As part of the Founders’ lab program, this thesis explores a social venture idea whose concept is to connect the philanthropic community with individuals and organizations in need of funding a project relating to (Sustainable Development Goals) SDG indicators through a peer-to-peer donation-based crowdfunding platform. Through this platform, the philanthropic community will have the possibility to easily access a wide range of projects to support as well as underserved individuals and communities seeking help, track their impact, donate in a complete transparent donation process, and automate donations through bank card round-ups. This social venture idea has been named PhilanthroGo.

Affective video games are still a relatively new field of research and entertainment. Even
so, being a form of entertainment media, emotion plays a large role in video games as a whole.
This project seeks to gain an understanding of what emotions are most prominent during game
play. From there, a system will be created wherein the game will record the player’s facial
expressions and interpret those expressions as emotions, allowing the game to adjust its difficulty
to create a more tailored experience.
The first portion of this project, understanding the relationship between emotions and
games, was done by recording myself as I played three different games of different genres for
thirty minutes each. The same system that would be used in the later game I created to evaluate
emotions was used to evaluate these recordings.
After the data was interpreted, I created three different versions of the same game, based
on a template created by Stan’s Assets, which was a version of the arcade game Stacker. The
three versions of the game included one where no changes were made to the gameplay
experience, it simply recorded the player’s face and extrapolated emotions from that recording,
one where the speed increased in an attempt to maintain a certain level of positive emotions, and
a third where, in addition to increasing the speed of the game, it also decreased the speed in an
attempt to minimize negative emotions.
These tests, together, show that the emotional experience of a player is heavily dependent
on how tailored the game is towards that particular emotion. Additionally, in creating a system
meant to interact with these emotions, it is easier to create a one-dimensional system that focuses
on one emotion (or range of emotions) as opposed to a more complex system, as the system
begins to become unstable, and can lead to undesirable gameplay effects.

Through this creative project, I analyzed how COVID-19 has affected the theatre industry. I created a mini-documentary following ASU’s production of Runaways, which was performed without an audience. The final product was a combination of pre-filmed and self-taped scenes. I documented how students were still able to learn and cultivate their skills during a time where most things are virtual. In addition, I analyzed how the shift to filmed theatre has changed the definition of live theatre, including increased accessibility. I also explored the importance of theatre through analyzing the themes of musical theatre performances such as Rent and Runaways. During a time where people cannot gather, artists are still finding a way to create and tell stories.

This thesis paper examines the challenges and opportunities that are present for nonprofit organizations seeking to engage in social media marketing. By analyzing the rise of social media as a prevalent tool for business-consumer outreach the paper proposes a dialogic approach to social media for nonprofits to effectively engage with their audiences, develop relationships with them, and mobilize them towards a common mission.

The academic environment has historically been somewhat slow to implement and adopt new technologies. However, developments in video games have created an opportunity for students to learn new skills and topics through nontraditional mediums of education. The disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic further highlighted the need for flexible learning opportunities. Joystick Education is our approach to addressing this need. Through online, game-based tutoring and a database of video games with high educational value, Joystick Education creates a learning environment that is effective, fun, and engaging for students. We analyzed popular, mainstream video games for educational content and selected nine games that teach concepts like history, biology, or physics while playing the game. Through promotion on social media, we generated buzz around our website which led to 103 unique visitors over our first month online and two customers requesting to book our tutoring service. We are confident that given more time to grow, Joystick Education can generate profit and become a successful business.

The academic environment has historically been somewhat slow to implement and adopt new technologies. However, developments in video games have created an opportunity for students to learn new skills and topics through nontraditional mediums of education. The disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic further highlighted the need for flexible learning opportunities. Joystick Education is our approach to addressing this need. Through online, game-based tutoring and a database of video games with high educational value, Joystick Education creates a learning environment that is effective, fun, and engaging for students. We analyzed popular, mainstream video games for educational content and selected nine games that teach concepts like history, biology, or physics while playing the game. Through promotion on social media, we generated buzz around our website which led to 103 unique visitors over our first month online and two customers requesting to book our tutoring service. We are confident that given more time to grow, Joystick Education can generate profit and become a successful business.

Executive Casework, Inc. is a custom commercial mill working company based in San<br/>Jose, CA. Although the company originally only focused on cabinets, it has expanded to include custom reception desks and solid surface countertops to meet demand. The company founded by David and Mark Brown has humble beginnings, originally located in Mark's garage. Over the last two decades, the company has seen astronomical growth buoyed up by the fast increase in commercial real estate in Silicon Valley.<br/>However, the company is currently facing considerable uncertainty like many others in the industry. These resulting overhead costs, when paired with future uncertainty of demand created by geopolitical trends, work from home, and Covid-19, create a notable problem for Executive Casework, Inc. As such, this thesis will focus on strategic steps Executive Casework, Inc. can make to capitalize on current macrocosmic trends, as well as trends within their own industry. More specifically, it will be a strategic analysis identifying the key external forces driving the fluctuating revenues in the commercial custom mill working industry, followed by an analysis of these external forces (magnitude and longevity). We will end with a framework for capitalizing on these trends by organizationally and physically placing a company like our exemplar company, Executive Casework, in the best position to realize maximum profitability.

Physical appearance is an important communication tool that involves the way people define themselves and others around them. Clothing is a major component of physical appearance. When people can understand how different clothing styles flatter their specific body shapes, they can use clothing as a means to manipulate their physical appearances. In this way, people can choose deliberate clothing to send out purposeful visual messages that align with their goals and interests. Understanding how clothing affects visual appearance can be a very complicated task (Ilnitsky, 2018; Nix-Rice, 2014). There should be a simple and way for people to pick clothes that will specifically look good on their body. The purpose of this current study is to introduce a new method of online shopping that collects users’ body dimensions and shows them clothing that will flatter their particular body shape. The following study proposes a prototype design for such a shopping experience.