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A tangible tool designed to help children easily express complex feelings. By turning daily experiences into a physical balancing act, the design makes it highly intuitive for kids to map out and understand their current mood.
Users simply write down specific situations on the weighted blocks and place them on the scale. Relying on the basic physics of balance—where placing a block further away creates a bigger impact—the central display visually reveals their resulting emotional state.
Users simply write down specific situations on the weighted blocks and place them on the scale. Relying on the basic physics of balance—where placing a block further away creates a bigger impact—the central display visually reveals their resulting emotional state.
When feelings get a little tangled, the Emotion scale gives kids a fun, hands-on way to sort them out. The interaction is designed to be completely intuitive. First, children draw or write what is on their mind onto the reusable blocks using a simple whiteboard marker.
Next, they decide if that experience felt positive or negative by placing the block on the scale. By physically balancing out their day, kids can easily clear their heads and visually track exactly how they are feeling.
Before landing on the final scale design, a wide range of ways to map emotions physically was explored. Early sketches explored everything from interconnected grids to modular node systems and 3D shapes to represent a person's emotional landscape. Once I zeroed in on the concept of a physical balance, I relied on quick, low-fidelity cardboard mockups to test different pivot mechanics. This hands-on iteration helped me refine the physical structure and the visual feedback system itself.
To get the physics of the balance just right, I programmed a parametric simulation that allowed for intuitive experimentation with the math and find the optimal ratios. This seamless workflow enabled rapid iteration—allowing me to start with quick cardboard mockups to test the mechanics, and easily expand the design into durable materials like wood and acrylic for the final working designs.
Each block is built to be both a reusable canvas and a functioning weight. The top features a smooth whiteboard finish that is easy for kids to draw on and wipe clean, while the solid wooden base provides the mass needed to actually tip the scale.
Public Laundry
The idea for this project started while I was volunteering with outreach programs on Skid Row in Los Angeles. By spending time with the homeless community and the people supporting them, I learned that one of their biggest daily struggles is simply keeping clothes clean. Without access to laundry, it becomes incredibly difficult to find work, enter public spaces, or even just feel socially accepted. This project was designed as a direct, practical response to that overlooked need. It proposes a compact, durable washing machine that can be installed right into existing public restrooms, giving people an accessible way to wash their clothes and regain a sense of dignity.
By volunteering on the streets, I got a much better understanding of the daily struggles firsthand. By talking directly to outreach directors, fellow volunteers, and homeless individuals themselves, it became clear that simply being unwashed makes it incredibly hard already for homeless individuals to even have normal social interactions with people outside of their bubble. This made me narrow down my focus to laundry.
I sketched out everything from wearable backpack washers to hanging tree pods. But exploring all those ideas made one thing obvious: a practical, dignified solution shouldn't force people to carry extra, heavy equipment around all day. That realization led directly to the final concept of hooking a fixed washing system into the existing plumbing of public restrooms.
The spherical design features a front-loading watertight hatch, providing easy access to the perforated inner drum. Water is sourced directly from standard plumbing fixtures via a simple hose connection, ensuring the system remains completely sealed during the wash cycle to prevent any public spills.
I found out that public libraries in LA have grown out to support the homeless community significantly by providing unbothered access to their sanitary facilities and unbothere access to wifi and their computers. I went to the South Pasadena Public Library close to where I lived and decided to build on that existing network for the main design parameters for the washing machine.
To guarantee long-term durability in public environments, the final drive system utilizes a robust, low-maintenance planetary gear assembly. This maximizes rotational force while minimizing the physical effort required to operate the machine, making it very accessible for users.
Kate Highchair
The Kate Highchair was designed with a straightforward goal: to create children's furniture that quietly fits into a modern home. Instead of relying on bulky plastics or complicated mechanisms, the chair features a clean, continuous wooden profile. It is a practical, no-nonsense design intended to feel like a natural extension of the living space rather than a temporary add-on.
As shown in the spatial layout, the highchair is proportioned to easily pull right up to a standard dining table or kitchen island. The use of warm, natural materials helps it blend comfortably alongside existing furniture. Ultimately, the aim was simply to let the child join the family at the table in a chair that shares the same understated aesthetic as the rest of the room.
The design process focused on finding the balance between stability and visual lightness. Early sketches started with basic geometric shapes, eventually softening into a continuous A-frame profile. By opening up the center of the wooden side panels, the chair keeps its structural strength without looking heavy or bulky.
The seating assembly focuses on safety without cluttering the chair's minimal look. As shown in the exploded view, the curved wooden guard, seat plate, and central safety post connect using straightforward hardware, keeping the outer surfaces totally clean. The accompanying sketches highlight the practical development of the tray and seat ergonomics, exploring everyday functional details like a subtle raised edge to keep food and toys from slipping off.
Small-scale physical prototyping played a vital role in refining the chair's side profile. Using dark covers to highlight the silhouette helped pick out the new form factor of a traditionally L shaped object.
WikiBoard.org
WikiBoard.org is a learning tool designed to give students a big, open digital workspace to explore information. Instead of just reading standard top-to-bottom pages, students can drag Wikipedia articles and PDFs right onto a digital whiteboard. The interface pairs these reading materials with fun, easy-to-use tools like colorful sticky notes, drawing lines, and new features like stacking notes or grouping items.
This layout was built specifically to help students easily see how different topics connect and keep their thoughts right next to what they are reading.
This layout was built specifically to help students easily see how different topics connect and keep their thoughts right next to what they are reading.
Today, the platform supports an active user base of 10,000 people, alongside a dedicated subreddit where 1.2k members share ideas and updates.
One of the core features of WikiBoard is the ability to place notes exactly where you need them. Instead of keeping a separate, disconnected text document, students can drop sticky notes directly on top of Wikipedia articles and PDFs to flag specific paragraphs, summarize ideas, or leave reminders. This was designed so you can attach your annotations directly to the source material.
To help students see their research path, the platform is built so that clicking a link opens the new page right next to the old one. A line automatically connects the two, intentionally mapping out their journey across the board. This setup was designed so students can click around and explore without ever losing their place, keeping all their open pages visible and ready for more notes.
To keep the workspace clean, the interface uses small menus that only pop up when you need them. Instead of a permanent toolbar taking up space, clicking on an item brings up specific options right next to it—like changing a line's shape or moving a window to the front. To help manage a busy board, students can also compress a group of open articles into a neat stack. This setup was designed to keep the screen free of distracting buttons, leaving as much room as possible for actual reading and learning.
The interface is built as one continuous, modular framework surrounding the screen. For student, this splits the tools—keeping creative actions seperate from utilities. This modular setup also makes the platform highly customizable. It was designed this way so that adding new tools and functions can happen quickly and easily, without needing to redesign the entire menu system.