```cv
gallery
{"layout":"hscroll","images":[{"src":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/maitake-project.appspot.com/o/pages%2FQQnuTXVP57fJbCdncVJXXfnlcEy1%2FS5RcUaE2mxbTKz8adYL6%2F0a47957e-6f48-4660-9732-ac72f474d0e9.png?alt=media&token=3428a6ae-902b-4f6f-8d43-0ebceb4f47ed","id":"0a47957e-6f48-4660-9732-ac72f474d0e9","width":1285,"height":870,"filename":"gaurika thesis zine.png","type":"image/png","caption":"","border":false}]}
```

**Abstract**

Weathering Weather is an explorative study that looks at unveiling what is obscured when using numeric weather data in our everyday lives. It does this by breaking down our understanding of weather, while simultaneously bringing attention to how we’re all weathering - enduring, living, and changing with weather. This thesis unpacks the many relationships we have with weather, climate, and climate change. It proposes alternative ways in which we may understand, relate to, and communicate weather in our everyday lives.

While the politics of weather are examined through a critical lens, an exploratory approach is used to understand how the qualitative aspects of weather might be mapped. Embodied co-speculation, a methodology that uses practices from embodied design, participatory design, and speculative design, is employed to capture the subjective embodied knowledge about weather that we inherently possess. Co-speculation is used to find alternative ways of measuring and communicating weather (alternative to numeric ways). This creative outlook towards weather allowed for estrangement and imagination to emerge, which created room for reflection about our relationship with weather and climate change. Three co-speculation workshops reveal how feelings, rhythms, moods, observations, and senses are deeply impacted by weather and obscured when we condense weather into numeric meteorological data.

The workshops documented the subjective weather experiences, which were thematically analysed. The alternatives were filtered to create themes that collate how weather can be understood through natural and urban environments, language, celebrations, memories, safety, productivity, privilege, mixed feelings, moods, mental health, seasonality, and temporality. Rich, personal, physical materials collected from the co-speculation workshops were documented in the form of a zine (an independent publication that is made for a large but niche audience interested in the topic), titled ‘Deep talk about Weather’ which was co-authored and co-created with two participants, acts as the tangible outcome of this thesis.

In proposing reflective, qualitative, and embodied alternative ways of understanding weather, this thesis offers different perspectives through which we can understand and reflect on complex eco-social subjectivities related to weather and climate change.

Keywords: weather, weathering, climate change, embodied co-speculation, participatory design, zine

*The thesis and zine can be found here - <https://linktr.ee/WeatheringWeather>*

Winner, Good Design Interventions '23

Product Designer at Saidot.ai

Novel Eustachian Tube Dysfunction Management Techniques: Prototype Feasibility Studies in Fresh Cadaveric Specimens

My MA thesis, Weathering Weather, was selected as 1 of 15 Good Design Interventions among 100 global applicants. 

Good Design Interventions is an award and a curated exhibition (Oct 2023) at Parsons NYC for intangible design projects that address the pressing issues of our time by bringing together the power of design and social sciences.

Specialisation: Collaborative and Industrial Design

Student project featured at while{tech}do{art}, Bangalore International Center (BIC)

Art Feature

Student project about Designing for Indian Trains

Winning a challenge at Pune Design Festival

Art featured at Museum of Student Life, Otaniemi, Finland

Participated in a two-week-long collaborative, remote project where we (a diverse & multidisciplinary team of five) tried to imagine a feminist and anti-racist Internet collectively along with a partner organisation - Fem-R

Creating inclusive well-being futures

A small home business/ initiative that makes custom handmade crocheted shoes, toys, and accessories for children and adults and donates profits towards the education of underprivileged children in India.

Founder, Experience Designer

Designed a sustainable, circular, and local service that redefines the concepts of ownership and repair in a team of four.

Finalist at the Student Service Design Challenge

An introduction to creative mending - visible and invisible repair — facilitated a repair workshop, and helped participants mend their worn-out personal items at Dodo's Urban Dinner at Kääntöpöytä in Pasila, Helsinki

Visible and Invisible Repair + Repair Workshop

International Tutor

Helped the Feminist Futures Copenhagen team with social media content design and management

Volunteer Social Media Manager

Masters Student Advocate

Advocate - Consultative Forums

Volunteer

Student Representative Member at TSAK - Academic Committee for Arts, Design and Architecture

Halloped Member

Assisted the Creatures EU research team at Aalto University with design and project management tasks.

Research Assistant

Worked with a multidisciplinary team to translate customer needs and insights into wireframes, design better experiences, and develop websites for various clients. Additionally, I worked on internal design projects related to branding, communication, and social media.

Service and UI/UX Design Intern

Worked on project CareCradle, a conceptual solution of a cradle with tracking tools that parents could take home with them from the hospital, aimed at monitoring at-risk newborns at home to prevent morbidity and mortality.

Product Designer

Project Carelet - led a small multidisciplinary team for R&D of life-saving research tool focussed on improving and facilitating Kangaroo Mother Care for neonates, funded by Grand Challenges Canada (GCC)

Project BabyOnTrack - led the graphic, strategy, experience design, and web development of a platform-based service focussed on providing personalised counseling and advice to parents of newborns. This project was funded the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Product Design Lead

Nov 2021 – Dec 2021
Assisted Professor Anna Valtonen for the course, Systems Innovation, and Design with Tongji University

May 2021 – Jul 2021
Worked on redesigning the Collaborative and Industrial Design (CoID) website.

Dec 2020 – Apr 2021
Website design for Societal Design practices course in Information Networks.

Teaching Assistant

Responsible for the design of Saidot's AI transparency and governance platform that helps companies and governments worldwide to deploy Responsible AI

Worked on my B.Des Thesis Project - a minimally invasive surgical product for the treatment of Eustachian Tube Dysfunction.
Patent pending.

Graphic and UI Design, Digital Marketing, and Advertising strategy for Monarch, a digital platform offering convenient, customized and experienced support from pregnancy to parenthood.

Gaurika Singhal

2023