Assignments from the first year of college
Major: Digital Culture/Visual Arts
Final Assignment for ARIN1010 (Elements of Digital Cultures)
📍Project Title
Digital Culture Portfolio – “Exploring the Interfaces Between Technology and Creativity”
💡Project Overview
This portfolio was developed for the ARIN1001: Introduction to Digital Cultures course at the University of Sydney. It explores the intersection of technology, creativity, and critical theory through a series of digital artefacts across multiple media formats—image, text, sound, and video. Each element investigates a distinct theme from digital culture, including algorithmic bias, AI authorship, platform power, and mediated identity.
The project emphasises creative experimentation: testing tools, manipulating AI models, and transforming theoretical readings into visual and auditory forms of critique.
Graded 89/100, this portfolio was selected by the course team as an exemplar of creative excellence and featured in the Outstanding Student Showcase for its originality and conceptual depth.
Graded 89/100, this portfolio was selected by the course team as an exemplar of creative excellence and featured in the Outstanding Student Showcase for its originality and conceptual depth.
⚙️Skills & Understanding
Through this project, I demonstrated:
Critical literacy in digital culture – applying academic theories to contemporary digital media phenomena.
Creative fluency across platforms – using tools such as Notion and Canva to construct a cohesive digital narrative.
Technical experimentation – employing AI image generators, sound editing, and digital remixing to explore algorithmic processes.
Reflective analysis – articulating how creative practice can be a form of cultural critique, aligning with the readings from scholars such as Lessig, Zuboff, and Chesher.
Critical literacy in digital culture – applying academic theories to contemporary digital media phenomena.
Creative fluency across platforms – using tools such as Notion and Canva to construct a cohesive digital narrative.
Technical experimentation – employing AI image generators, sound editing, and digital remixing to explore algorithmic processes.
Reflective analysis – articulating how creative practice can be a form of cultural critique, aligning with the readings from scholars such as Lessig, Zuboff, and Chesher.
💻 ThinkPad X1 Fold: A Case Study in Design Failure
📍Course: DESN1000 – Principles of Design
💡Project Overview
This A3 poster was created for the Design & Disaster assessment in DESN1000: Principles of Design. Working in a small team, we analysed the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold, the world’s first foldable-screen laptop, as a case study of technological innovation colliding with real-world usability.
Our investigation explored how the product’s ambition to redefine portability was undermined by issues in durability, interface design, and cost-effectiveness. The poster situates the ThinkPad X1 Fold within its design context, identifies the systemic flaws that led to user dissatisfaction, and proposes evidence-based strategies for future improvement—grounded in user-centred design, ergonomics, and sustainable material practices.
Graded 24.6 / 30, this project achieved a result significantly above the class average (21.0) and was recognised for its analytical depth and visual clarity.
⚙️Skills & Understanding
This project demonstrated my ability to:
-Translate research into visual communication, synthesising technical, ergonomic, and market data into a cohesive A3 layout.
-Critically evaluate design decisions, identifying how structural and interaction design flaws impact real-world user experience.
-Apply design principles to strategy, formulating realistic improvements grounded in material science, usability testing, and iterative design.
-Collaborate effectively in a team, balancing research, writing, and layout design within a shared creative workflow.
✏️Reflection
Through this project, I learned that innovation without empathy often collapses under its own ambition. The ThinkPad X1 Fold represents how cutting-edge ideas can falter when usability and durability are overlooked in pursuit of novelty. Designing the poster was also a test of communication design—distilling complex research into clear hierarchy, restrained typography, and balanced composition.
The project strengthened my understanding of design as both analysis and storytelling—a process that transforms failure into insight.
🖼️ Critical Mass: Collective Reflections on Contemporary Art
📍Course: CAVA1002 – Visual Art Foundation
💡Project Overview
This group project, Critical Mass, aimed to cultivate collaborative awareness and peer learning through collective engagement with a contemporary art exhibition. Working in a team of five, we attended an exhibition together and produced a shared visual and written response reflecting on our interpretations and experiences.I was responsible for the entire visual documentation, photography, and layout design of the final submission. All photographs were taken and edited by me, while the written statements combined contributions from each group member to form a unified reflective document. The final output explored how visual presentation can extend critical discourse—how the design of a document can itself become part of its artistic reflection.
Graded 75/100, this project ranked within the top 25% of the cohort, recognised for its thoughtful presentation and cohesive aesthetic direction.
⚙️Skills & Understanding
Through this project, I developed and demonstrated:
Collaborative artistic practice, integrating diverse voices into a single visual and conceptual framework.Photography and composition skills, capturing the atmosphere and curatorial logic of the exhibition space.Editorial and layout design expertise, using typography, rhythm, and pacing to guide reader interpretation.Critical reflection, connecting the sensory experience of viewing art with analytical writing and design thinking.
✏️Reflection
This project deepened my understanding of art as a shared process rather than an individual act. Designing the collective statement taught me how visual arrangement can mediate meaning—how the placement of images beside text shapes interpretation as much as the words themselves.It also reminded me that collaboration in art isn’t about blending voices into uniformity, but composing difference into coherence. The experience reshaped how I approach group creativity: as a negotiation of perspective, rhythm, and care.