Acknowledgments

My journey of exploring my thesis topic has been influenced and supported by many people in the past two years, and I want to thank all of them for helping me make it possible.

First and foremost, I want to thank my parents for their unconditional love and support from 13,568 km away in India. They were always a call away and comforted me in every situation in the past two years. I want to thank my brother Savan and my sister-in-law Helly for comforting me whenever I felt homesick and making me laugh in all situations. Lastly, this journey wouldn’t be possible without my cousin sister Chandni, who stood by me through thick and thin and showing me how to live in New York City. She was my rock in this unknown world and my home away from home.

I want to show my thankfulness towards my thesis professors, Tom Kinkostien and Janine Toro, whose support, questions, and knowledge pushed my work and research beyond what I could have imagined. This thesis would not be the same without professor Tom Klinkostien. He pushed me, encouraged me with every step at Pratt Institute. His imparting knowledge and use of words opened a new world of design to me.

I want to thank professors at the Pratt Communication Design program, Karen Dunn, Matt Martin, Joseph Burwell, Amit Kalra, Alisa Zamir, and Frances Pharr, for all the conversations, encouragement, and support throughout my two years at Pratt. Special thanks to professor Eric O’ Toole for guiding me with my capstone project and help me convert my 2D visual into the 3D installation.

My gratefulness to my classmates from thesis class at Pratt: Amber Hsuan Lin, Brian Krohnengold, Giulia Privileggio, Johanna Beck, Lizzie Cox, Yuejia Zhu, and Zeynep Kiris- your weekly feedback and ideas helped me push my thesis in prolific directions.

I want to thank my friends: Shrey Patel, Ritika Shastri, Masoom Agarwal, Siddhant Khilauria, Subhadip Paul, Tanya Kuruvilla, and Samarpita Chowdhury for helping me at various points in the past 24 years of my life. Lastly, to Kuldeep Beniwal for helping me with my 2 am design decisions and always being there with me. I could not have done this without you.