Bria Mckouen
Undergraduate
I am passionate about sustainability and all things dirt! I am an environmentalist at heart and hope to put my passion for the environment into my future work. Design is about understanding the world around us and looking past what we see to the endless possibilities of what could be. Something my boss tells me as an online user experience designer at the Home Depot is "design for them, not for you." Understanding the people we design for is where the motivation to design comes from. The purpose of creating a better tomorrow is so that it can be enjoyed by people; isn't that the point of all this? I want to bring happiness and true joy into the lives of as many people as I can reach. If this sparks your interest, infuriates you, or you’re bored because of quarantine, feel free to message me about this; I’m always happy to have a conversation and gain a new perspective.
Forget Me Not
Class: Sophomore Studio | Instructor: Steve Chininis
Forget Me Not is a wellness product for new college students who are living on their own for the first time. The assignment was to find a way to better the health and wellness of this demographic and after thorough research realized I was forgetting something- everyone forgets things. Apps are wonderful but you have to consciously open them and it's easy to forget to do that. I designed this device to show students important information of their choice (the weather, upcoming home sporting events, Canvas classroom notifications) on a simple storage device for said things. This device gets the job done!
Chakra Lamp
Class: Sophomore Studio | Instructor: Steve Chininis
This is the lamp that I designed and built for the dramatic lighting project. The purpose of this project is to choose a setting and design a floor lamp specifically for that area. I chose to create a lamp for a yoga studio, making it tall and skinny to fit in the corner and adding translucent stone and glass beads to represent the 7 chakras. This project taught me how to weld, how to plan for support as well as beauty, and how to untangle beads over and over again.
Mug
Class: Make 10 | Instructor: Steve Chininis
Make 10 gives students the opportunity to explore an area of interest and make an improvement. I am an avid tea drinker and noticed that there are no mugs on the market that offer a simple, easy way to discard the tea bag once the tea is done steeping. After playing with the form and function for weeks, I finally came to this design. I used this shape so the same part serves as a lid and as a coaster and it can fit in the top and bottom. The lid/coaster has a bowl like area to house the used tea bag until it can be thrown away.