 year journey in SIAT. As many current students might be experiencing this themselves, SIAT offers many interesting directions, and it was quite a journey for me. My interests lied in several areas, often at the same time: cinematography, spatial design, industrial design, and interaction design. Towards the end of my undergraduate degree, I was able to utilize most of this knowledge together, but felt a clear direction was missing. Business of Design program helped me find focus where I can create the most impact in the future, and it’s sustainability without a doubt.
This term BoD was all about exploring and learning what contributes to sustainable living, habits, systems analysis, energy & resources, community and cities. As a class we came to realization, sustainability has to be indeed at the core of everything. Our ways of living, consuming, building, making have to change if we want our future generations to enjoy what have left, otherwise they will be the ones trying to catch up fixing our mistakes.
In this program you will be also encouraged to make. Whether it’s something tangible, a service, a business, educational component - all of it can contribute in so many ways you might not image right now. I come from a background where I was not limited to explore tangible things, materials, tools, but digital technology was limited. Because we are all exposed to so many digital products, we forget how to interact with the world using what was given to us. And I believe it’s something that is missing in current generation of young people who have privilege to live in a city like Vancouver. With so many products available today, many of us think the more the advanced the better. But, “sometimes the old ways are the best”. And you only realize it when you experience it yourself.
Therefore, my objective this term was to make anything that would contribute to sustainable living through the use of wood. I enjoy doing hands on work using tools and materials, and having SolidSpace to us this term allowed me to work on few projects like that. For personal prototype I’ve made a Mason Bee Hive to address the decline of keystone species of bees. I also had opportunity to join Cuyler, Carolyn, and Brendan with whom I shared similar objectives to make. We’ve build a rain barrel to reduce drinking water usage on watering gardens. Further on, after adjusting our goal towards sustainable communities, we’ve reperpoused the barrel to make Yatai, a multi-purpose cart to serve as a community beacon. Through the process of making, we learned to explore how wood can be used efficiently, where almost each scrap piece can serve a purpose.
Sustainability can take many directions and it will resonate with each person differently, whether it’s physical making, business, activism, policy making, etc. Moving forward to MakerLabs next term, I think this class/cohort has a great potential to create something meaningful and impactful combining all these aspect together, to help communities shift towards more sustainable mentality.
Group Project:
Yatai