maya friedman
2019 01
A design fiction on
the future of hormone
related technologies
maya friedman
2019 02
My short film is about a dystopian future where women live with a lifestyle technology called “hormonal recognition.” Hormonal recognition plays off of the concept of facial recognition. However the device is only able to read women’s hormone levels accurately, but is unable to translate them coherently into an understandable update / diagnosis. The goal of this piece is to provide commentary on a history where women’s hormones have consistently been seen as a “third rail” in health and design. Even today they are treated with an antiquated combination of bias and uncertainty, creating a space where women live with these powerful chemicals but with minimal understanding of their effects.
maya friedman
2019 03
The use of a tattoo to represent the technology is a metaphor for the idea that once we manipulate our hormones we can’t reverse the effects or scrub it off. Hormone therapies transform our systems without enough insight into individualized effects. The tattoo is also inspired by a number of events throughout history where tattoos represent a “brain washing.” During the Cold War, thousands of people willingly got tattoos to represent their blood type, thinking that in the event of an atomic bomb, the tattoo could help keep them alive.
[excuse the poor quality footage]
maya friedman
The film uses archival footage from Walt Disney’s 1946 film, “The Story of Menstruation,” which teaches girls how to deal with their hormones by keeping they’re heads up and sitting pretty.
2019 04
maya friedman
2019 06
HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER
create strategies to confront taboo topics knowing how complex the basis of taboos are -so intertwined with culture, politics and systemic inequalities?
HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER
play a role in female healthcare conversations given many of the root issues (research inequality, doctor/patient diagnosis) are out of our control?
maya friedman
2019 01
An analysis of the
terms and conditions
of Internet Gatekeepers
maya friedman
2019 02
Within the last year, three newsworthy events occurred that provided very clear evidence that we in Western society, still operate with biases around sex and pleasure that are deeply embedded in our digital technologies, public spaces and social media sites. Inspired by these events, I was curious if I scrapped data from the Terms and Conditions sections of Facebook, Twitter, Google, Etsy and Pintrest, what would their policies on sexuality be and what would they tell us about how we view sexuality as a society? Through an analysis of each site’s language, there was a consistent dismissal of the normalcy and right of everyone to have awareness of and access to pleasure as related to sexuality.
[excuse the poor quality footage]
maya friedman
2019 03
maya friedman
TITILATING TITLES
RAUNCHY RATIONAL
PROPER POLICIES
2019 04
AMAZON: Clinical Tone - Any language describing a product must be “clinical” in tone— careful, businesslike, and straightforward, focusing simply on product features/benefits without sexual innuendo, adult language, or aggressive marketing. PINTREST: We do not allow the advertising of sex toys. FACEBOOK: We do not allow advertising of sex toys, or products focused explicitly on sexual pleasure.
PATTERNS
NOTES ON NUDITY
ETSY: Art and history can be provocative, emotional, and divisive. There are some topics on which we may never reach a consensus as a community, and that is okay. In the words of Joyce Carol Oates, “art should not be comforting; for comfort, we have mass entertainment and one another.
maya friedman
Regulations of this pedigree around pleasure, in turn, cause businesses to disguise or sneak around advertising regulations by minimizing, manipulating or re-framing the purpose of their products to be more “acceptable� to the public at large.
2019 05
maya friedman
2019 06
HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER
contribute to normalizing pleasure via the design of products and services, which operate under power inequalities driven in part by a capitalist society?
design for edge cases where normative assumptions about sexuality and pleasure are made explicit?
HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER
create for those who are transitioning or exist outside of heteronormative gender construction?
maya friedman
2019 01
Formalizing a network of bikers on the outskirts of Mexico City
maya friedman
2019 02
This project was born out of the bottomup, local advocacy cycling tradition in Mexico City that was fueled by frustrations with the government for the lack of attention to bike culture and infrastructure in a city ranked the world’s most congested. In recent years, the biggest challenge has been to make cycling safer and easier for those living on the poorly connected city fringes. Enter Bici Afueras, a local, fictional advocacy group that created the embedded device called “El Pedal.” This device lives on corners throughout the neighborhood of Iztapalapa and enables bikers to categorize the streets for safe biking through a ranking system that is collected in an ever-changing, online community bike map.
maya friedman
2019 03
“Resources are not actually the problem - it’s putting those resources where they are needed, very strategically, to make this system work,” [Areli] Carreón, Bike Mayor of Mexico City, said. There is clear momentum and awareness that a culture of biking needs to be pushed outwards from the city center.
maya friedman
2019 04
During later conversations, people felt that this device could excel even more as a physical touchpoint in unsafe neighborhoods. In parts of the city that have high numbers of disappearances this could be a useful tool. Future iterations of the device might have a camera or greater identification ability for those who interact with it.
maya friedman
2019 05
maya friedman
2019 06
HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER
create “intangible” infrastructures such as one for “safety?”
HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER
tackle the negative attitudes towards biking as a mode of transportation as related to race and class?
maya friedman
2019 01
An analysis of Search and Rescue
Routes of Lost Hikers
maya friedman
2019 02
This systems map is a representation of the true stories of five missing hikers. It is visualized through aerial Search and Rescue (SAR) flight routes contrasted with the routes the hikers wandered while lost. The goal of this map was to unearth the edge cases in SAR. Meaning discrepancies between the precise algorithmic systems used to systematize human behavior and true human behavior which is often unsystematic and un-categorizable. We often blankly systematize unique individuals according to averages and often the two don’t meet in the middle. Especially in cases when it can be life or death, how do we handle these discrepancies?
Final image
maya friedman
2019 03
maya friedman
Early process sketches tried to look at the material and organizing logic of each (algorithm & lost behavior) to create a comparison. The shapes represent SAR patterns, whereas the writing is qualitative descriptions of being lost from hikers’ journals.
2019 04
maya friedman
2019 05
HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER
ensure they understand the materials and organizing principles of algorithms in cases where it’s life and death, such as SAR?
HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER HOW DOES A DESIGNER
play a role in life extreme cases like Boeing, where the design of the system is a crucial component to ensuring the safety of the passengers?
maya friedman
2019 01
A comparison of Las Vegas to the Internet and virtual spaces
maya friedman
2019 02
The architects behind Learning From Las Vegas revised the idea of traditional of monumentality with their analysis of the components of the Las Vegas strip through the lens of postmodernism. In this project I compare the uniqueness of Las Vegas’s architecture to digital and virtual worlds through four main categories: The Endless Strip versus the Endless Scroll, Information Hierarchy, Control and Advertising Vehicles. Ultimately the piece ends with a warning for designers of AR and VR to avoid a conversion to an advertising vehicle as the Internet has become.
maya friedman
2019 03
In early iterations, I explored references to old-school 90’s Internet, the barcode, press releases for products and Vegas’s signage as a way to present my text.
maya friedman
2019 04
maya friedman
2019 05
The final iteration was a nod to the distortion of time and space in Las Vetas as a method to encourage consumerism. My work plays with scale, signage and the idea of the “endless” scroll of the Internet akin to the “endless strip” in Las Vegas.