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Selected Work
Rooted in Connection: A Community Engagement Design Toolkit
The Research Question
How can design help grassroots organizations build more sustainable, consistent community engagement?
The Uphams Corner Food Forest in Dorchester, MA is a publicly accessible green space maintained by volunteer stewards and part of the Boston Food Forest Coalition. Despite strong community interest, the food forest faced a persistent challenge: neighbors didn't know it existed, and the stewards lacked the resources to change that in any lasting way.
Understanding the Problem
Before designing anything, I needed to understand three things: how food forests function as community spaces, what makes grassroots engagement efforts succeed or fail, and what design toolkits in similar settings already looked like.
That research shaped everything that followed.
Process & Methods
Observational Studies
On-site observation revealed that stewards — the volunteers who maintain the space — are the primary users and the backbone of any engagement effort. Without a registration or sign-up system, there was no way to follow up with visitors, and no data to learn from.
Stakeholder Interviews
Interviews surfaced a consistent set of needs: clearly defined roles, a system for data collection, outreach strategies, and better internal organization. The through-line was that any solution had to be adaptable, accessible, and modular — built for a team with limited time and resources.
Participatory Design Sessions
Working directly with stewards and community members highlighted the need for clearer structure and plain-language instructions. This confirmed the direction: modular tools and templates that could flex to different situations, with digital access so nothing would get lost in a folder.
User Testing
On-site testing validated several tools immediately. Others needed simplification, stronger visuals, and translation into languages spoken in the surrounding neighborhood.
The Toolkit: Rooted in Connection (www.rootedinconnection.net)
The final product is a free, editable, publicly available website resource organized into three sections:
Engagement Tools — for activating and retaining community members
Outreach Tools — for spreading awareness in the neighborhood
Understanding Participation Tools — for tracking who shows up and why
Every tool is designed to be adapted. The goal was never a one-size-fits-all solution — it was a replicable framework that other food forests, community gardens, and grassroots organizations could make their own.
Impact
The toolkit's real-world impact became visible when comparing two consecutive season opener events at the food forest. Door-knocking and flyer distribution — both guided by toolkit resources — drove a measurable increase in sign-ups and attendance. More people showed up. More people left their names.
What This Could Become
This project is designed to grow. Next steps include testing the toolkit with other Boston Food Forest Coalition members, refining tools based on ongoing feedback, and developing resources for season-closing events and longer-term community stewardship. The broader ambition: a replicable engagement framework that travels — to other food forests, other cities, other grassroots efforts working to bring people into shared space.
How can design help grassroots organizations build more sustainable, consistent community engagement?
The Uphams Corner Food Forest in Dorchester, MA is a publicly accessible green space maintained by volunteer stewards and part of the Boston Food Forest Coalition. Despite strong community interest, the food forest faced a persistent challenge: neighbors didn't know it existed, and the stewards lacked the resources to change that in any lasting way.
Understanding the Problem
Before designing anything, I needed to understand three things: how food forests function as community spaces, what makes grassroots engagement efforts succeed or fail, and what design toolkits in similar settings already looked like.
That research shaped everything that followed.
Process & Methods
Observational Studies
On-site observation revealed that stewards — the volunteers who maintain the space — are the primary users and the backbone of any engagement effort. Without a registration or sign-up system, there was no way to follow up with visitors, and no data to learn from.
Stakeholder Interviews
Interviews surfaced a consistent set of needs: clearly defined roles, a system for data collection, outreach strategies, and better internal organization. The through-line was that any solution had to be adaptable, accessible, and modular — built for a team with limited time and resources.
Participatory Design Sessions
Working directly with stewards and community members highlighted the need for clearer structure and plain-language instructions. This confirmed the direction: modular tools and templates that could flex to different situations, with digital access so nothing would get lost in a folder.
User Testing
On-site testing validated several tools immediately. Others needed simplification, stronger visuals, and translation into languages spoken in the surrounding neighborhood.
The Toolkit: Rooted in Connection (www.rootedinconnection.net)
The final product is a free, editable, publicly available website resource organized into three sections:
Engagement Tools — for activating and retaining community members
Outreach Tools — for spreading awareness in the neighborhood
Understanding Participation Tools — for tracking who shows up and why
Every tool is designed to be adapted. The goal was never a one-size-fits-all solution — it was a replicable framework that other food forests, community gardens, and grassroots organizations could make their own.
Impact
The toolkit's real-world impact became visible when comparing two consecutive season opener events at the food forest. Door-knocking and flyer distribution — both guided by toolkit resources — drove a measurable increase in sign-ups and attendance. More people showed up. More people left their names.
What This Could Become
This project is designed to grow. Next steps include testing the toolkit with other Boston Food Forest Coalition members, refining tools based on ongoing feedback, and developing resources for season-closing events and longer-term community stewardship. The broader ambition: a replicable engagement framework that travels — to other food forests, other cities, other grassroots efforts working to bring people into shared space.
Touchless Kitchen: Designing for Dirty Hands
Every cooking session is filled with small interruptions. Messy hands pause to open a cabinet, adjust the stove, or press a button, breaking the natural rhythm of the task. During the development of the "Dirty Hands" Project, we began by questioning this overlooked friction point: what if the kitchen could respond to people instead of requiring people to constantly adapt to it? Rather than designing a single product, the project explores gesture-based interaction and embedded sensing as a way to create a more accessible, intuitive, and responsive cooking environment.
The project combines observations of everyday kitchen behaviors with gesture-mapping exercises across users and cultural contexts to develop a system where natural hand movements control common tasks without physical contact. Discreet infrared and radar-based sensors, supported by an adaptive AI layer, interpret gestures, understand context, and personalize interactions over time, enabling actions such as opening cabinets or controlling appliances through simple movements. Three principles guided the design throughout the process: interactions should be intuitive, easy to learn, and seamlessly integrated into the environment.
By reframing interaction around human behavior rather than technology, Dirty Hands positions gesture as an invisible interface that reduces interruptions while improving accessibility and efficiency. The project explores the potential of ambient computing and emerging sensor technologies to create spaces that anticipate human needs instead of demanding constant attention, suggesting a future where the best interfaces are the ones that quietly disappear into everyday life.
The project combines observations of everyday kitchen behaviors with gesture-mapping exercises across users and cultural contexts to develop a system where natural hand movements control common tasks without physical contact. Discreet infrared and radar-based sensors, supported by an adaptive AI layer, interpret gestures, understand context, and personalize interactions over time, enabling actions such as opening cabinets or controlling appliances through simple movements. Three principles guided the design throughout the process: interactions should be intuitive, easy to learn, and seamlessly integrated into the environment.
By reframing interaction around human behavior rather than technology, Dirty Hands positions gesture as an invisible interface that reduces interruptions while improving accessibility and efficiency. The project explores the potential of ambient computing and emerging sensor technologies to create spaces that anticipate human needs instead of demanding constant attention, suggesting a future where the best interfaces are the ones that quietly disappear into everyday life.
Sow & Tell: A Participatory Toolkit for Community Connection
A seed-based participatory toolkit that transforms shared spaces into platforms for conversation, reflection, and community connection.
Sow & Tell is a participatory experience designed to foster conversation, reflection, and connection within community green spaces. Using seeds as both a physical and symbolic medium, the project invites participants to engage with their environment—and each other—through storytelling and exchange.
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THE OPPORTUNITY
Public green spaces often rely on passive engagement. While people share the same environment, opportunities for meaningful interaction and dialogue are limited.
This project asks: How might we design simple, accessible interactions that encourage people to connect through shared space?
THE APPROACH
Sow & Tell introduces a lightweight, modular toolkit combining:
- Seed cards and plant matching
- Prompt-based storytelling
- Open-ended interaction between participants
The system is intentionally flexible–structured enough to guide participation, yet open enough to allow for personal interpretation and improvisation.
THE EXPERIENCE
Participants:
- Match seeds to plants
- Exchange stories or reflections tied to nature and place
- Contribute perspectives shaped by their own experiences
What begins as a simple activity evolves into a shared dialogue, where knowledge, memory, and identity intersect.
KEY INSIGHT
Tangible objects can act as powerful social catalysts.
Seeds–small, familiar, and symbolic–lower the barrier to participation while creating space for deeper engagement. By grounding interaction in something physical, the experience becomes more approachable, inclusive, and memorable.
WHY IT MATTERS.
Sow & Tell reframes engagement in public spaces as something active, collective, and evolving.
Rather than designing for passive use, it creates conditions for:
- Conversation
- Knowledge sharing
- Community connection
REFLECTION
This project demonstrates how design can facilitate–not dictate– interaction.
Sow & Tell is a participatory experience designed to foster conversation, reflection, and connection within community green spaces. Using seeds as both a physical and symbolic medium, the project invites participants to engage with their environment—and each other—through storytelling and exchange.
---
THE OPPORTUNITY
Public green spaces often rely on passive engagement. While people share the same environment, opportunities for meaningful interaction and dialogue are limited.
This project asks: How might we design simple, accessible interactions that encourage people to connect through shared space?
THE APPROACH
Sow & Tell introduces a lightweight, modular toolkit combining:
- Seed cards and plant matching
- Prompt-based storytelling
- Open-ended interaction between participants
The system is intentionally flexible–structured enough to guide participation, yet open enough to allow for personal interpretation and improvisation.
THE EXPERIENCE
Participants:
- Match seeds to plants
- Exchange stories or reflections tied to nature and place
- Contribute perspectives shaped by their own experiences
What begins as a simple activity evolves into a shared dialogue, where knowledge, memory, and identity intersect.
KEY INSIGHT
Tangible objects can act as powerful social catalysts.
Seeds–small, familiar, and symbolic–lower the barrier to participation while creating space for deeper engagement. By grounding interaction in something physical, the experience becomes more approachable, inclusive, and memorable.
WHY IT MATTERS.
Sow & Tell reframes engagement in public spaces as something active, collective, and evolving.
Rather than designing for passive use, it creates conditions for:
- Conversation
- Knowledge sharing
- Community connection
REFLECTION
This project demonstrates how design can facilitate–not dictate– interaction.
Acrylic Lampshade/Plant Pot
The goal for this project was to give an object two distinct uses.
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