Elleyce Pahang

Away From Home is a four-part interactive storytelling narrative game driven by the stories of people and their definitions of  “home”. For our capstone, we created Part 1 which is set in the forest. Follow our journey on our instagram, @projects.exe as we continue the next chapters of our game.

Ride. Watch. Learn. Earn. During this 2 minute installation, users learn about sustainable consumption, earn a reward, have the chance to compete for a bigger prize, and literally feel the amount of energy needed to create a single compostable cup. We hope to build awareness of the environmental harm of using disposable cups and to encourage UW community members to bring their own reusable mugs. Together with computer science engineering majors, Alex Davis and Sachin Bharati, we built an interactive full-body experience for people where riding the bike would activate an informative video about sustainable cup usage. Participants of the installation would receive a coupon for a free drink at the Parnassus or the Husky grind if they bring their own mug. Participants who did the 1-minute biking speed challenge competed to win a free reusable thermos.

For the 2019 Microsoft Design Expo we were tasked with accomplishing Empathy at Scale. We determined that scaling empathy would mean that empathy is practiced on a daily basis, in situations both great and small. However our own feelings, perspectives, and biases can stand in the way of building that empathy. From these conclusions we created Ponder, a system that provides people a safe space to vent and reflect while also creatively considering others' perspectives. Using AI, Ponder analyzes your point of view by asking clarifying questions, then using discourse from online articles Ponder suggests alternative perspectives in the form of a story. Finally, Ponder provides a platform by which people can set empathetic goals to help them practice empathetic reaction.

Raising a child can be cause for a lot of anxiety in parents. From ages 0-5, it is imperative that children to be screened for any developmental delays so that they can be diagnosed early on. While parents understand the importance of documenting changes in their children’s development, they can be overwhelmed by many logistical challenges that come with child rearing. Bean is an app that alleviates the pressure of screening a child's developmental progress by enabling multiple caregivers to collaborate, engage with, and monitor a child's growth.