Nora Le

Hello! I’m Nora, I am a fourth-year Business student and I am pursuing a minor in Interactive Arts & Technology.
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Business of Design brought me a lot of valuable experience in teamwork, problem-solving, and organizational skills. The course also enabled me to think deeply about my behaviours and sustainability. By creating various prototypes, totaling of six, both tangible and intangible, I learned to change my habits in a more sustainable way, as well as being motivated to develop more creative ideas to promote sustainable behaviours to the community. Over the past 13 weeks, I realized that my interests involved mostly with waste reductions, and how to influence people towards sustainable behaviours. My prototypes aimed to address the three big problems: (1) Overconsumption of clothes (Fast Fashion), (2) Overconsumption of disposable cups, (3) Overconsumption of plastic bags.
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With the problem of overconsumption of clothes, I discovered that a lot of people, including myself,  buy too many clothes in a short period of time; and these clothes, on average, will only be used for 2 to 3 weeks. Thus, my first prototype was a mock-up website, where people can connect to each other to donate clothes, swap clothes, and they get points to redeem for other used clothes. On the second prototype, I taught my friend how to reuse the used clothes to make different styles so that we can avoid throwing the used clothes away, as well as eliminate the frequent purchasing of new clothes. My third prototype was to create a survey from 40 people. This helped me learn a lot about consumer behaviours regarding the consumption of clothes.
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On my fourth prototype, I created a program to reduce the use of disposable cups. The participants were two university students and me. The participants will use reusable jar to buy drinks. Every time they use a reusable jar to buy a drink, they will receive a sticker. The number of stickers will show how many disposable cups they save. By creating this prototype, I learned how to influence people toward sustainable behaviours. I also developed a fifth prototype which I kept track all of the items that I purchased and threw away every day within a week. The purpose of this prototype was to explore and understand my own behaviours, and see if there are alternative ways I can improve to better influence people’s thoughts and behaviours.
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My final sustainability issue topic that I am interested in is the overconsumption of plastic bags. With this issue, I created a sixth prototype that mainly focused on creative influence. In this prototype, I did a challenge with my friend about not using any plastic bags for a week and using the reusable bag instead (a sustainable bag challenge). I also interviewed my friend before and after the challenge to learn more about her thoughts, as well as to see how my prototype has influenced her.  After the challenge, I realized the use of reusable bags and learned to be more sustainable, as well as learned how to motivate people to act in more sustainable ways.

Friend’s challenge, interviews and insights:
‍https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VJZFI-xNyc

My challenge and insights:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jR5bqonWa9g