Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection
Barrett, The Honors College at Arizona State University proudly showcases the work of undergraduate honors students by sharing this collection exclusively with the ASU community.
Barrett accepts high performing, academically engaged undergraduate students and works with them in collaboration with all of the other academic units at Arizona State University. All Barrett students complete a thesis or creative project which is an opportunity to explore an intellectual interest and produce an original piece of scholarly research. The thesis or creative project is supervised and defended in front of a faculty committee. Students are able to engage with professors who are nationally recognized in their fields and committed to working with honors students. Completing a Barrett thesis or creative project is an opportunity for undergraduate honors students to contribute to the ASU academic community in a meaningful way.
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Description
Fueled by fear in the post-9/11 United States, American intelligence agencies conduct dragnet data collection on global communication. Despite the intention of surveillance as preventative counter-terrorism action, the default search and seizure of global communication poses a threat to our constitutional rights and individual autonomy. This is the case especially for people who may be thought of as in opposition to our current political climate, such as immigrants, people of color, women, people practicing non-western religions, people living outside of the United States, activists, persons engaging in political dissent, and people with intersecting identities. Throughout the Fall and Spring semesters, I have done research, conducted visual experiments and designed exploratory projects in order to more thoroughly identify the issue and explore the ways in which visual communication design can aid in the conversation surrounding global surveillance. It was the intention of my fourth year social issue projects to explore the role of visual communication design in the dialogue surrounding surveillance, principally focusing on the responsibility visual communication design has in spreading ideas about how to globally subvert surveillance until governments disclose information about their unconstitutional actions or until whistleblowers do it for them. My final project, the fourth year social issue exhibit, focuses on how improving our personal password habits can help us gain agency in digital spaces. Using the randomness of rolling a dice to generate entropy can help us generate stronger passwords in order to secure sensitive information online. Using design as a method of communication, my fourth year social issue exhibit shared information about how encrypted passwords can act as the first line of defense in protecting ourselves from invasive data collection and malicious internet activity.
ContributorsBailey, Lauren Nicole (Author) / Sanft, Alfred (Thesis director) / Heywood, William (Committee member) / The Design School (Contributor) / School of Social Transformation (Contributor) / School of Art (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-05
Description
My creative project involved the creation of a short, abstract animation set to EDM music. It's meant to mimic the graphics displayed in the background of EDM concerts and was inspired by Beeple and the graphics he designed for EDM artist, Zedd. Under the guidance of my director, Meredith Drum, and with help from my second committee member, Muriel Magenta, I was able to use Audacity to edit the music, Autodesk Maya 2016 to model and animate the animation, the HIDA render farm to render the frames using Maya Software and mentalray, Adobe After Effects CC to assemble and edit the animation, and Adobe Media Encoder to export the end product. The final animation included 20,855 individual frames, totaling to 14 minutes and 28 seconds in length. The project takes the viewer through seven worlds to express the idea of feeling isolated in your home, exploring the world, and then returning home with a new perspective. Each world evokes a different emotion through the interaction of its visual and audio design to allow the viewer to experience the intended storyline without explicit characters or plot detail. Due to the importance of maintaining plot flow, I utilized beautiful, yet difficult, design elements including glass textures, ocean shaders, and paint effects to create drastically different world designs specific to each song. These songs were chosen from a variety of EDM artists and edited to flow together seamlessly through each world and evoke a different emotion. Throughout the thesis process, I gained more skills in animation and editing and greatly improved my ability to use each application. While there is plenty of room to grow, I have improved exponentially as an artist from when I began this project to the moment I completed it.
ContributorsMallik, Ajanta Angie (Author) / Drum, Meredith (Thesis director) / Magenta, Muriel (Committee member) / The Design School (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / School of Social Transformation (Contributor) / School of Art (Contributor) / WPC Graduate Programs (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
In early 2026, the NASA Discovery Program will fall into orbit with a metal asteroid named Psyche. Through discovery and interaction, this exploration will give us insight into an asteroid that we cannot see or interpret. From a certain view, you can look at how this mission mimics that discovery with experimentation of our own senses. As a part of a team of eight seniors, we were tasked to help develop a mobile application that reflects the Psyche mission and shows the future of the project ten years from now. Since this is also a government funded project, it is pertinent to adhere to the ADA compliance guidelines required to make digital applications accessible to the larger public. As a designer, I wanted to push this concept further to showcase that accessibility is not something that should be stereotyped or discouraged from a design perspective. Each person that interacts with the application will have a different experience but it is this collaboration between the object and it's audience that creates this sense of discovery. Taking the mission's core values one step further, this application was designed and explored to uphold the foundations of what Universal Design is about. It is about connecting interested parties to the material they are looking for without unrealistic access that is dependent on ability.
ContributorsSchaecher, Lauren Allison (Author) / Sanft, Alfred (Thesis director) / Heywood, William (Committee member) / The Design School (Contributor) / Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
DescriptionThrough artist book, printed photographs, paintings, writing, and web design, August Tang deconstructed their identity as a nonbinary person. Both educational and expressive, the creative project was a manifestation of a coming out journey, affirmation of gender identity, and experiences relating to gender with friends, family, and strangers.
ContributorsTang, August B (Author) / Button, Melissa (Thesis director) / Sanft, Alfred (Committee member) / School of Art (Contributor) / Dean, W.P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / The Design School (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
Last Hymn was created by the team of Tyler Pinho, Jefferson Le, and Curtis Spence with the desire to create an eccentric Role Playing Game focused on the exploration of a strange, dying world. Battles in the game are based off of rhythm games like Dance Dance Revolution using a procedural generation algorithm that makes every encounter unique. This is then complemented with the path system where each enemy has unique rhythm patterns to give them different types of combat opportunities. In Last Hymn, the player arrives on a train at the World's End Train Station where they are greeted by a mysterious figure and guided to the Forest where they witness the end of the world and find themselves back at the train station before they left for the Forest. With only a limited amount of time per cycle of the world, the player must constantly weigh the opportunity cost of each decision, and only with careful thought, conviction, and tenacity will the player find a conclusion from the never ending cycle of rebirth. Blending both Shinto architecture and modern elements, Last Hymn used a "fantasy-chic" aesthetic in order to provide memorable locations and dissonant imagery. As the player explores they will struggle against puzzles and dynamic, rhythm based combat while trying to unravel the mystery of the world's looping time. Last Hymn was designed to develop innovative and dynamic new solutions for combat, exploration, and mapping. From this project all three team members were able to grow their software development and game design skills, achieving goals like improved level design, improved asset pipelines while simultaneously aiming to craft an experience that will be unforgettable for players everywhere.
ContributorsPinho, Tyler (Co-author) / Le, Jefferson (Co-author) / Spence, Curtis (Co-author) / Nelson, Brian (Thesis director) / Walker, Erin (Committee member) / Kobayashi, Yoshihiro (Committee member) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Computing and Informatics Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12
Description
The purpose of this thesis was to develop a tool to provide information and data for design teams to use throughout the mobile application design process. Ideally, this would enable teams to see patterns in iterative design, and ultimately use data-driven analysis to make their own decisions. The initial problem was a lack of available information offered by mobile application design teams—the initial goal being to work closely with design teams to learn their decision-making methodology. However, every team that was reached out to responded with rejection, presenting a new problem: a lack of access to quality information regarding the decision-making process for mobile applications. This problem was addressed by the development of an ethical hacking script that retrieves reviews in bulk from the Google Play Store using Python. The project was a success—by feeding an application’s unique Play Store ID, the script retrieves a user-specified amount of reviews (up to millions) for that mobile application and the 4 “recommended” applications from the Play Store. Ultimately, this thesis proved that protected reviews on the Play Store can be ethically retrieved and used for data-driven decision making and identifying patterns in an application’s iterative design. This script provides an automated tool for teams to “put a finger on the pulse” of their target applications.
ContributorsDyer, Mitchell Patrick (Author) / Lin, Elva (Thesis director) / Giles, Charles (Committee member) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12
Description
I devote my thesis to the practice of adaptive architecture and parametric design. The interactive and adaptive design would be my interest and my research thesis will be the process of exploring the architectural potentials of computer-programmed architectural design which interact with human beings. Start with the adaptive architectural theory of Neil Leach and Sou Fujimoto's architectural theory of architecture type, I explore and test the possibilities with current tools. I did reseach on the current study and practice of adaptive and interactive architecture in 20 century. After a series of study and experiment, I decided to make the "mirror" as a portal of inside and outside a building indicating a vague spacial relationship instead of just a normal mechanic mirror. The "mirror" will able to translate the information captured from motion to another "language" presented by movable materials to surrounding people, which provides people space to reflect and interact with each other. And the device would be the prototype of my thesis. The exploration of technology in the field of architecture really attracts me. I enjoy the design process and the final product. I will pay attention to new technologies in the future and try to combine technology, art and architecture together to create new experience.
ContributorsJu, Dewen (Author) / Diego, Garcia-Setien (Thesis director) / Hejduk, Renata (Committee member) / The Design School (Contributor) / School of Art (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
The purpose of this research paper is to address the gap between programmers' capability to develop well-designed websites and the shabby designs of the websites they actually produce. This paper will first address what constitutes a poor website design and what constitutes a good website design. I will research what academia and popular opinion state are taboo elements that condemn a website's design choices and what they extoll as good website design choices. This includes an objective evaluation of both poorly-designed websites and well-designed websites. Following that, this paper will observe the cases of acclaimed and basic programmers and developers who produce incredible technologies while their website development work remains shoddy. I hope to glean some insight into why this performance gap exists. Ultimately, I will create wireframe designs for my own website, demonstrating the elements of a well-designed website in order to address everything I have learned.
ContributorsPandey, Ainesh (Author) / Anderson, Dennis (Thesis director) / Mazzola, Daniel (Committee member) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
The sole purpose of this innovative thesis is to produce and provide strategic recommendations for one of Arizona's premier Asian Supermarkets, that is, Lee Lee Oriental Supermarket. These strategic recommendations will then be utilized and integrated with Lee Lee's current marketing consultant company's marketing components, by Air Marketing, for Lee Lee. These recommendations will aim to serve four main purposes. These four main purposes will be to (1) create exchanges, which will create, deliver, and communicate value, (2) assist to continue developing the identity of Lee Lee, (3) establish relationships to grow Lee Lee's network, and (4) to help solve customer problems. Through these effective marketing recommendations, this innovative thesis project will assist to increase awareness of the supermarket, increase brand recognition and, ultimately, to assist in further defining the brand and uniqueness of the ethnic retail store.
ContributorsRodriguez, Elindoro Joseph (Author) / Brooks, Dan (Thesis director) / Eaton, John (Committee member) / Truong, Paulina (Committee member) / Department of Supply Chain Management (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2013-05
Description
"The Wedding Dress" is a creative project investigating the history of wedding dress design that led to the design and construction of a wedding dress with historical inspiration. The project details the process of creating the wedding dress, in addition to the historical study of wedding dresses, and the designer/author's inspiration.
ContributorsAlbasha, Heba (Author) / Facinelli, Diane (Thesis director) / Dai, Lenore (Committee member) / Raad, Nada (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Chemical Engineering Program (Contributor)
Created2013-05