Parsons School of Design
BFA Communication Design
Thesis 2018

Parsons School of Design
BFA Communication Design
Thesis 2018

Racial Lenses
Jissaura Taveras Hernandez

Advancements in technology have played and important role in spreading information and transforming media. Lately the integration of augmented and virtual reality has been gaining traction in the social media and technology world. Racial Lenses uses the social media platform Snapchat to create an interactive piece about racism and the reality of it for those it affects.

Racial Lenses was created using Snapchat’s augmented reality building program that allows users to upload their own designs to the social media platform. I took advantage of this tool by creating an augmeted reality lens that shows racial statistics such as; the percentage of black Americans more likely to get stopped by police than white Americans, and thoughts that may appear in the mind of someone whom the impact of racism affects. For example, the user would see augmented reality text of thoughts like “I’m in a predominately white neighborhood, will someone call the cops and have me arrested or killed for being black?” Statistics and location traction is based on New York City statistics, and recent apparent racially targeted incidents.

I chose a social media platform with location-based augmented reality and filter because it’s an app that can easily be recorded, shared, and viewed, by many users. People who don’t have to deal with racism can put themselves in the perspective of someone who does. Even as simple as worrying about being in a certain area and not being viewed as suspicious because of the color of their skin.

Maxine Joy Almendra

Daniela Al-Saleh

Amon Dario Appelt

Shruti Ashok

Whitney Badge

Jaire Berkel

Ingrid Bonetti

Victoria Boyd

Madison Bozinoff

Malulani Bria

Kaylin Brown

Rachel Brownjohn

Olive Burd

Germán Castellanos Reyes

Madeline Cericola

Vicky Chau

Amber Chen

Victor Chen

Wendy Ching

Connie Chu

Channon Chung

Leonardo Cilmi

Emma T. Conway

Nicole Corso

Qamile Dani

Magdalena de la Torre Suárez

Amanda Ericson

Dan Feldman

Anna Feng

Natalia Flores

Peter Frasco

Lucia Garza

Mariana Gaviria

Mikey Hefez

Adrianna Hinsey

Avinash Hirdaramani

Marielle Holland

Grace Hong

Surkho Shane Hong

Pauline Hotelier

Dylan Hughes

Jiyoung Hwang

Sonali Jain

Andrea S. Jassir

Christina Jenkins

Maria Jessica

Erin Johnston

Javarius Jones

Yea Ji Jung

Rachel Kahn

Anastasia Kharchenko

Jonathan Haojaq Kho

Alexa Kim

Cindy Dawon Kim

Sang Dennis Kim

Somin Kim

Yoonji Kim

Kyungmin Ko

Sidney Law

Kevin Lee

Jane Lee

Matheus Dal Santo Lewis Sage Smith

Kristiana Marcon

Hannah Marshall

Kruti Mehta

Gabriel Mester

Charlotte Miller

Mintra Morrison

Tamir Moses

Kaisha Murzamadiyeva

Thomas Nghia Nguyen

Lanie Nowak

Satoe Onizuka

Steven Orts

Owen Pace

Tatyana Palacios

Herin Park

Olga Pavlova

Luli Peralta-Esquivel

Lindsay Petricca

Constanza Pinto

Shreya Razak

Costanza Reiser

Vincent Riportella

Bateel Saber

Ahana Seth

Cristina Soberon

Rebecca Speiser

Natalia Spotts

Sabrina Steck

JD Stephenson Jr.

Richard Supriano

Eden Tartour

Jissaura Taveras Hernandez

Nathalia Tello Arias

Liz Tsai

Altyn Turdukulova

Amena Tyebji

Gabriela Vieira

Juan Diego Villegas

Yige Wang

Evelyn Wu

Jessie Yao

Crystal Yin

Rebecca Jiayi Zhou