Etching of a shape changing form
Etching, artist unknown. Form changing shape
paper stones
Paper Stones at the Wagner Museum, Philadelphia
Book Model
Book model, tracking change


Final Project, Concept

Week One

Late in 2013, I was diagnosed with an auto-immune disorder and was told by my doctor to change almost every aspect of my life. Overwhelmed by my diagnosis, I began reading about the topic of change and learned that exacting real change is a slow, contemplative practice. It takes between 21-30 days to form a new habit and you can only successfully change one habit at a time. I had arrived at a solution that felt realistic and began to change one thing about myself every month, and it worked.

Other people struggling with health challenges began to ask me if I had any suggestions on how to track this change and see their progress over time. While there are apps that will help you to track lifestyle changes, I found that the intimacy of tracking this change was lost when handling with a glowing screen or sharing with your social network.

Being a book designer, I started to think of a solution using folded paper. The resulting item was a book that had tear off tabs on the fore-edge. Each page represented a day and and each day there would be new items to tear off. While I liked this as an object, I wished for there to be a way that the data was being collected

What if there was something between and app and a book, a physical object that you could spend time with, mediate or reflect with, but that it was also collecting the data that you input every day? For my final project, I would like to make this object.