Hi everyone! My name is Firdous Nizar and I am pleased to join the Nomad Coliving family as a design intern.
Monday, March 14, 2022
Currently enrolled in the Individualized PhD program at Concordia University, I believe that working with Nomad Coliving (Noco) is going to be a much-needed experience in the sustainable housing industry. I have a background in architecture and design which I hope will guide me in my efforts to build an educational platform about Coliving at Noco. This project is powered by Mitacs Accelerate program and the generous support of my research supervisor, Dr. Carmela Cucuzzella (Professor at Design and Computation Arts, Co-director of Next Generation Cities Institute). I really look forward to expanding my skills in interaction design and community engagement during the next 8 months with Noco and OctoD.
This first stay at Noco has been a unique experience for me: how many people can say that they get to LIVE inside the firm they are interning with? I find it a cool way to get to know the people of NoCo and get a first-hand experience of what it means to be a part of a coliving community. I can already tell that this is an environment that is very welcoming of building long-term social connections. My goal is to capture these lived experiences and add this data to one of the many layers of the multidimensional platform that I will help build This includes taking field notes, making sketches of the different areas, interviewing NoColivers about their thoughts on coliving and integrating all this information into an immersive 3D model.
As a design graduate, I look for opportunities to really experiment with new concepts on design thinking and practice. I am a big believer in trial and error, and I don’t have a problem with abandoning prototypes or concepts that no longer help solve the problems I try to address. The key is to focus on the quantity and the quality will arise from the time committed to the task at hand. Which is why I find that this internship with Noco could be a good ground zero for me to make mini projects with Storyline 360 (which I find quite fascinating as a design tool) and keep testing it out with the NoColivers. What works, I keep and try to refine, and what doesn’t, I takeaway and learn hard lessons. In this sense, I hope that this platform will be a product of, by and for the community.