Maia Kaufman

Design Projects

 

Fisher Center

Audience experience design for in-person and virtual performances.

 


The V Store

Designed a “third space” for people to get information about reproductive health in a comfortable, inviting, and fun way.

 

Green Map

Design Research project that transformed a non-profit into a self-sustaining business.

 
 
 

Fisher Center

As the Audience and Member Services Manager, my role is to design the audience experience for both our in-person and virtual events.

In the past year and a half, we have taken our first steps into virtual programming and selling tickets around COIVD protocols such as selling tickets “by the household” and contact tracing information. All of this had to be designed around our ticketing system and existing purchase path.

The goal was to make it as seamless as possible for our audiences to understand the process and give us all the necessary info up front, to alleviate multiple communications and pain points later on.

By adding an additional “ask” button in the purchase path, we were able to get over 40% of ticket buyers to donate during a time when we were only producing virtual programming and ticket sales were non-existent.

 

Original Dining Calendar

 
 
 

Pre-pandemic, focusing on user experience was key. One example was our dining calendar, which was extremely complicated to follow. I created a new visual language using icons and minimal language to make it much more user friendly.

 
 

New system for ordering ticket “by pod” to accommodate household restrictions during COVID.

 

New, updated dining calendar!

Image from inside a boutique retail shop before it's opened. There is a large "V" in the window, a sitting area, and products on shelves on each wall.

The v Store

 
This gave me a better feeling for trying to advocate for myself.
 
 
 
 

The V Store

In Spring of 2016, The V Store (named after a year of referring to my project lovingly as "the vagina store") opened in Soho for 3 days. The experiment was to combine sexual and reproductive health products in a new way to make them more accessible and less taboo. We wanted to see what happened when we made a sex shop that took into account the whole of sexuality- from first periods through menopause.

We partnered with local vendors, sex educators, medical professionals, and retailers, in order to create a safe, unbiased, and sex-positive approach. 

The result was 4 workshops around health and sexuality, over 120 customers, and a demand for more stores like this!


I went to the shop with my mom and it was great hearing her interactions with everyone in the space, she’s so proud to be a woman! I’m not sure I would have seen that side of her had I not visited the shop with her.

 
The more times you enter a store like yours, the more educated you will become of your own health and alternative healthcare.
 
Close-up photo of "V" in window looking out onto the street.
Book Cover for "The Field Guide to Future Green Map" which shows two roads with points on them, and cute abstract trees dotting the landscape.

Green Map

Tasked with the goal of creating financial stability in a struggling non-profit, the solution became less about adding in income-generating ideas and more about taking what Green Map already was doing right and turning them into money-making ventures.

The answer was a roadmap for the next 3 years that prioritized low-cost and low-tech solutions, and slowly added more complex solutions that required investment once initial goals were met.

 

PRIORITIZED LOW-COST & LOW-TECH SOLUTIONS 

 

 

personal brand

Starting with the founder Wendy Brawer's, personal brand (capitalizing on the work she was already doing in consulting and lectures) was the first step. Working on a personal website and linking the principles back to Green Map, she was able to think of her work as part of Green Map, as opposed to a separate endeavor, and start valuing and leveraging what she already had.

 

 
Screenshot outlining the proposed membership plan for Businesses, Nonprofits and Individuals, and Educational Accounts
 

Audience

The biggest asset to solving the task was understanding Green Map's audience. By interviewing key stakeholders, as well as people who were not yet GM's audience, but who were identified as the target audience, a plan came into form for how to categorize and then pinpoint offerings and price plans for different groups of users.

 

 

Art & Design Projects


Graphic image of angry protesters sit behind a belt that pops out horizontally so as to give a "buffer zone" around the wearer.

Roberts belt

Roberts Belt

This was an installation piece, made for the exhibit Fix! for SVA's Design for Social Innovation MFA program. We were asked to imagine and invent a tool to fix a social problem.

In June 2014, the supreme court case McCullen v. Coakley struck down the 35-foot buffer zone around abortion clinics. The belt is named for Chief Justice John Roberts who wrote the opinion (in a 9-0 decision).

With this case in mind, I came up with the concept of a wearable buffer zone.

Gif demonstrating how the belt can be unhooked to pop out to full size, approx 6' in diameter.
 
Straight on image of a dress form wearing the skirt underneath a video playing the gif, and the poster of angry protesters behind them.