"The New Chapter"

Yesterday I attended the end-of-project presentations at California College of the Arts by the MDes students. We worked with a great team of four students at Enso Village : Vedanshi Mishra , Arushi Kumar , Elaine Lu , and Yagmur Alptekin .

The team started with the question: "How might we enable the residents to continue sharing knowledge and building connections through books?"

The project took place over two semesters, and in the process of working on it, the students had the opportunity to do several rounds of interaction with future residents of Enso Village . In response to these conversations and in consultation with other key stakeholders, they created a digital and analog system for the books at Enso Village.

Here's what the team wrote about their experience:

Working on this unique project with Enso Village and the lovely future residents to bring the idea of a deconstructed library to life has been an incredible experience. Their patience and active involvement in co-designing this concept provided valuable feedback and ideas that shaped its reality. A heartfelt thank you to Erin, whose unwavering support and insightful contributions guided us throughout the entire process.?

Enso village is a breath of fresh air in senior living, and so is its library! We had an amazing time bringing the concept closer to reality, collaborating with Erin and many future residents. It was an incredible learning opportunity as we got to work on a number of touchpoints and even repeatedly testing and fine-tuning the designs. It was amazing to see our concepts bring joy and excitement among people. Thank you to the entire Enso team for the incredible opportunity!

I appreciated the team's flexibility in working with us, their openness in sharing ideas, the deep listening they did as we discussed the evolving project, and the amount of care they brought to designing the systems. I hope to host them for lunch at Enso once we are open, so they can see the space and the work they did in action!

While I was waiting for the presentations to begin, I reflected on the fact that it has been over 10 years that I have enjoyed the opportunity of working with CCA students in various ways connected to art, design, and aging. This project represents the first of what we hope to be many opportunities connecting CCA to the community at Enso Village.