Bio:
Robin Friedman is a creative multimedia designer interested in how design can challenge inequalities and promote a more just society. As an honors student at The College of New Jersey, he pursued a BA in Interactive Multimedia with a minor in Communication Studies. Robin is a quick learner who is skilled in user experience (UX) design, coding, and research.
Project Overview:
The "Identity Multimedia Quilt" is an interactive tapestry of multimedia "patches" that raise awareness for the spectrum of nuanced identities and stories of LGBTQIA+ people.
Inspiration:
While there are many things that I have learned along my own journey, discovering my gender and orientations has been an important process for me in becoming who I am. For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to be a teacher in some capacity. Through curating the multimedia patches that make up the quilt, I have been able to learn and share in others’ personal journeys. Now I am helping them express their identities and passions to the world through the Identity Multimedia Quilt.
As a queer-identified person, many of whose loved ones are also LGBTQIA+, I often hear similar stories with the same themes. (A small subset of these narratives are represented in popular media.) But I know that not every LGBTQIA+ person has an identical experience, and I wanted to tap into the experiences that make each person’s life unique.
Solution:
The Quilt is intended to fill the unseen gaps in popular narratives that involve queer, and otherwise non-cishetero people, by drawing on the often-overlooked aspects of being LGBTQIA+.Design Problem:
Development:
Making the Quilt involved networking, collecting contact information, putting out calls for submissions through personal and scholarly networks, and then following up with everyone regularly through the semester.
Concurrently, I sought a platform that would allow me to feasibly create an accessible experience. I considered Unity but struggled to find resources on building accessible games and apps using it. Instead, a website was my ultimate choice. I had to learn some PHP to get my website to function how I needed, as well as find plugins to customize the tools on WordPress.
I planned the logo and general design on paper. Everything always starts on paper! Development involved consulting documentation on the WordPress Developer website as well as forums on general PHP syntax.
I added the content contributors submitted to my password-protected webpage for the Quilt as pieces came in. When it was all put together, I lifted the password protection and officially launched the IMQ website! Contributors (and my thesis advisor) got the first peek.
COVID-19:
While I wasn’t able to perform any interviews face-to-face, working fully online didn’t disrupt my workflow on this project. Instead, I was able to hold my interviews over text and on Discord and FaceTime calls.