Tag Archives: Design

Of Great Things and Sacred Spaces–A Summer 2025 NOVA Lab Update

NOVA Lab, over five years, has initiated numerous impactful projects, merging education with community service. A standout effort this year is the Joe and Zoe Trail Signage project, which offers educational signage on local ecology. This embodies the principle of Purpose Driven Learning, emphasizing meaningful, community-oriented education beyond traditional classrooms.

Back to the Future: Human Centered (Re)Design for the Future of Towns & Cities

These initiatives consider their impact on a much larger geography (the world) and a much larger time frame (designing for the future). Such forward thinking is indicative of people who are concerned about the great good, who understand the necessity for all people to act within the framework of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, and who are interested in making the world a better place.

The Thrill of Victory, and the Agony of Defeat: Cassidy Lichtman’s “P/ATH” and Sport as a Good Thing

A look at a small but determined initiative using sports in a focused and determined way to achieve one’s goals as well as a way to develop a solid sense of self and a care for a larger key community.

Lightning in a Bottle…Twice: The Joy of Learning

This is the kind of experience that shifts the mind utterly, that reveals something we’ve hidden from students behind tests, and rules, and most of all, grades.

This is the Joy of Learning embodied.

Build Design Challenge: Day 7 Prototyping–Fail early, Fail Often

Gentrification was a word I have never heard of until this class, it means that wealthier individuals change poorer areas in many ways. You would think that it is good but that makes everything more expensive, to wealthy people it isn’t a problem but to those less fortunate it forces them to move. With this information provided by builduniversity.org, we began creating a prototype. 

Design Build Challenge Day 6: Ideate to Prototype

Passionately working is so different from working with the sole purpose of finishing. Often, we as busy humans are subjected to cram tasks into our day, instead of being truly infatuated with what we are doing. I sincerely hope I commit my mind to openly creating throughout the duration of this class, but also throughout my life. 

Build Design Challenge: Collaborating, Defining, Affinity Mapping

Friday, October 29 found us gathering in groups around our clients and sharing all our insights into the client’s life. Culling all those observations and then organizing them into clusters through affinity mapping will help us identify pain points, opportunities, or needs that we can solve to help the client and their neighborhood develop intoContinue reading “Build Design Challenge: Collaborating, Defining, Affinity Mapping”

Build Design Challenge: Day Three

We’re on our third day of Build.org‘s Design Build Challenge. There’s plenty of time to join. Check out the website! What’s most impressed me about Build.org’s work on this year’s challenge is just how real Build University is trying to keep the experience to the Design Thinking methodology. Today’s work on empathy is excellent andContinue reading “Build Design Challenge: Day Three”