Vivian Lin is an industrial design student at Emily Carr University of Art and Design (Vancouver, Canada), and is always inspired by her experience in her own skin.

While she doesn’t have dermatographia, she is still sensitive to the way people perceive others with a skin condition.  She grew up with severe eczema and now has countless scars to show for it, “For years (and even now), I am still uncomfortable with my body and how people perceive it.”  But, rather than let this get her down, she has turned it all around, designing things with an awareness of people’s self-consciousness.

I asked her some questions about skin, design, and how she seeks to make the world a better place.

Ariana Page Russell (APR): Please tell me a little bit about yourself.

Vivian Lin (VL): I am a third year industrial design student at Emily Carr University of Art + Design, from Vancouver, Canada. I define myself as not an industrial designer, but rather, a critical thinker, a design researcher, and a systems mapper; I am keen on helping people and cultivating community engagement within urban areas, through sustainable interventions that will help in changing perceptions about the city, the streets and the people themselves. My mission in life is to design for and contribute to a healthy, happy city through behaviour change and community engagement; I emphasize this through critical, conceptual and system design.

(APR): You are so right–you can change people’s perceptions with art and design!  How exactly do you define yourself as a systems mapper?  Can you please give me an example of a sustainable intervention that you have in mind?  How does ‘critical, conceptual and system design’ contribute to a happy city?  I’d like to know more!

(VL): I see products as more than just a physical object, but as part of a larger overarching system of where the materials came from, how it is manufactured and produced etc. I’m interested in mapping out the life cycle of whatever I design, but also interested in how people use it and interact with it, so I can design for maximum use and efficiency. I believe that knowing and understanding the system can really make or break a product – I don’t want to design something that will only contribute to the mass amounts of waste we in North America, are part of.

So sustainable interventions through community engagement really plays into that as I love designing/figuring out how even the simplest things, can transform a space and people’s perspective of it, while bringing awareness to the larger issues we face globally. Park[ing] Days is a great example of the community engagement/tactical urbanism ideas that I love to do; it is an annual worldwide event where people come together and transform metered parking spots into temporary public parks. It brings people together, reduces the amount of people driving which in turn, helps reduce the amount of CO2 being released into the air. However, it is true that this event does work better in some cities than others.

Sustainable interventions in my mind then, is exactly that – implementing a small change into the everyday lives of the average citizen to raise awareness, by changing behaviours. “Walkable City” by Jeff Speck and “Happy City” by Charles Montgomery are great reads that have really inspired me to do the work that I do.

One quote that really stood out to me, as Charles Montgomery says, “As much as we complain about other people, there is nothing worse for mental health than a social desert. The more connected we are to family and the community, the less likely we are to experience heart attacks, strokes and depression. Connected people sleep better at night. They live longer. They consistently report being happier.” If connected people are happier, than collectively, it could mean a happy city in turn. I believe through the design work I do, I can contribute to a healthy, happy city; critical design in that it lies in the space between art and design, almost using taboo as a way to instigate conversation around the topic of how disconnected we are (especially on public transportation), conceptual in that it may not manifest as a physical thing but be a social experiment and systems design, as in looking at the collective instead of the individual. Through different aspects of design, I want to make people happy and aware.

Currently, I am part of a group of students working with the City of Vancouver in helping transform the public spaces around transit stations, to make the everyday commute fun, engaging and safe and possibly, encourage more people to use public transportation.

(APR): Community is huge for me too–that’s why I started Skintome ; )  How has your skin inspired you in design?

(VL): My skin has always been an insecurity of mine. Growing up with eczema has definitely influenced me as a person in how I perceived others and how others perceived me. Art became an escape for me and surprisingly, also my saviour in allowing others to see me for who I am. My skin became a source of inspiration for me to draw my creativity from – if I can change people’s perceptions of who I am through my artwork, then I can also change their perception of a wider range of people through design, by creating and facilitating solutions through products and systems.