Mohammad Zeryab Sial
Strategy • Research • Digital + Physical
Product Design • Project Management
Philadelphia, PA
Launching the first digital census during a time of extreme political mistrust presented a unique set of challenges for communities that rely on a fair census count the most for representation, programming, and funding, threatening an accurate count and the futures of these communities.
The Muslim pilgrimage of Hajj is among the largest, most diverse gatherings in the world. Languages, cultures, lifestyles converge for five days with the same goal of connecting to one God. The Hajj is seen as a sacred right for this rapidly growing population of 1.8 billion Muslims, resulting in significant pressure on the host to accommodate the demand. As a result, the city has undergone drastic changes through a constant cycle of destroy/rebuild without any calculation of the effects on Mecca’s ecology. Due to the sanctity of the ordained rituals enshrined in over 4000 years of tradition, little flexibility is left for the rearrangement of affairs, rather, the city most mold to the pilgrims. The current efforts need to be reevaluated as a means of enhancing and supporting the unique story of Mecca before it becomes a fragmented memory. Until a fundamental shift is made in how these problems are addressed, the transformative experience of Hajj may not be accessible to future generations.
Building upon the recent movement of Decolonizing Design, this work is an attempt to address the ways of mainstream Design historically operating on a eurocentric, neoliberal, secular-modernist framework and has been used as a tool for reproducing these ideologies (directly and indirectly, intentionally and unintentionally) to serve the dominant western worldview, often at the expense of the oppressed and the "other."
Amitav Ghosh, once described the climate crisis as a ‘crisis of imagination.’ As we struggle to make any significant progress in turning back destructive environmental trends one decade after another, the urgency for new methods and thinking have become critical. Our climate efforts have been doomed by our framing.
Imagine getting a box to take home with every in store purchase. It sounds unreasonable but with transitioning consumer habits, the waste being produced from ecommerce will become comparable. Online shopping is reaching ubiquity. As of 2016, US consumers have been purchasing more online than in person. This service requires additional materials to facilitate the delivery of these items. Unreasonable waste is produced in packaging material that is limited in use but has a lifetime extending past its intended purpose. The management of all the remaining material, post shipment, will become problematic as this purchasing trend continues.
