Christina Holman | Design Blog

"Draw It" activity from IDEO's  Field Guide Another topic that has also preoccupied my thoughts is the act of observation. What is the least intrusive way I can observe and connect with the people of Cape Verde? How can I minimize the dynamic and disruption that Western/American tourists usually bring? Mayrah Udvardi, who I met during my first year and her last year at Wellesley, developed a wonderful presentation about this topic and presented it at a MaddyTalks - a reunion at the Albright Institute. (Watch below.) I remember when she told me that she had won a Watson Fellowship and was planning on not taking any electronics, drawing the whole experience as she travelled for a year. I was just as much impressed and excited for her as I was worried, considering STEM and architecture fields require a lot of documentation that is usually electronic. Now, after practicing it and hearing this same notion from design professors, I can absolutely say that  drawing ...

The team at INIDA has a number of topics for me regarding the Santiago Island dams: some of them are outside of my background but others, like technical issues, economic analysis and statistics, are a bit more workable. It would be really interesting to do a report on the technical/engineering as well as the economic and political aspects of the dams. For my other project, at UNI-CV, I am really excited to work with the engineering faculty and find more project-topics with which Wellesley faculty can collaborate. The methods and ideas listed in IDEO's  Field Guide to Human-Centered Engineering  (below) would be really helpful in that phase. Starting the Process IDEO's field guide gives a quick overview of the design process I learned over a semester-long class: there are three phases we can identify as  inspiration, ideation and implementation.  (I remember others using different words but the same idea.)  In both of t...

(Heads up, this is a long post.) Prof. Banzaert recommended three books to me as an introduction to service-learning basics and humanitarian engineering methods: Paul Polak -  Out of Poverty IDEO -  Field Guide to Human-Centered Engineering Kevin M. Passino -  Humanitarian Engineering along with a final project report on Santiago Islands. All of these readings were much better than I expected and offer great advice if interested in doing development work (as an engineer). Out of Poverty Polack describes twelve steps he used "to arrive at solutions to extreme poverty." I am not entirely convinced with his argument that poverty can be "solved" -- but he makes great points at how to go about finding a solution for human-users.  Go to where the action is Talk to the people who have the problem and listen to what they say Learn everything you can about the problem's specific context Think big and act big Think like a child See and do the obv...

Long time, no talk! I have finally wrapped up my junior year of college: I am officially a rising senior - and it is still  unreal to think about entering my final year of college. (To those entering or still in college: take advantage of every moment you have.) Fortunately, I will enter the fall semester with a  bang!  as I will have just ended an amazing summer internship in Praia, Cape Verde. Cape Verde is an archipelago composed of ten islands in the Atlantic Ocean, sitting right off of North-West Africa. I was accepted as an intern for the Uni-CV Technical Investigation Internship through the Albright Institute (into which I have also been fortunately accepted for the 2017 program!) and funded by the Anchor Point Fellowship Fund . (A huge shout-out to them both.) There, I am pursuing TWO projects: Dam Poilao management: Working with the government to understand the technical and maintenance issues of the recently established dams on Santiago Island. UNI...