Lookbook 444 > (print)

MFA PRODUCTS OF DESIGN SCHOOL OF VISUAL ARTS NEW YORK CITY

Look Book Vol. 2

ED EN L E W N AT S U K I H AYA SHI MA RI A N N A ME Z HIB O V SK AYA

T H E F I RS T F I V E Y E ARS

Common Bench

by Judy Chi

Disposability has become the status quo in the U.S., to the point where even furniture is considered throwaway. Consumerist culture is ravaging the environment.

Reframing physical products as “objects of permanence”, Judy Chi’s thesis PERMANISM: Towards the Obsolescence of Disposable Furniture combines undervalued yet strong materials with premium woods to create durable products of high design.

Common Bench is part of a proposed product line constructed from these material combinations. Quarterand half-inch walnut surrounds a paper honeycomb core, giving common bench the warmth of wood without the environmental impact and cost. The walnut grain direction on each face of the bench is aligned in keeping with a solid walnut plank. The cardboard tube legs wrapped in thick wood veneer are removable for knock-down shipping.

3RD YEAR THESIS: PERMANISM Towards the Obsolescence of Disposable Furniture

3D PRODUCT DESIGN II WITH SINCLAIR SMITH

Let’s Get Physical

by Judy Chi

Not more than 50 or 60 years ago, the idea of “disposable” did not exist; the physical objects in our lives were intended to be with us for a lifetime...or longer. Today, the convenience of disposability in the United States has become the status quo, and everything from packaging to electronics to even large-scale items like appliances and furniture are now considered throw-away. Spurred by our imperative for constant economic growth, our consumerist culture is having a detrimental impact on our environment.

Judy Chi’s master thesis, Permanism: Towards the Obsolescence of Disposable Furniture, looks to reengage people with the physical products in their lives as “objects of permanence.”

Let’s Get Physical is an interactive experience—a venue for people to discover a new material combination using paper honeycomb and wood for sustainable furniture design—and employs the upbeat and outrageous vernacular of 80’s design to entice participants to take part.

Instead of making traditional furniture pieces like a chair or table to display, Judy made barbells in the same honeycomb and wood materials. This prototype design demonstrated how something that looks heavy, can actually be lightweight and still durable. Participants were invited to a gym studio in order to “work out” with the barbells under the guidance of a “personal trainer.”

3RD YEAR THESIS: PERMANISM Towards the Obsolescence of Disposable Furniture

DESIGN DELIGHT WITH EMILIE BALTZ

Norman

by Judy Chi

One of the challenges with the sharing economy is that communal goods get damaged due to a lack of accountability—indeed, it’s a problem with which many furniture sharing and rental services contend. Cognizant of this issue, Judy mocked up norman—a furniture sharing service targeted at career millennials leading nomadic, urban lifestyles. Norman’s furniture items are given catchy names and anthropomorphic qualities. With these endearing personas, users would be less likely to mistreat the furniture.

Members of norman have access to a collection of quality vintage and contemporary furniture offerings. The platform has a friendly guide—fittingly named “Norman”!—who embodies the form of a vintage wood chair and makes helpful suggestions on furniture options based on a user’s profile. Another inviting feature is the conversational user interface (CUI). When members click on the green chat button, Norman “talks” to them. It’s this conversational chatting, and Norman’s witty demeanor, that draws users in.

By making the acquisition and moving process easy, fun, and affordable, norman reverses the role that inertia usually plays in behavioral economics. Human tendencies for inaction frequently lead to missed opportunities or loss.

With this service however, that inactivity actually leads to gains: Users can just let norman suggest furniture pieces, and handle the details of delivery and pickup. Members gain the benefit of convenience while also contributing to more sustainable practices.

3RD YEAR THESIS: PERMANISM Towards the Obsolescence of Disposable Furniture

DESIGN FOR SCREENS WITH BRENT ARNOLD

Theory Coloring Book

by Adam Fujita

Some of Adam’s interviews revealed how difficult it is to get clear and accurate information to the undocumented community. The Pew Charitable Trust released a study in 2015 stating that over 5 million U.S. born children live with at least one undocumented parent, and that 95% of these kids speak English better than their parents. With that in mind, Adam designed the Theory Coloring Book service—a monthly coloring book service partnering with City and Federal agencies that details the critical topics outlining the rights of undocumented people. The inaugural issue would partner with the ID-NYC program, and would explain the steps needed to acquire the municipal ID. Additional issues could cover signing up for the Affordable Care Act, how to properly file your income taxes, and how to conduct yourself in an emergency situation with the NYPD. Adam’s future goals for the project are to pitch the magazine to the Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City and to the Center for Urban Pedagogy as potential partners in the launch of this critically important tool. “Creating an empowered generation of newly documented people in our country is a way for people, already separated by distance, to stay in touch,” he argues.

3RD YEAR THESIS: XENO From the Foreign to the Familiar

SERVICE ENTREPRENEURSHIP WITH STEVEN DEAN

I B New York

by Adam Fujita

Adam Fujita’s thesis is dedicated to empowering the undocumented community of the United States. With the primary intent of examining the duality between the advocates and detractors of immigration reform, Fujita’s thesis dictates that giving undocumented people new tools and innovative technologies to foster agency will help them feel appreciated while building our economy, and strengthening and diversifying our communities.

I B New York ad campaign—was designed to celebrate the immigrant and undocumented members of our community.

Inspired by Milton Glaser’s iconic “I HEART New York” logo (but with a literal twist), the work is a public intervention designed to highlight the role that undocumented people play in our society. “By building New York, this diverse and inspirational community becomes New York,” Adam offers.

“If we advocate and celebrate the immigrant population of New York City, we will foster greater tolerance.”

3RD YEAR THESIS: PERMANISM From the Foreign to the Familiar

THESIS I WITH ALLAN CHOCHINOV AND ANDREW SCHLOSS

The Underground Expressway

by Adam Fujita

Adam Fujita’s thesis is dedicated to empowering the undocumented community of the United States. With the primary intent of examining the duality between the advocates and detractors of immigration reform, Fujita’s thesis dictates that giving undocumented people new tools and innovative technologies to foster agency will help them feel appreciated while building our economy, and strengthening and diversifying our communities.

The US Customs and Border Protection estimate that there were over 60,000 children last year alone. The Underground Expressway is a speculative foundation that provides support for people crossing the border. The foundation would raise funds to help pay the costs of these children’s legal fees by offering an added covert service—a dark web app that hacks into the border patrol’s thermal imaging cameras, displaying the images in real time on the smart phones of the children. Additional services through the app would include a map of safe houses to support the migrants along their route, all the way to their final destination.

Additionally, the Underground Expressway would provide products to serve its users, such as the Indian Paintbrush SeedPack. While most migrants skillfully hide their tracks, these packs are intended to highlight their route for others to follow.

3RD YEAR THESIS: XENO From the Foreign to the Familiar

THESIS I WITH ALLAN CHOCHINOV AND ANDREW SCHLOSS

Solace

by Oscar de la Hera Gomez

Oscar de la Hera’s thesis, Finding North, plays at the intersection between Western, “social interventions”—such as help from friends, family or professionals—and Eastern, “introspective interventions”—such as yoga or meditation.

The work aims to help individuals who have recently suffered emotional trauma transition to a more hopeful, happier, and healthier state of mind.

Solace—The Light in All of Us, is an interactive experience for practicing contemplative meditation. For Oscar’s designed experience, participants change into a special garment—helping them shift their mentality both physically and mentally. The outfit includes a wearable—connected to the Solace lamp—that converts their breathing rhythms into light, and offering them a greater mind-body connection.

3RD YEAR THESIS: FINDING NORTH Marrying Physical and Digital to Process Emotional Trauma

DESIGN DELIGHT WITH EMILIE BALTZ

Solace Platform

by Oscar de la Hera Gomez

Oscar de la Hera’s thesis, Finding North, plays at the intersection between Western, “social interventions”—such as help from friends, family or professionals—and Eastern, “introspective interventions”—such as yoga or meditation.

The work aims to help individuals who have recently suffered emotional trauma transition to a more hopeful, happier, and healthier state of mind.

Solace Platform enables individuals to meditate anywhere, in real-time, with anyone around the world. This appenabled platform makes use of a suite of a products of designed to enhance an individual’s meditation. The platform is centered around Lumi—a smart lamp that enables individuals to practice contemplative meditation either by themselves, with an array of supporting professionals, or with any internet-connected member of the Solace community.

When used solo, the platform features include Echo—an experience that helps individuals gain awareness of their breath through light-driven biofeedback, and Resonance, a resonant breathing exercise. Community enables users to partake in guided meditation. Alternatively, if you are more interested in in finding Solace with family and friends, Kin helps you share an intimate moment with your closest circle, letting you sync your breathing in real time.

3RD YEAR THESIS: FINDING NORTH Marrying Physical and Digital to Process Emotional Trauma

3D PRODUCT DESIGN II WITH SINCLAIR SMITH

Finito

by Oscar de la Hera Gomez

Oscar de la Hera’s thesis, Finding North, plays at the intersection between Western, “social interventions”—such as help from friends, family or professionals—and Eastern, “introspective interventions”—such as yoga or meditation.

The work aims to help individuals who have recently suffered emotional trauma transition to a more hopeful, happier, and healthier state of mind.

Finito came to life after an interview with Emily Roberts, who reasoned that “there is a necessity to produce a product or system that provides a rapid reduction in emotional distress.”

With this ability, she argued, individuals might be able to process trauma from a different perspective—enabling them to regain control, understand and cope with the events.

Oscar researched various forms of psychotherapy, and came across Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)—a treatment discovered by Dr. Francine Shapiro in 1987, who through more than 30 studies has demonstrated its ability to alleviate emotional distress.

3RD YEAR THESIS: FINDING NORTH Marrying Physical and Digital to Process Emotional Trauma

THESIS I WITH ALLAN CHOCHINOV AND ANDREW SCHLOSS

Visor Hood

by Natsuki Hayashi

Natsuki Hayashi’s master’s thesis, titled Sincerely, explores a contemporary design of assisted suicide. Utilizing design to reimagine the way we die, Natsuki pushes the boundaries of the legally, morally, and emotionally appropriate ways to end life.

In lieu of prescribed medication, some people elect to take an overdose of sleeping pills, and to then cover their heads with a plastic bag. VisorHood is a speculative product that attemps to ennoble the process of using a plastic bag.

Once a person reaches a rational decision to end their life, but where no physician agrees to help, he or she can take sleep-aid medications and wear the visor hood. The visor creates a space between the face and the bag to remove the discomfort of the bag sticking to the mouth.

3RD YEAR THESIS: SINCERELY Toward a Contemporary Design of Assisted Suicide

THESIS I WITH ALLAN CHOCHINOV AND ANDREW SCHLOSS

Passage

by Natsuki Hayashi

Natsuki Hayashi’s master’s thesis, titled Sincerely, explores a contemporary design of assisted suicide. Utilizing design to reimagine the way we die, Natsuki pushes the boundaries of the legally, morally, and emotionally appropriate ways to end life.

Passage is a “final cocktail” kit, consisting of a cup, mixing spoon, and tray for preparing one’s last drink. Passage introduces the element of considered and deliberate ritual into the preparation of making one’s final beverage.

The components are made of raw wood to reflect the taste of the specific medicine used for ending life—often secobarbital—which happens to taste like wood. The materiality of the wood highlights its temporality as a food vessel. The form of the tray dictates the placement of opened and unopened capsules, with cavities mimicking the two sides of the broken capsule, and the round-bottomed cup is designed to encourage the user to drink its contents in one shot.

In states where assisted suicide is legal, patients can request a lethal amount of prescription medicine from their physicians for their final exit. The medication often comes as a bottle of 100 capsules, which the patient is instructed to break apart in order to derive 10 grams of powder, and then to mix the powder with 6 ounces of water to create what’s known as a “final cocktail.”

3RD YEAR THESIS: SINCERELY Toward a Contemporary Design of Assisted Suicide

3D PRODUCT DESIGN II WITH SINCLAIR SMITH

Couple Hood

by Natsuki Hayashi

Natsuki Hayashi’s master’s thesis, titled Sincerely, explores a contemporary design of assisted suicide. Utilizing design to reimagine the way we die, Natsuki pushes the boundaries of the legally, morally, and emotionally appropriate ways to end life.

The fear and the stress of the idea of being left behind, alone, can be so unthinkable, that some elderly couples choose to die together. If a couple feels they have lived full lives, and want to leave this world with their loved one, then it is their choice to do so, together. She reasoned, “We shouldn’t promote or romanticize the idea of double suicide, but perhaps we shouldn’t condemn it either.”

To respect the decision of a devoted couple reaching the end of their lives, Couple Hood uses helium method to achieve peaceful death. When people breathe pure helium, they don’t actually feel any sensation of suffocation. They simply fall unconscious after a minute or so, and within fifteen minutes, are gone peacefully. With Couple Hood, two people put the hoods over their heads; one person turns a valve to release the gas from the tank, and the other person turns another valve, closing the system and trapping the gas inside of the hood. This design therefore requires the partnership and the participation of both parties to achieve their goal.

3RD YEAR THESIS: SINCERELY Toward a Contemporary Design of Assisted Suicide

THESIS I WITH ALLAN CHOCHINOV AND ANDREW SCHLOSS

Mary-Kate

by Wan Jung Hung

Wan Jung Hung’s master’s thesis, Do It Now: Overcoming Procrastination, focuses on the moments when people notice they are procrastinating. Her design interventions aim to change the direction of decision-making—from putting off tasks, to reframing those tasks, to taking care of them immediately.

Mary-Kate is a goal-setting timer for procrastinators that displays how much they have worked on their goal each day. “Many procrastinators live within their own versions of the passage of time — where their notion of time does not match actual ‘clock time.’” Wan Jung adds, “In order to change a procrastinator’s perception of time, I thought about using the 25-minute interval popularized by the Pomodoro Method, which breaks one’s working time into individual 25-minute intervals separated by short breaks.”

She adds, “The technique has proven effective in helping many people to be more productive.”

3RD YEAR THESIS: DO IT NOW Design to Overcome Procrastination

3D PRODUCT DESIGN II WITH SINCLAIR SMITH

It’s Time to Nail It

by Wan Jung Hung

Wan Jung Hung’s master’s thesis, Do It Now: Overcoming Procrastination, focuses on the moments when people notice they are procrastinating. Her design interventions aim to change the direction of decision-making—from putting off tasks, to reframing those tasks, to taking care of them immediately.

It’s Time to Nail It is a pop-up nail salon aimed at helping people to overcome their procrastination. After signing up, participants came to the nail salon to create their own reminders. First, they filled out a worksheet, itemizing personal goals that could be achievable within two weeks.

Simultaneously, nail artists applied check-box patterns on one of the participant’s hands, while discussing how to break down their goal into five consecutive steps. Next, participants were asked to choose five corresponding icons, which the nail artist then applied to their other hand.

Once they had finished, the photographer photographed and published their hands “as a public demonstration of the participants’ commitment,” says Wan Jung.

3RD YEAR THESIS: DO IT NOW Design to Overcome Procrastination

DESIGN DELIGHT WITH EMILIE BALTZ

Watching You

by Wan Jung Hung

Wan Jung Hung’s master’s thesis, Do It Now: Overcoming Procrastination, focuses on the moments when people notice they are procrastinating. Her design interventions aim to change the direction of decision-making—from putting off tasks, to reframing those tasks, to taking care of them immediately.

Watching You is a device that tracks people’s movements and puts just enough pressure on them to motivate them to do their work. A user hangs “Watching You 1.0” on the wall in front of their desk. When the user moves, the googly eyes follow them. Watching You 2.0 is a smaller version of Watching You 1.0 that can be attached to their screen, next to the webcam. When users spend too much time on social media or playing games, the googly eyes will show up and surprise them.

3RD YEAR THESIS: DO IT NOW Design to Overcome Procrastination

THESIS I WITH ANDREW SCHLOSS AND ALLAN CHOCHINOV

Set

by Isioma Iyamah

In Flux, the master’s thesis of Isioma Iyamah, is about how we communicate our identities—both verbally and non-verbally. It’s about the myriad ways we create and conceptualize our spaces, using language and behavior to structure, categorize, and tell our stories. And it explores the patterns of behavior that frame our social identities.

Within the realm of communication and interaction design, Isioma turned to exploring how what we communicate in social media contributes to the construction of our different online personas. set is a geo-social app that helps people make new friends outside of their established social circles. Avatars are colored shapes, generated algorithmically based on users’ online activity. Examples of such activity are Twitter hashtags and tweets, Facebook likes, and geotagged photos from Instagram. Users can form groups, and make new shapes together—colorful metaphors for their new friendships. Scraping social media data and user output such as words, phrases, geotagged images and memes, set maps, tracks and categorizes its users.

3RD YEAR THESIS: FLUX Identities Under the Influence

DESIGN FOR SCREENS WITH BRENT ARNOLD

Transceiver

by Isioma Iyamah

In Flux, the master’s thesis of Isioma Iyamah, is about how we communicate our identities—both verbally and non-verbally. It’s about the myriad ways we create and conceptualize our spaces, using language and behavior to structure, categorize, and tell our stories. And it explores the patterns of behavior that frame our social identities.

Transceiver is a two-way microphone and speaker device that records a user’s day-to-day sonic activity in the home.

Over a two-week period, the device audio records the activities of a user or a family. These are made up of the ritual (and non-ritual) patterns of behavior associated with waking up, getting ready for the day, returning from work or school, cooking, entertaining, fighting, laughing, crying, etc.

3RD YEAR THESIS: FLUX Identities Under the Influence

3D PRODUCT DESIGN II WITH SINCLAIR SMITH

Dicto

by Isioma Iyamah

In Flux, the master’s thesis of Isioma Iyamah, is about how we communicate our identities—both verbally and non-verbally.

It’s about the myriad ways we create and conceptualize our spaces, using language and behavior to structure, categorize, and tell our stories. And it explores the patterns of behavior that frame our social identities.

Dicto is a speculative Amazon Echo language AI module outfitted with subscription-based language packs—$25 per month for one language pack, $80 per month for unlimited language packs. It’s for people who want to learn a new language, but have no time to go out and do it the best way: immersion—being around native speakers.

“Converse with Dicto at home, in the shower, in the living room, or in the kitchen. Outfitted with a broad range of language packs, Dicto speaks pitch-perfect everything, checks your grammar, conjugation and accent, making sure you hit all the right notes. Speak to learn; practice makes perfect.” Isioma imagined Dicto as a campaign, with a series of print and poster ads posted across the city. Dicto’s personality here is reflected by the copy, and colorway is conversational, bright, playful, and a little saucy.

3RD YEAR THESIS: FLUX Identities Under the Influence

THESIS I WITH ANDREW SCHLOSS AND ALLAN CHOCHINOV

Allusion Altar

by Panisa Khunprasert

Panisa Khunprasert’s thesis, Hereafter, uses her role as a designer to create products and services that enable us to externalize grief in an empowering and beautiful way. The world of bereavement—in a contemporary society which does not talk about death or grief—is fertile ground for design. But Panisa’s thesis work “doesn’t seek ‘solutions’ or ways toward closure,” she argues. Rather, “it strives to allow grief to be acknowledged and accepted as a normal outlet, and not one to be ashamed of.” She adds, “As a society we have to learn how to live with death and grief, because death is a natural step in life, and grief is the price we pay for love.”

Allusion is a wall of mounting altars that physicalize different stages or ways of grieving—exploring the complexity of grief and expanding its elements into simple, visual representations. The intention of Allusion is to offer the bereaved something that they can physically use and maintain—preserving memories they can hold onto during the mourning period. Users are encouraged to store physical items that are important to them or the deceased, and establish their own symbolic rituals or routines to interact with the alter. Here Panisa offers, “The product symbolically suggests three different things: Deliberate gestures, designated places, and the ephemerality of time.”

3RD YEAR THESIS: HEREAFTER Remapping the Landscape of Death and the Way it is Remembered

3D PRODUCT DESIGN II WITH SINCLAIR SMITH

Grieving Wall

by Panisa Khunprasert

Panisa Khunprasert’s thesis, Hereafter, uses her role as a designer to create products and services that enable us to externalize grief in an empowering and beautiful way. The world of bereavement—in a contemporary society which does not talk about death or grief—is fertile ground for design. But Panisa’s thesis work “doesn’t seek ‘solutions’ or ways toward closure,” she argues. Rather, “it strives to allow grief to be acknowledged and accepted as a normal outlet, and not one to be ashamed of.” She adds, “As a society we have to learn how to live with death and grief, because death is a natural step in life, and grief is the price we pay for love.”

Grieving Wall is an interactive experience that uses the typology of putting written messages up on, or into, a wall.

First, the bereaved user receives a package of message cards, along with instructions. They are invited to sit down at the provided tables and chairs, and to articulate their emotions in a written message. They can then enjoy walking in the peaceful garden and thinking about their loved ones. After putting their message up on the wall, they are encouraged to read other people’s messages, and appreciate the collective artwork they have helped create.

Being given the opportunity to express grief and sorrow is a gift to many people. “Because oftentimes,” she adds, “we live with grief, and never realize that a sense of community and empathy can be very helpful.”

3RD YEAR THESIS: HEREAFTER Remapping the Landscape of Death and the Way it is Remembered

DESIGN DELIGHT WITH EMILIE BALTZ

Bloodline

by Panisa Khunprasert

Panisa Khunprasert’s thesis, Hereafter, uses her role as a designer to create products and services that enable us to externalize grief in an empowering and beautiful way. The world of bereavement—in a contemporary society which does not talk about death or grief—is fertile ground for design. But Panisa’s thesis work “doesn’t seek ‘solutions’ or ways toward closure,” she argues. Rather, “it strives to allow grief to be acknowledged and accepted as a normal outlet, and not one to be ashamed of.” She adds, “As a society we have to learn how to live with death and grief, because death is a natural step in life, and grief is the price we pay for love.”

Bloodline is a service that offers the bereaved a therapeutic way of liberating their grief, expressing their loss, and preserving memories of their loved ones—through the art of tattooing. The pain created by the needle of the tattoo machine represents the pain of loss, and the art of the tattoo creates the remembrance of love and beauty. But Bloodline is an impermanent tattoo—employing a technique that tattoo artists typically use to create a temporary boundary before coloring— using just water to lubricate the needle. “The marks will fade and disappear in two-to-six weeks,” remarks Panisa, “and as the skin heals, it is time to move forward.” Users can always come back to the service and get another Bloodline tattoo, and then another, she adds, “because grief comes and goes at anytime, and sometimes, you actually don’t want it to stop coming.”

3RD YEAR THESIS: HEREAFTER Remapping the Landscape of Death and the Way it is Remembered

SERVICE ENTREPRENEURSHIP WITH STEVEN DEAN

Keyhole Gigantico

by Eden Lew

In Eden Lew’s thesis, Masterminds and the Art of Misbehaving, Eden’s definition of a criminal mastermind alludes to the romanticized sector of criminals—including burglars, con men, hackers and heist planners. They are the con artists who persuade victims into giving up money and valuables; they are the craftsmen and tinkerers who decipher the mechanics of systems in order to later break them down; they are the hackers who write inventive code to go around highly-secured firewalls, and drug cartel kingpins who run businesses as effectively as CEOs of major corporations.

Keyhole Gigantico is a children’s toy—a “piggy bank”— comprised of a giant, simplified wooden keyhole, along with blown-up versions of the pins, tumblers, and lock picks needed to train this time-honored skill. The Keyhole Gigantico strives to make sure that the arts, skills, and mindset of historical creative criminals are not lost.

Here’s how the device works: The driver pins and key pins are two sets of wooden blocks, differing in size. Kids drop the key pins into the shafts, followed by the driver pins— this causes the puzzle box to lock. Children can then use the toy as a place to put (hide, really) their coins over time, and when they want to empty it out, they must “pick it.” Here, kids use the giant picks to push up the key pins through the keyhole, lining them up with the driver pins to match the shear line. Once cleared, the plug can be turned and pulled out, releasing the coins!

3RD YEAR THESIS: MASTERMINDS And the Art of Misbehaving

3D PRODUCT DESIGN II WITH SINCLAIR SMITH

Security Camera Gown

by Eden Lew

In order to become more brave and confident, MFA Products of Design student Eden Lew embarked on a year-long experiment to become a better designer by learning the ways of a criminal mastermind.

In her thesis, Masterminds and the Art of Misbehaving, Eden’s definition of a criminal mastermind alludes to the romanticized sector of criminals—including burglars, con men, hackers and heist planners. They are the con artists who persuade victims into giving up money and valuables; they are the craftsmen and tinkerers who decipher the mechanics of systems in order to later break them down; they are the hackers who write inventive code to go around highly-secured firewalls, and drug cartel kingpins who run businesses as effectively as CEOs of major corporations.

This is a garment to evade security cameras.

3RD YEAR THESIS: MASTERMINDS And the Art of Misbehaving

THESIS I WITH ANDREW SCHLOSS AND ALLAN CHOCHINOV

Louis Vuitton Knife

by Eden Lew

In Eden Lew’s thesis, Masterminds and the Art of Misbehaving, Eden’s definition of a criminal mastermind alludes to the romanticized sector of criminals—including burglars, con men, hackers and heist planners. They are the con artists who persuade victims into giving up money and valuables; they are the craftsmen and tinkerers who decipher the mechanics of systems in order to later break them down; they are the hackers who write inventive code to go around highly-secured firewalls, and drug cartel kingpins who run businesses as effectively as CEOs of major corporations.

Eden imagined a scenario of flaunting “crime tools” by redesigning knives and security cameras with a couture branding layer. She created a Louis Vuitton Knife, a Prada Security Camera, a Fendi Gun, and a Coco Chanel Grenade—pushing the aristocratic nature of the criminal that’s forever romanticized in the cinema to the level of absurdity.

3RD YEAR THESIS: MASTERMINDS And the Art of Misbehaving

3D PRODUCT DESIGN II WITH SINCLAIR SMITH

Masterminds Pop-up Shop

by Eden Lew

In Eden Lew’s thesis, Masterminds and the Art of Misbehaving, Eden’s definition of a criminal mastermind alludes to the romanticized sector of criminals—including burglars, con men, hackers and heist planners. They are the con artists who persuade victims into giving up money and valuables; they are the craftsmen and tinkerers who decipher the mechanics of systems in order to later break them down; they are the hackers who write inventive code to go around highly-secured firewalls, and drug cartel kingpins who run businesses as effectively as CEOs of major corporations.

In order to promote the grandeur of misbehaving, Eden opened a one-day pop-up shop called Masterminds to reward misbehavior and to collect stories of troublemaking from the public. Using face masks of well-known movie-star criminals, visitors went under disguise to brag in front of a “machine” about a time they were proud of misbehaving. “Visitors spilled stories of times they had cheated, forged, lied, or stolen things,” Eden reports, “but they had a kind of permission to do so since they were wearing movie-star face masks. The machine rated their deeds, and then ‘rewarded them’ with diamond and gold pins...according to a scale of ‘badassery.’”

3RD YEAR THESIS: MASTERMINDS And the Art of Misbehaving

DESIGN DELIGHT WITH EMILIE BALTZ

Alphakit

by Jon Lung

Jon Lung’s master’s thesis, At the Ready, is an inquiry into “preparedness” in all its forms—from the fancifully speculative, to the soberly real. It traverses the many boundaries of design in order to understand how to better fortify oneself for the ever-changing challenges that life throws our way. His thesis journey started at the individual scale—focusing on how he could better prepare himself personally. As the project continued, he looked at how he could use his skills and abilities to help those he cared about. And toward the end of his thesis journey, he concentrated less on the objects of preparedness, and more on the requisite skills.

Inspired by Doomsday Preppers—people who leave modern society in order to prepare for an end-of-the-world scenario they think is coming, Jon wanted to bring the “fervor for preparedness” to the general population by creating a pocket-sized survival kit. The first iteration of the kit features products that support three life-sustaining elements: Air, Water and Fire. Air is a respirator/ air filter for breathing; Water is a water pump for creating clean water; and Fire is a firesteel to help start fires.

3RD YEAR THESIS: AT THE READY Preparation for Just About Anything

3D PRODUCT DESIGN II WITH SINCLAIR SMITH

Run & Help / Run & Hide

by Jon Lung

Jon Lung’s master’s thesis, At the Ready, is an inquiry into “preparedness” in all its forms—from the fancifully speculative, to the soberly real. It traverses the many boundaries of design in order to understand how to better fortify oneself for the everchanging challenges that life throws our way. His thesis journey started at the individual scale—focusing on how he could better prepare himself personally. As the project continued, he looked at how he could use his skills and abilities to help those he cared about. And toward the end of his thesis journey, he concentrated less on the objects of preparedness, and more on the requisite skills.

Pushing his studies of preparedness into digital platforms, Jon created the Run & Help / Run & Hide app. The app is based on the “bystander effect—the social psychological phenomenon that refers to cases where an individual does not offer help to a victim when other people are present—in addition to what Jon dubs the “John McClane effect” (the fictional protagonist played by Bruce Willis in the Die Hard film series)—where the inactivity of many spurs an individual to offer assistance. Here, Jon created an app that would alert a person to a crime happening in their immediate vicinity, and give them the option to either help or hide.

The app uses existing technology that allows smartphones to listen in on unencrypted police frequencies—turning them into push notifications that “specify the crime and the location.” When users then open the app, they are faced with the decision screen.

3RD YEAR THESIS: AT THE READY Preparation for Just About Anything

DESIGN FOR SCREENS WITH BRENT ARNOLD

BAMF Academy

by Jon Lung

Jon Lung’s master’s thesis, At the Ready, is an inquiry into “preparedness” in all its forms—from the fancifully speculative, to the soberly real. It traverses the many boundaries of design in order to understand how to better fortify oneself for the ever-changing challenges that life throws our way. His thesis journey started at the individual scale—focusing on how he could better prepare himself personally. As the project continued, he looked at how he could use his skills and abilities to help those he cared about. And toward the end of his thesis journey, he concentrated less on the objects of preparedness, and more on the requisite skills.

Inspired by the fictional MacGyver—and his ability to solve seemingly-impossible tasks with nothing but everyday objects—the BAMF Academy is a game that tests its participants’ ability to rescue an object that’s fallen into a “staged storm drain”—using nothing but common items such tape, paperclips, and chewing gum, all within a 10-minute time limit. By empowering people with the tools of MacGyver, participants walk away feeling like Bad Ass Mother F*ckers.

3RD YEAR THESIS: AT THE READY Preparation for Just About Anything

DESIGN DELIGHT WITH EMILIE BALTZ

Conviction

by Marianna Mezhibovskaya

Marianna Mezhibovskaya’s Masters thesis, Outsiders: Designing Engagement With the Incarcerated, explores how design can foster compassion for the marginalized and disenfranchised incarcerated population through the creation of social support services and products.

Conviction was an interactive exhibit dedicated to sharing the firsthand experiences of people that are incarcerated at a local New York Correctional Facility. The content for this exhibit was created through the use of the sketchbooks designed by Marianna as a tool of expression and transformation. Through the generous support of colleagues and experts, she found a way to bring these books to her intended audience—the incarcerated population—and then to the public. Gallery visitors had the opportunity to see a largely unseen and unheard perspective, and had the chance to respond to the artists and authors who could not be present.

3RD YEAR THESIS: OUTSIDERS Designing Engagement with the Incarcerated

DESIGN DELIGHT WITH EMILIE BALTZ

Chronicle

by Marianna Mezhibovskaya

Marianna Mezhibovskaya’s Masters thesis, Outsiders: Designing Engagement With the Incarcerated, explores how design can foster compassion for the marginalized and disenfranchised incarcerated population through the creation of social support services and products.

In an effort to combat “the suppression of voice, and the breaking of spirit” in the current criminal justice system, Marianna designed Chronicle—a contraband voice recorder disguised as a digital radio, sold in prison commissaries. After researching products marketed to correctional facilities, Marianna discovered the literal use of transparency for technology intended to enable correctional officers to find any drugs or paraphernalia smuggled into prisons.

Chronicle is meant to be smuggled into prison both as a tool for self-expression and simultaneously as a way to covertly record abuse of correctional officers. “With regard to the empowerment of people that are or have been incarcerated, what I believed was that anonymity transforms our understanding of others. What I believe now is transparency transforms our sense of ourselves and of “otherness.”

3RD YEAR THESIS: OUTSIDERS Designing Engagement with the Incarcerated

3D PRODUCT DESIGN II WITH SINCLAIR SMITH

Social Mob

by Marianna Mezhibovskaya

Marianna Mezhibovskaya’s Masters thesis, Outsiders: Designing Engagement With the Incarcerated, explores how design can foster compassion for the marginalized and disenfranchised incarcerated population through the creation of social support services and products.

Inspired by the influence The Fortune Society has on the lives of thousands of individuals, Marianna designed a platform that could magnify individual actions, rippling their effects throughout communities. Social Mob is a decision-making tool that explores our moral and social responsibility towards others through organized flash-mob performances.

The incarcerated population in the United States has increased by 500% over the past 30 years—skyrocketing from approximately 500,000 people to nearly 2.3 million people in prisons and jails across the country. So the number of people entering the penal system is well understood. But frustratingly, there are poor statistics and research regarding the people leaving prisons without a support network or a home to return to.

As a consequence, Marianna created a systems map “to explore the cycle of incarceration through the lens of access to social support as a basic need.”

3RD YEAR THESIS: OUTSIDERS Designing Engagement with the Incarcerated

THESIS I WITH ALLAN CHOCHINOV AND ANDREW SCHLOSS

ETKI

by Adem Önalan

The objective of Adem Önalan’s master’s thesis, Vakit: On the Elasticity and Subjectivity of Time, is to reframe our relationship with time—identifying opportunities that lead people to spend time well—from recontextualizing time, to slowing it down through meaningful, memorable life experiences.

Etki—a quantified-self smartwatch that let’s you mark and recall the meaningful moments with creative technology...and a simple gesture. (“Etki” is the Turkish word for ‘impressions’.)

When a “remarkable” moment happens during your day—perhaps a great lunch with an old friend, or something amazing you saw in the street—you simple lay your hand over the “watch face” to mark it. That’s it; no other gesture is required. When triggered, Etki doesn’t capture any audio, video, or images; rather, it only records the time and location of the event that occurred.

At the end of the day, you can use Etki to remind of the time and place of your “marked” moments, but you’ll need to use your memory and imagination to recreate them in your mind. Etki’s purpose is beyond documentation—it is about recalling memories.

The device forces you to think about the quality of the time spent in your daily life, “and reminds us that often very remarkable things happen to us...it’s just that we may not notice them,” Adem adds. “As a consequence, Etki motivates you to try to spend your next day more thoughtfully.” “The body of the watch is purposefully concave,” Adem offers, “because the space between your hand and the object is for your memories; it becomes the vessel of your memories.”

3RD YEAR THESIS: VAKIT On the Elasticity and Subjectivity of Time

3D PRODUCT DESIGN II WITH SINCLAIR SMITH

Timeoff Clock

by Adem Önalan

The objective of Adem Önalan’s master’s thesis, Vakit: On the Elasticity and Subjectivity of Time, is to reframe our relationship with time—identifying opportunities that lead people to spend time well—from recontextualizing time, to slowing it down through meaningful, memorable life experiences.

“Although clocks were initially designed for religious purposes,” Adem reports, “they later became an important tool of industrialization and modern life. We put them at the highest points of our walls—as if they are infallible.” This inspired him to design Timeoff—a clock that only functions when it is needed.

When you’ve got a task to complete, for example, looking at a clock can be counter-productive and even anxiety-inducing. With the Timeoff Clock, you can literally “stop” time so that there’s nothing to distract you. When you’ve completed your task, you simply switch the clock back on, where it will fast forward to the correct time and resume ticking. “There are times that we don’t need to keep track of time, and there are times when keeping track of time even makes us anxious.“ Adem adds, “Sometimes we even live out of time.”

3RD YEAR THESIS: VAKIT On the Elasticity and Subjectivity of Time

THESIS I WITH ANDREW SCHLOSS AND ALLAN CHOCHINOV

Sync

by Adem Önalan

The objective of Adem Önalan’s master’s thesis, Vakit: On the Elasticity and Subjectivity of Time, is to reframe our relationship with time—identifying opportunities that lead people to spend time well—from recontextualizing time, to slowing it down through meaningful, memorable life experiences.

Time is also valued when it is spent with loved ones. Sync is a platform that functions as a timekeeper—increasing the quantity and quality of time spent together by two people. Sync geo-locates two people in a couple and visualizes their movements through a unique, interactive clock face. Each person has a specific color for his or her individual clock display, and couples can anticipate when they will be next be together. When they get closer to each other, their individual clocks also get closer to each other. The two clocks only become a “single clock” when the individuals fully sync with each other by spending time together. Additionally, through an online dashboard, Sync can also show how much time they spend together each day, week, month, and year.

3RD YEAR THESIS: VAKIT On the Elasticity and Subjectivity of Time

THESIS I WITH ANDREW SCHLOSS AND ALLAN CHOCHINOV

Sans Consequence

by Tahnee Pantig

Language played a key role in Tahnee’s thesis. Speak Easily was successful because it got people talking, but Tahnee knew that a model like this would likely not work on our biggest forum: the internet. Online, there is freedom of speech, but also freedom from consequences, allowing different parts of the web to be rife with racist rhetoric.

As a response, Tahnee designed sans consequence, a conversational user interface that flags when a phrase or term with racist undertones is used. A conversational user interface is an interface where users interact in the same way they would with a human—through platforms like email or text messaging—but where they interact with an artificial intelligence instead. (Current models are Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, or Microsoft’s Cortana.)

Here’s how sans consequence works: Within the context of an email or text messaging, users start to type their message. When a trigger phrase is typed—for example, “I don’t see race,” sans consequence will highlight that text and then autocompletes it to include contextual information that reveals why the phrase is problematic. For example, in the case of “I don’t see race,” the autocomplete would write, “...because I occupy a space of privilege that allows me to ignore the oppression of others.” Other examples of trigger phrases would include “all lives matter,” “I’m not a racist,” and “race has nothing to do with it.”

3RD YEAR THESIS: THIS GREAT VIOLENCE A Thesis on Race

DESIGN FOR SCREENS WITH BRENT ARNOLD

Speak Easily

by Tahnee Pantig

Speak Easily is a pop-up speakeasy that Tahnee held over a two-week period throughout various locations around Manhattan. She invited two participants to a secret location, where they would be guided through a conversation on race through the creation of cocktails.

The guide included activities about privilege, drawing from the influential essay White Privilege: Unpacking The Invisible Knapsack by Peggy McIntosh. Participants read statistics about the disparity between races, and provoked participants with quotes from Between The World and Me about the visceral nature of racism. Participants were tasked with creating cocktails that visualized their answers and the character of the resultant conversation.

3RD YEAR THESIS: THIS GREAT VIOLENCE A Thesis on Race

DESIGN DELIGHT WITH EMILIE BALTZ

Stop The Frisk

by Tahnee Pantig

The policy of Stop and Frisk in New York is highly controversial. In 2015, 8 out of 10 stopped and frisked New Yorkers were innocent, and an overwhelming majority of those who were innocent were Black (NYPD Reports, 2015). According to the New York Civil Liberties Union, the policy and practice of stop and frisk has never been proven to reduce crime, and in fact, has been found to corrode trust between the police and local communities. Being stopped and frisked is an intimate and uncomfortable experience.

Will E.—a 20-year old Black and Dominican man from Hamilton Heights—described his experience: “…checking other people’s private areas, and people’s rectal area to see if they have drugs in them. It’s just too much, outside—that’s embarrassing.”

Stop The Frisk makes the receipt a 2-part exchange—one includes the original form given to the civilian by the officer, and a new form, designed by Tahnee, to be kept by the police. The form for the officer to keep makes note of the civilian’s name, age, factors contributing to their suspicion, gender, race, and ultimately, the outcome of the procedure. Stop The Frisk requires police officers to keep copies of these receipts for their records.

Her hypothesis is that after filling out a high number of these forms, the stack of receipts will create a three-dimensional visualization of the officer’s behavior—and his tendencies to engage in the stop-and-frisk activity. Perhaps after time this will persuade precinct leadership to make changes to this overused, ineffective policy.

3RD YEAR THESIS: THIS GREAT VIOLENCE A Thesis on Race

THESIS I WITH ALLAN CHOCHINOV AND ANDREW SCHLOSS

CleanCath

by Souvik Paul

Products of Design MFA graduate Souvik Paul’s thesis, Unbound, seeks to empower individuals with spinal cord injuries and disorders (SCI/D), and to tackle some of shortcomings in treatment paradigms for SCI. CleanCath is a device that uses UV-C radiation to kill bacteria on silicone intermittent catheters. The device originated from early thesis work on incontinence and bowel management. “Having to relearn urination and defecation” was one of the hardest things to adjust to after sustaining a SCI/D, according to users. This is particularly urgent from a design perspective, since the topic of elimination is not openly discussed, and there can be a lot of shame initially associated with it. Indeed, urination and defecation are two of the first things that individuals learn in their development as human beings— even before forming memories.

3RD YEAR THESIS: UNBOUND Design for Paralysis and Disability

3D PRODUCT DESIGN II WITH SINCLAIR SMITH

Journey

by Souvik Paul

Products of Design MFA graduate Souvik Paul’s thesis, Unbound, seeks to empower individuals with spinal cord injuries and disorders (SCI/D), and to tackle some of shortcomings in treatment paradigms for SCI. Journey is an app that connects recently-injured spinal cord patients to one another based on their personality type and injury type. The motivation for this app came from the belief that sometimes the best support can come from someone who is going through a similar experience, and an insight from a registered nurse who noted that nights are particularly hard on patients “because there is so much time to just sit and think.” In these moments, Souvik argues, “words just aren’t enough to comfort and support someone who has undergone trauma.” So he wanted to develop a nonverbal communication tool for people with SCI/D and their support network— precisely for those moments.

3RD YEAR THESIS: UNBOUND Design for Paralysis and Disability

DESIGN FOR SCREENS WITH BRENT ARNOLD

Test Drive

by Souvik Paul

Products of Design MFA graduate Souvik Paul’s thesis, Unbound, seeks to empower individuals with spinal cord injuries and disorders (SCI/D), and to tackle some of shortcomings in treatment paradigms for SCI. Test Drive is a service as a marketplace—where buyers can connect to sellers, and vice versa—thereby reducing the costs associated with shipping wheelchairs and warehousing them.

The insight for Test Drive emerge from an early user interview with a SCI/D patient. The patient noted that “the loaner chair that a patient leaves a hospital with,” and “their first custom wheelchair” are the two worst wheelchairs that they will ever use.

But what if instead of borrowing the loaner chair from the hospital, the patient could be fitted for a used wheelchair—bought or leased from an SCI/D veteran—that is nearer to an ideal fit?

Here, the new user could spend more time in that chair, developing their wheelchair handling skills much faster. Down the line, they’d know more precisely what kind of a wheelchair is best suited to their idiosyncratic needs. This would present a significant improvement over the current system, where patients often end up with a poorly-fitting wheelchair that they are stuck with for the next five years because of insurance costs.

3RD YEAR THESIS: UNBOUND Design for Paralysis and Disability

SERVICE ENTREPRENEURSHIP STEVEN DEAN

Tree Hole

by Ziyun Qi

Ziyun Qi’s thesis, Animate: Bringing Charm and Magic to everyday life, aims to help people see the exciting in the mundane, and to re-vitalize, re-energize, and above all, reanimate the objects around us that previously gave us life, hope, and spirit. Qi argues that modern life has conditioned people to crave novelty. “We are addicted to anything that is new, and discontented with what we already have,” Qi adds. “Everything that lacks superlative status and isn’t the newest, the most expensive, or the most popular, lacks both appeal and specialness.” She began the thesis with an exploration of how stories influence us and shape our behavior.

Qi reflects that in ancient times, a troubled person might go into the mountains and find a hole in a tree to tell their secrets to. They would seal the hole with mud so that the secrets would stay there forever. “Nowadays, our lives are so busy, and we are put under an incredible amount of pressure. We have an increased need to express our thoughts, emotions, and anxieties,” she argues. Tree Hole is an interactive intervention that repurposes one’s negative emotions by collecting a complaint and translating it into music by echoing your voice. Tree hole encourages people to complain, to vent, and to be self-aware. After the complaint, Tree Hole will play music back to you, giving you a new perspective on the things that cause you stress.

3RD YEAR THESIS: ANIMATE Bringing Charm and Magic to Everday Life

3D PRODUCT DESIGN II WITH SINCLAIR SMITH

Baku

by Ziyun Qi

Ziyun Qi’s thesis, Animate: Bringing Charm and Magic to everyday life, aims to help people see the exciting in the mundane, and to re-vitalize, reenergize, and above all, re-animate the objects around us that previously gave us life, hope, and spirit. Qi argues that modern life has conditioned people to crave novelty. “We are addicted to anything that is new, and discontented with what we already have,” Qi adds. “Everything that lacks superlative status and isn’t the newest, the most expensive, or the most popular, lacks both appeal and specialness.” She began the thesis with an exploration of how stories influence us and shape our behavior.

Baku is a mythical Japanese creature “that eats people’s nightmares.”

Qi designed a BAKU app as a modern embodiment of the story, and used it as an intervention for the social phenomenon of complaining. Qi first considered BAKU as a speculative campaign and public intervention, offering “complaint booths” for people to articulate their feelings about the Monday blues—out loud. Every word uttered would help inflate a huge BAKU balloon, and at the end of the day, the huge balloon would be set free into to the sky…showing that the dream-eater monster “had taken one’s nightmares away.”

In order to help more people deal with blue moods in their everyday lives, Qi imaged the BAKU app. “BAKU eats your blue moods,” Qi offers. “It let’s people complain, and then transforms those negative emotions into something fun and uplifting.” Here’s how it works: First, the user clicks on the ‘Complain’ button, which activates the microphone and invites their complaint. The longer one complains, the larger BAKU becomes.

When the user releases their finger from the microphone button, BAKU stops inflating. Then the user has the choice of picking up a needle and popping the complaint-filled monster.

3RD YEAR THESIS: ANIMATE Bringing Charm and Magic to Everday Life

DESIGN FOR SCREENS WITH BRENT ARNOLD

Petting Zoo of Animated Chairs

by Ziyun Qi The policy of Stop and Frisk in New York is highly controversial. In 2015, 8 out of 10 stopped and frisked New Yorkers were innocent, and an overwhelming majority of those who were innocent were Black (NYPD Reports, 2015). According to the New York Civil Liberties Union, the policy and practice of stop and frisk has never been proven to reduce crime, and in fact, has been found to corrode trust between the police and local communities. Being stopped and frisked is an intimate and uncomfortable experience.

Will E.—a 20-year old Black and Dominican man from Hamilton Heights—described his experience: “…checking other people’s private areas, and people’s rectal area to see if they have drugs in them. It’s just too much, outside—that’s embarrassing.”

Stop The Frisk makes the receipt a 2-part exchange—one includes the original form given to the civilian by the officer, and a new form, designed by Tahnee, to be kept by the police. The form for the officer to keep makes note of the civilian’s name, age, factors contributing to their suspicion, gender, race, and ultimately, the outcome of the procedure. Stop The Frisk requires police officers to keep copies of these receipts for their records.

Her hypothesis is that after filling out a high number of these forms, the stack of receipts will create a three-dimensional visualization of the officer’s behavior—and his tendencies to engage in the stop-and-frisk activity. Perhaps after time this will persuade precinct leadership to make changes to this overused, ineffective policy.

3RD YEAR THESIS: ANIMATE Bringing Charm and Magic to Everday Life

DESIGN DELIGHT WITH EMILIE BALTZ

Exponent Keyboard

by Roya Ramezani

Roya’s thesis, entitled Exponent: Amplifying the Female Voices in Tech Discourse, attempts to address these issues using product design, service design, and platform design.

Keyboards—either physical or screen-based—are the primary tools we use to convert our thoughts to words online. Roya wanted to use them as a starting point for her interventions, and speculated around how women might benefit from a product line that leveraged women’s cognitive advantages. She imagined a utopian future where all tech companies have implemented the new keyboard—quickly becoming “a woman’s new weapon.”

Research around gender cognitive and physical differences reveals that women have superior fine motor skills. The Exponent Keyboard has keys that are intentionally smaller than those of a standard keyboard, liberating extra space for adding more keys. Roya designed these new keys to trigger some of the assertive action verbs missing from many women’s word banks—such as “Claim” or “Disagree” or “Insist”. The keyboard’s software tracks every keystroke, adding every word to its database. The exponent server then analyzes the words, and based on individual input, generates missing “power verbs.” These words are repeated over and over—until they become part of the user’s modified word bank.

The form of the keyboard is inspired by Thomas Hansen’s writing ball—the first commercially available typewriter— built in 1870.

3RD YEAR THESIS: EXPONENT Amplifying the Female Voices in Tech Discourse

3D PRODUCT DESIGN II WITH SINCLAIR SMITH

Exponent Voices

by Roya Ramezani

Roya’s thesis, entitled Exponent: Amplifying the Female Voices in Tech Discourse, attempts to address these issues using product design, service design, and platform design.

“One of the best practices for adapting a powerful language is to observe and mimic people who are successfully doing it,” Roya argues. She created Exponent Voices with two goals in mind. The first was to create a platform for women developing their voice by learning and getting inspired by powerful female voices in their industries. It’s a series of interviews where women thought leaders in tech and science share stories about their challenges, their proud moments, and tips of wisdom based on their experience.

Roya used the typology of a “science lab” to create a visualization of their voice so that participants could see the power of their language.

The human voice is composed of a multitude of different components—making each voice different—such as pitch, tone, and rate. Pitch is critical. Roya paired the visible spectrum frequency with voice pitch frequency, and created 6 segments. Each segment represents one color from the spectrum. During the interviews, colors were added to the water based on the pitch of the participants voice. At the end of the session, participants received a sample of the water— “symbolically carrying away their voice energy.”

These interviews—along with their sound visualizations—are posted on the online platform for women technologists and scientists—to visit, listen to, and further develop their own strong language.

3RD YEAR THESIS: EXPONENT Amplifying the Female Voices in Tech Discourse

DESIGN DELIGHT WITH EMILIE BALTZ

Presentation Buddy

by Roya Ramezani

Roya’s thesis, entitled Exponent: Amplifying the Female Voices in Tech Discourse, attempts to address these issues using product design, service design, and platform design.

The Presentation Buddy app is designed to address and improve this imbalance through a personal coaching service.

Buddy is a personal speech coach that helps users build confidence for public speech through constructive rehearsal.

The app leverages a Conversational UI to build a relationship between the user and the built-in bot named Buddy. Buddy asks for the presentation topic, scans commentary forums, and grabs the most relevant, widely-referenced words used by professionals in that field. Afterwards, people record their rehearsal, and Buddy gives them an overview of how they did, “providing suggestions on how to sound more like they know the language of their field.”

3RD YEAR THESIS: EXPONENT Amplifying the Female Voices in Tech Discourse

DESIGN FOR SCREENS WITH BRENT ARNOLD

The Light Globe

by Leila Santiago

Here, There & Elsewhere is a masters thesis project about the experiences of travel and place. Leila Santiago was born and raised in São Paulo, Brazil, one of the largest and most complex cities in the world. There she trained as an architect and urbanist, studying the built environment and the complexities of the urban space. In the midst all of that, Leila also learned that the urban space “is a place for playing.”

An interview with the designer Constantin Boym—whose work and writings around souvenirs have received much acclaim—prompted Leila to look into the rituals related to capturing memorable experiences and transforming them into souvenirs. Where Boym reimagined die-cast miniatures, Leila decided to recontectualize the beloved snow globe, turning it into a life-sized platform called The Light Globe. “You don’t shake this snow globe; rather, you shake in it!” Leila remarks.

On March 27th, and with the help of her classmates, Leila installed the Light Globe Photo Booth on the Coney Island boardwalk, hosting a light painting experience.

Photos of the event were posted on @thelightglobe on Instagram so that participants could find them afterwards, and also to see the light paintings that other visitors created. But the true souvenir—“the one participants will always remember,” argues Leila—“was created the moment when they were inside the light globe...immersed in that place and in that experience.

3RD YEAR THESIS: HERE, THERE & ELSEWHERE A Design Journey Around Travel and Place

DESIGN DELIGHT WITH EMILIE BALTZ

here & there

by Leila Santiago

Here, There & Elsewhere is a masters thesis project about the experiences of travel and place. Leila Santiago was born and raised in São Paulo, Brazil, one of the largest and most complex cities in the world. There she trained as an architect and urbanist, studying the built environment and the complexities of the urban space. In the midst all of that, Leila also learned that the urban space “is a place for playing.” here&there is a network of travel tips for map lovers. It promotes the exchange of physical handmade maps— containing tips and recommendations—made by locals from cities around the world. here&there’s ultimate goal is to connect people, promoting a unique exchange of travel inspiration without adding to the already-overwhelming amount of information that currently exists online and off.

Leila found it challenging to find ways to encourage participants to submit their maps back, and thereby feeding the “map chain.” At first, she proposed a financial incentive.

If participants submitted their maps back to h&t, they would get part of their money back. At a “shark tank simulation” at Luminary Labs in the spring, Bill Cromie, Director Of Emergent Technology at the Robin Hood foundation, suggested a different approach: He argued that since a financial incentive “wasn’t so attractive in a project that is about personal relationships,” he believed that the best incentive would be to highlight personal feedback from other participants from around the globe. “When I make a map for a friend, afterward I want to know if they did the things that I suggested...and particularly what their reaction was. That’s why I’d do it,” he said.

3RD YEAR THESIS: HERE, THERE & ELSEWHERE A Design Journey Around Travel and Place

THESIS I WITH ALLAN CHOCHINOV AND ANDREW SCHLOSS

Travel Machines

by Leila Santiago

Here, There & Elsewhere is a masters thesis project about the experiences of travel and place. Leila Santiago was born and raised in São Paulo, Brazil, one of the largest and most complex cities in the world. There she trained as an architect and urbanist, studying the built environment and the complexities of the urban space. In the midst all of that, Leila also learned that the urban space “is a place for playing.”

Public binoculars are icons of touristic destinations. “They allow us to see far,” Leila submits, “but only what’s already there.” In order to show the traveler what is unseen, she proposed retrofitting these binoculars, transforming them into Travel Machines.

Travel Machines use Augmented Reality to reveal artistic perceptions of a place. In the example below, Leila imagined a speculative intervention that Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama might have created around the Manhattan Bridge. Travel Machines could also take place through a mobile experience. When users reach an Access Point, their smartphones pop up a notification letting them know that an augmented reality is available to them. “In this way, geolocation ‘unlocks the installation!” Leila adds.

The irony of the work is not lost on her though. “Though Travel Machines use digital technology—often considered responsible for disconnecting people from reality—” she argues, “users need to physically move in order to unlock these experiences. So the overall consequence will be the encouragement of people to physically explore the places near them or far away when they travel.”

3RD YEAR THESIS: HERE, THERE & ELSEWHERE A Design Journey Around Travel and Place

THESIS I WITH ALLAN CHOCHINOV AND ANDREW SCHLOSS

Didgets

by Belen Tenorio

Product and Experiential Designer Belen Tenorio’s thesis, Re-Mind, explores productivity, and re-evaluates Attention Deficit Disorder and Attention Hyperactivity Disorder in the context of a quick-fix society that too eagerly medicates individuals.

Wanting to encourage double tasking through fidgeting, Belen created a set of quality fidget tools called Didgets. Didgets allow discreet fidgeting inside classrooms, meetings, and lectures.

Belen created a set of four in the first iteration—each designed for specific tactile preferences.

The CUBIX “has something for everyone.” Users can push, pull, click, squeeze or rotate the device. “And it even has the classic dish-shaped concavity on one side that references traditional worry stones,” The ROLLER is perfect for “full hand movement enthusiasts,” Belen offers. “It’s soothing motion involves every bit of the hand—right to the fingertips—and users can roll forward, backward, or a bit of both!”

The SQUISHY is perfect for individuals who like to squish things with their hands. It can be manipulated between the thumb and two fingers, or simply between the palm and multiple fingers.

3RD YEAR THESIS: RE-MIND Re-evaluating ADD & ADHD in a Quick-Fix Society

3D PRODUCT DESIGN II WITH SINCLAIR SMITH

The Fidget Lab

by Belen Tenorio

Product and Experiential Designer Belen Tenorio’s thesis, ReMind, explores productivity, and re-evaluates Attention Deficit Disorder and Attention Hyperactivity Disorder in the context of a quick-fix society that too eagerly medicates individuals.

Alongside this work, Belen wanted to test a couple of hypotheses: Can this fidget data be more interesting—perhaps something beyond data visualization? Could it be decoded through music? And if so, could this trigger memories of past experiences? And finally, can both ADD-er’s and non ADD-er’s benefit from double tasking?

Participants were given a primary activity—to solve a maze.

But while solving the maze, they were encouraged to engage in a secondary activity—the ‘double task’: fidgeting with the pad (and thus creating music). After completing the tasks, participants listened back to the tunes they had just produced.

“When listening back, some participants were able to recall their past experiences, inflection points, and even the times when they were struggling at solving the maze,” Belen reports.

The fidget lab findings reinforced the correlation between working with our hands and increased memory and creativity, providing Belen insights that were significant, and encouraging her to take the work further. “I used to believe that ADD and ADHD was a disorder,” Belen concludes. “What I believe now, after my explorations, is that ADD and ADHD is a Superpower.”

3RD YEAR THESIS: RE-MIND Re-evaluating ADD & ADHD in a Quick-Fix Society

DESIGN DELIGHT WITH EMILIE BALTZ

Locus

by Belen Tenorio

Product and Experiential Designer Belen Tenorio’s thesis, Re-Mind, explores productivity, and re-evaluates Attention Deficit Disorder and Attention Hyperactivity Disorder in the context of a quick-fix society that too eagerly medicates individuals.

“Can fidgeting be an effective tool for measuring emotional state— as well as productivity? What can this data tell us about who we are? What about our circadian rhythms? And can we modify our day-to-day patterns based on what our body is telling us?” Locus, a smart “clicker”, is connected to a platform that allows you to measure your productivity based on the number of clicks you make at specific times throughout the day.

3RD YEAR THESIS: RE-MIND Re-evaluating ADD & ADHD in a Quick-Fix Society

THESIS I WITH ALLAN CHOCHINOV AND ANDREW SCHLOSS

TEMPO

by Chelsea Stewart

Chelsea Stewart’s master’s thesis, Atto: An Exploration Between Design and Movement, investigates opportunities for movement to shape design, and for design to shape movement. From simple actions to complex systems, Atto aims to find a design narrative between people, objects, and the information moving around us.

TEMPO is a new take on a conventional means of keeping rhythm. Currently, many people engage in ‘quantified self’ tracking—capturing their every movement through mobile devices and platforms. Products like Apple Health, Fitbit, and Nike+ are all great ways of creating data sets behind our daily actions, but they can’t physically show us what our actions look like. TEMPO challenges the traditional roles of our products and smart tracking devices, and makes the digital physical again.

Inspired by the humble metronome (which traditionally keeps rhythm for musicians and dancers), TEMPO harnesses an individual’s personal rhythm and provides a “snapshot view” or “live view” of their day’s activities.

Connected through the user’s smartphone or wearable device, TEMPO tracks how fast or how slow your steps are...and mimics them.

3RD YEAR THESIS: ATTO An Exploration Between Design and Movement

3D PRODUCT DESIGN II WITH SINCLAIR SMITH

.OTF NYC

by Chelsea Stewart

Chelsea Stewart’s master’s thesis, Atto: An Exploration Between Design and Movement, investigates opportunities for movement to shape design, and for design to shape movement. From simple actions to complex systems, Atto aims to find a design narrative between people, objects, and the information moving around us.

OTF NYC is an exploration of the movement of people and things in New York City through the lens of type design.

Chelsea asked participants in Washington Square Park to use their feet to write the first letter of their name in a sand-filled platform. “The action was half-familiar, yet halfnew,” Chelsea argues, “and encouraged people to think differently about their movements and intentions.” (The project was inspired by Craig Ward’s work around a glyph typeface based on subway bacteria.)

In addition to a creating a new form of typography, the foot actions of each participant revealed their personality: Many participants created simple actions with their feet, but all the while their upper body moved quite rapidly and with larger motions. Others made smaller movements, creating more intricate letterforms.

3RD YEAR THESIS: ATTO An Exploration Between Design and Movement

DESIGN DELIGHT WITH EMILIE BALTZ

Innate Goods

by Chelsea Stewart

Product and Experiential Designer Belen Tenorio’s thesis, Re-Mind, explores productivity, and re-evaluates Attention Deficit Disorder and Attention Hyperactivity Disorder in the context of a quick-fix society that too eagerly medicates individuals.

“Shopping online has never been more popular or more commonplace,” Chelsea remarks. “Online shopping has become the easiest way to purchase goods, but with this new convenience comes a lot of waste.” In 2014, the online retail market reached 453 billion dollars in online sales. But almost one-third of all purchased goods are returned. These items are being sent and returned by mail of course—increasing their transport energy. INNATE GOODS is a speculative design platform intervention that reinserts the tactility of an in-person retail experience, with the hopes of reducing online return rates and energy consumption.

Here’s how it works: INNATE GOODS provides a kit to test the consumer’s sensory preferences. For example, if the user would have been in a store when purchasing an item, they may have quickly felt, smelled, or tasted something that told them it wasn’t really what they wanted. In which case the product would have never be bought. With INNATE GOODS, a shopper can instead use the kit—containing three of each smells, tastes, sounds, textures, and patterns—to determine their “favorite” combinations. Once the kit is returned back to the INNATE GOODS lab, the platform creates a personal profile page containing the products that most closely match the user’s preferences. “The platform increases the chance that people will be ‘sensorially satisfied’ with their purchases, and will therefore significantly decrease the number of returned items.”

3RD YEAR THESIS: ATTO An Exploration Between Design and Movement

SERVICE ENTREPRENEURSHIP WITH STEVEN DEAN

Beyond

by Louise-Anne van ‘t Riet

Almost since birth, Louise-Anne van ‘t Riet has spent much of her spare time in museums and galleries. “When I’m surrounded by art, I have the feeling that my mind flies;” she proclaims, “that time is suspended, and nothing else matters other than recharging my energy.” Lou is a designer whose work is very often influenced by art— it always inspires her and helps her to meditate and escape. But her thesis is not about creating art. Rather, Lou’s products and services are an attempt to make art accessible, enjoyable, and understandable to people who don’t appreciate art.

“I transformed this specific daily object into a meditative one. Books have the capacity to transport us anywhere at anytime. I wanted to do the same—but with light instead of words.” As a response, Lou created an art object to help people escape an oppressive, social media-obsessed world: Beyond. Beyond is a product that looks and feels like a book, but isn’t an ordinary book. Once you open it up, you are absorbed into an illusion of an infinitely deep “tunnel of light.”

3RD YEAR THESIS: SIDE STEP A Momentary Escape from the Real World Through Art

3D PRODUCT DESIGN II WITH SINCLAIR SMITH

Gateway

by Louise-Anne van ‘t Riet

Almost since birth, Louise-Anne van ‘t Riet has spent much of her spare time in museums and galleries. “When I’m surrounded by art, I have the feeling that my mind flies;” she proclaims, “that time is suspended, and nothing else matters other than recharging my energy.” Lou is a designer whose work is very often influenced by art—it always inspires her and helps her to meditate and escape. But her thesis is not about creating art.

Rather, Lou’s products and services are an attempt to make art accessible, enjoyable, and understandable to people who don’t appreciate art.

Pulling things back, Lou’s next work was Gateway—a virtual reality app that allows people to experience the latest art installations “anywhere and at any time.” Created for art lovers who neither have the time nor the money to go to art exhibitions, “Gateway features a different experience on a daily basis, teleporting users whenever they want to go,” Lou offers. ”Every day, people can use the app, discovering the ‘art of the day.’

Users can turn around 360 degrees, look up, and look down.

When looking down, the name of work and the artist is revealed. With the Gateway app, they can see that specific art installation as many times as they want throughout that day—and can also revisit their favorites, since they have the option of saving twenty pieces per year. But if they miss a day, they will never be able to see that day’s art. “I wanted a way to persuade people to use the app on a daily basis—to condition them to want art and to enjoy art,” she argues. “If I added the elements of scarcity and time, there is a fear of missing out that motivates people. Who wants to miss something that might be great?”

3RD YEAR THESIS: SIDE STEP A Momentary Escape from the Real World Through Art

DESIGN FOR SCREENS WITH BRENT ARNOLD

WanderSpheres

by Louise-Anne van ‘t Riet

Almost since birth, Louise-Anne van ‘t Riet has spent much of her spare time in museums and galleries. “When I’m surrounded by art, I have the feeling that my mind flies;” she proclaims, “that time is suspended, and nothing else matters other than recharging my energy.” Lou is a designer whose work is very often influenced by art—it always inspires her and helps her to meditate and escape. But her thesis is not about creating art. Rather, Lou’s products and services are an attempt to make art accessible, enjoyable, and understandable to people who don’t appreciate art.

WanderSpheres is an event—fittingly in proximity to the galleries in Chelsea—teleporting people into her virtual art worlds. She created three “helmets”—inspired by Walter Van Beirendonck, Ingeborg Morath, and Saul Steinberg. Each helmet contains a Google Cardboard, an iPhone, and audio.

Recapping her experience of the event, Lou realized that “people were using the helmets between 30 seconds and 3 minutes—which is longer than the average time that most people look at any art.” (See above.) She posits that “people wearing the helmet experience a moment when they are seeing something unique—and that specific moment is very strong because nothing else can intervene. There are no distractions; it’s just the user and the virtual art installation.”

3RD YEAR THESIS: SIDE STEP A Momentary Escape from the Real World Through Art

DESIGN DELIGHT WITH EMILIE BALTZ

Gr

by Lijia Yang

Lijia Yang’s thesis explores the relationship between living environments and video game enthusiasts. It asserts there is a potential to help video game enthusiasts seek satisfaction and delight from reality by gamifying everyday things and incorporating physical exercise.

Gr is a mechanical game eater designed to help young video game enthusiasts curb their game playing. Gr allows users to connect to video game consoles and monitor their gaming behaviors by “eating” (freezing) the game programs temporarily if played for longer than one hour. The only way to get the games back is by repeatedly prying Gr’s big jaws, forcing users to exercise if they want to play on.

3RD YEAR THESIS: RELOAD Triggering Your Passion for Life with Gamification

3D PRODUCT DESIGN II WITH SINCLAIR SMITH

Ninja Hunting

by Lijia Yang

Lijia Yang’s thesis explores the relationship between living environments and video game enthusiasts. It asserts there is a potential to help video game enthusiasts seek satisfaction and delight from reality by gamifying everyday things and incorporating physical exercise.

This concept is from Japanese famous historical role - Ninja.

Ninja has always been fascinated by people with the mysterious qualities, not only related to his own professional orientation, but because of his variety of magical skills and abilities, such as stealth. Viewing from the success of co-creation, people have the inherent desire and curiosity to explore the unknown, while the Ninja’s stealth capability meets all kinds of imaginations of people and the moods to check it out.

Using these instinctive reactions and emotions, we can change passive into active, so that people may spontaneously and actively participate into the incidents which can inspire people’s curiosity to explore.

For example, this wall sticker, use photographic and PS techniques printing out ninja shape sticker with somewhere environmental image, and then paste it in the proper place. So the paper “Ninja” as if fused in the environment. And when people accidentally discover this sticker, and open it, little ninja on the back will give people a surprise. As a result, the people may be curious whether the rest of the house will also hide something like “stealth ninja”. A small activity “search ninja” begins with people’s curiosity and desire to explore.

3RD YEAR THESIS: RELOAD Triggering Your Passion for Life with Gamification

THESIS I WITH ALLAN CHOCHINOV AND ANDREW SCHLOSS

Parallel Times

by Class of 2016

Graduating students of SVA’s MFA in Products of Design present PARALLEL TIMES, an exhibition of artifacts developed through the varied lenses of extrapolated futures.

Guided by Sinclair Smith in the Product Futuring class, and employing the endangered vernacular of the newspaper, students constructed advertisements for a product accessory representing a utopian or dystopian future— envisioning a world to reach for or avoid. They then used the insights gleaned from these future accessories to refract backwards in time, designing critical products for the here-and-now within Raymond Loewy’s “most advanced, yet acceptable” framework. The contemporary products displayed in the center of this exhibition are the “original specimens”—the initial product offerings in a chain of events that will lead to their respective futures on the wall.

The products in the broadsheet below, and in the exhibit, are numbered to correspond with the 20 graduating designers in our Class of 2016. The exhibition was feature in Wanted Design Brooklyn as part of the 2016 NYCxDesign Global Design Celebration.

3RD YEAR PROJECT: PARALLEL TIMES

PRODUCT FUTURING WITH SINCLAIR SMITH

Parallel Times Newspaper

by Eden Lew and Natsuki Hayashi Class of 2016 graduating students Eden Lew and Natsuki Hayashi compiled all of the work created in the Product Futuring course led by Sinclair Smith, to create the Parallel Times Newspaper. The newspaper features an interview between Professor Sinclair Smith and Chair of the SVA MFA Products of Design Program, Allan Chochinov about the consequences, positive and negative, manifested by designing for the future.

The newspaper also features portraits of each designer and their corresponding work, as well as a comical classified section for the graduating class to qualm their upcoming nerves about finding jobs in the real world!

Hundreds of newspapers were printed and given out at Wanted Design Brooklyn as part of the 2016 NYCxDesign Global Design Celebration.

3RD YEAR PROJECT: PARALLEL TIMES

DESIGN PERFORMANCE WITH SINCLAIR SMITH

MISSION CTRL

by Class of 2015

As part of NYCxDesign, the students of the MFA in Products of Design at the School of Visual Arts present MISSION CTRL, a suite of interactions that explore how we come together to experience and share new design.

The interventions turn common gestures of digital, social networking into analog artifacts and performances, critiquing our dependence on new technology and providing alternatives for timely communication and wayfinding.

Through a playful series of dynamic, participatory installations, MissionCTRL celebrates the design community at large, and invites visitors to put away their devices and interact with each other in real life (IRL). The work comes out of a 10-week class called Design Performance taught

by Sinclair Smith, which explores design exhibition beyond the pedestal, focusing in on interaction, participation, and staging new behaviors.

2ND YEAR PROJECT: MISSION CTRL

DESIGN PERFORMANCE WITH SINCLAIR SMITH

#FAN

by Class of 2015

As a way to physicalize the “like” button in a new and compelling way, visitors to the exhibition are given a handscreened, chipboard paddle—called a fan—which takes its cues from the auction world. When visitors see something that they like at Wanted, they “give a wave,” voting with their fan by holding it up alongside the exhibitor—who have been provided with a deluxe model. Together they are able to draw attention to the exhibitor’s work, creating a new gesture of approval and appreciation.

2ND YEAR PROJECT: MISSION CTRL

DESIGN PERFORMANCE WITH SINCLAIR SMITH

#POST

by Class of 2015

Seven roving vertical signs travel the vast expanse of the exhibition space, allowing visitors to “analog tweet� in real space and in real time. Messages can originate from the Mission CTRL booth, or can spontaneously be created live on the fly. Students work with visitors to help them construct messages, engaging them in conversations around social media and point of view. Analog tweets range from shout-outs of great work, to messages back home, to news of after parties or lost items. #POST provides a large, low-tech, and mobile affordance to help people get their messages seen.

2ND YEAR PROJECT: MISSION CTRL

DESIGN PERFORMANCE WITH SINCLAIR SMITH

#PRESS

by Class of 2015

#PRESS creates an analog experience that provides a rich, interactive way to create messages. Posting to social media can be so easy that messages can often be unconsidered and rushed. #PRESS builds in time and labor into the process, painstakingly stamping out messages to be displayed throughout the Wanted exhibit on mobile signs.

2ND YEAR PROJECT: MISSION CTRL

DESIGN PERFORMANCE WITH SINCLAIR SMITH

#SNAP

by Class of 2015

#SNAP is a time-based analog tweet, taking its cues from self-destructing messages like the ones you’d find on services such as SnapChat. Here, visitors write messages on the boards and then hold them up for a limited time.

Products of Design students use stopwatches to time the message for 20 seconds, at which point they are lowered and deleted. Here, messages tend to be more personal (and more risky!), where the temporality of the message influences its content.

2ND YEAR PROJECT: MISSION CTRL

DESIGN PERFORMANCE WITH SINCLAIR SMITH

#FRIDGE

by Class of 2015

#FRIDGE is a magnetized letter version of the analog message boards where visitors compose their messages using magnetized alphabets to construct words. Students wear aprons with the sorted letters, inviting interactions between visitors and their ideas.

2ND YEAR PROJECT: MISSION CTRL

DESIGN PERFORMANCE WITH SINCLAIR SMITH

#DECISIONCTRL

by Class of 2015

#DECISIONCTRL is an installation to guides visitors through a decision tree, inviting them to evaluate whether or not to tweet something. Students’ insight was that people often regret posting something to their social media—that it’s just too quick and easy—and #DECISION builds in more time to consider whether one should post something or not.

2ND YEAR PROJECT: MISSION CTRL

DESIGN PERFORMANCE WITH SINCLAIR SMITH

#FOLLOW

by Class of 2015

#FOLLOW is a design intervention that takes its cues from people and ideas that are trending. Here students replace the of gathering followers and retweets in the digital world with actual clusters of human beings—literal “followers”— in the physical world. Students cluster around selected visitors, walk the show with them, and amplify their “likes” by holding up their fans in groups, adding even more attention to the visitor’s message.

2ND YEAR PROJECT: MISSION CTRL

DESIGN PERFORMANCE WITH SINCLAIR SMITH

ENGENDER

by Class of 2016

As part of NYCxDesign, the students of the MFA in Products of Design at the School of Visual Arts present Engender, a roving and interactive exhibition that explores the role of design in the construction of gender identities. The exhibition’s eight interventions deconstruct simple artifacts and gestures of our gendered world and invite visitors to play along in a performative game of gender mash up and reconstruction. Through a playful series of dynamic, participatory wearables and installations, Engender explores and celebrates the fluidity and spectrum of gendered behavior and design, and compels each of us to revisit how we design and construct our gendered selves.

The work comes out of a 10­-week class called Design Performance taught by Sinclair Smith, which explores design exhibition beyond the pedestal, focusing in on interaction, participation, and staging new behaviors.

3RD YEAR PROJECT: ENGENDER

DESIGN PERFORMANCE WITH SINCLAIR SMITH

RESHAPER

by Class of 2016

Reshaper co-opts the visual language of the carnival vendor by presenting a visual cacophony of goods—but replaces cotton candy and balloons with three-dimensional abstractions and representations of body parts. Visitors are invited to try on the body parts and perform the gender roles implied by their adopted body parts. These artifacts and their consequences start a playful dialog about how our body shapes influences our gender performances.

3RD YEAR PROJECT: ENGENDER

DESIGN PERFORMANCE WITH SINCLAIR SMITH

REBRANDER

by Class of 2016

Rebrander marks guests with the iconography of Engender’s branding. Syringe-­like tools apply colorful inks in fragments of typical gender iconography. These tools have a medical quality that suggest and subvert oppressive histories of tattooing individuals who identify outside of binary gender norms. Guests can mark themselves in any way they choose and invent their own graphic identities.

3RD YEAR PROJECT: ENGENDER

DESIGN PERFORMANCE WITH SINCLAIR SMITH

OLFACTOR

by Class of 2016

Olfactor is a game of “boy or girl?” Four baby dolls in a sling have been pre-scented with popular deodorants for men and women. Guests try to guess the sex of the baby based on the industrially-gendered and marketed scents. Olfactor highlights how early parents begin to brand their babies with gender identity, and how this process cascades into a frenzy of gendered baby gear—ultimately coalescing into the arbitrary gender-based marketing of generic goods.

3RD YEAR PROJECT: ENGENDER

DESIGN PERFORMANCE WITH SINCLAIR SMITH

TRANSLATOR

by Class of 2016

Translator re-introduces guests to the power of visual stimulation, and helps men and women alike reimagine themselves as the opposite sex. Through this imaginative transition implicating sex, gender and everything in between, participants are invited to reflect upon viewing their transportrait for the first time.

3RD YEAR PROJECT: ENGENDER

DESIGN PERFORMANCE WITH SINCLAIR SMITH

RENDERER

by Class of 2016

Renderer uses digital technology to transform guests’ bodies at their request. While visualizing idealized bodies and faces, Renderer uncovers a deeply-rooted gender bias in body image, and encourages visitors to critically examine the source of their physical aspirations. This invention demonstrates that as we move deeper into our digital capacity, we will move closer to creating new worlds where our gendered reality is as flimsy, or as ubiquitous, as the click of a mouse.

3RD YEAR PROJECT: ENGENDER

DESIGN PERFORMANCE WITH SINCLAIR SMITH

DECONSTRUCTOR

by Class of 2016

Deconstructor is series of stickers and appliqués that abstract and accentuate our most physical manifestations of gender. By choosing what facial and body features they want to amplify or mask—from eyebrows and mustaches to lips and pasties—participants can quickly subvert the most obvious ways that people interpret and judge their gender.

3RD YEAR PROJECT: ENGENDER

DESIGN PERFORMANCE WITH SINCLAIR SMITH

DISPENSER

by Class of 2016

Dispenser offers guests confections labeled with negative, gendered characteristics. By limiting their selection to negative traits, an ordinarily mundane choice becomes loaded with stereotypical implication and meaning. Through the provocation of hesitance, Dispenser highlights how “harmless” stereotypes might not be so harmless after all.

3RD YEAR PROJECT: ENGENDER

DESIGN PERFORMANCE WITH SINCLAIR SMITH

ACCESS LTD.

by Class of 2017

As part of NYCxDesign, the students of the MFA in Products of Design at the School of Visual Arts present ACCESS LTD, a set of roving checkpoints that investigates the way access is granted and denied by design—based on where we’re from, what we look like, how we speak, and what we own.

Embracing the international theme at the Wanted Design show, the students explore the way our national, cultural, and personal identities determine our opportunities—both locally and globally. Despite global common ground and interdependence, our differences continue to influence what rights and privileges we enjoy. Using the language and tropes of border control, the work invite guests visiting the Wanted Design exhibition to examine the role of design in granting or limiting an individual’s access to place, people, and prosperity.

Visitors receive a passport and collect a stamp at each of the 5 checkpoints. In order to complete their documentation, they are asked to: ADOPT a foreign identity MOVE adeptly between cultures CONNECT words to wares REVEAL the personality of possessions EMBODY your design desires

4TH YEAR PROJECT: ACCESS LTD.

DESIGN PERFORMANCE WITH SINCLAIR SMITH

REVEAL

by Class of 2017

Checkpoint: REVEAL prompts visitors to consider the power, privilege, and personality of their possessions. The interaction is a photo booth for your things. It borrows from the vocabulary of airport baggage scanning—but it is much more fun. Guests empty their pockets and arrange their items on a grid inside, labeling each according to the kind of meaning it holds for them. When the composition is complete, they take a top down photo of their recontextualized belongings.

4TH YEAR PROJECT: ACCESS LTD.

DESIGN PERFORMANCE WITH SINCLAIR SMITH

EMBODY

by Class of 2017

Checkpoint: EMBODY employs the trope of the carnival cutout to comment on the extent to which we allow ourselves to be defined by the objects we own and admire.

Using augmented reality, the intervention invites guests to take a passport picture embellished by products on exhibit at Wanted Design. The visitors apply codes to that represent furniture and fixtures to a magnetic silhouette, stand behind it, and are transformed into “furniture monsters.”

4TH YEAR PROJECT: ACCESS LTD.

DESIGN PERFORMANCE WITH SINCLAIR SMITH

MOVE

by Class of 2017

At Checkpoint: MOVE, dance is used as a metaphor for the ability to move adeptly between cultures—a valuable skill in today’s increasingly interdependent world. Guests get three chances to dance convincingly to 30 second clips of dance music from around the world.

4TH YEAR PROJECT: ACCESS LTD.

DESIGN PERFORMANCE WITH SINCLAIR SMITH

CONNECT

by Class of 2017

One of two interactions exploring the access that language grants us, Checkpoint: CONNECT is a memory game. Guests spin the hopper to receive a random language and have just 20 seconds to memorize five words in that language: table, stool, lamp, clock, and bowl. Presented with photographs of products on exhibit at Wanted Design, the visitor is then challenged to correctly label them with a set of magnets.

4TH YEAR PROJECT: ACCESS LTD.

DESIGN PERFORMANCE WITH SINCLAIR SMITH

ADOPT

by Class of 2017

Checkpoint: ADOPT asks guests to select a new nationality to be stamped on their passport. But there’s a catch: they will need to convince the patrollers that they can pass by saying one key phrase in their adopted country’s language.

Guests listen to the phrase “Hi, can I tell you about my work?” and receive a phonetic spelling of that phrase in the language they’ve chosen, and have three attempts to pronounce it correctly.

4TH YEAR PROJECT: ACCESS LTD.

DESIGN PERFORMANCE WITH SINCLAIR SMITH

GETTING MARRIED

by Class of 2017

Each checkpoint offers a second way to get the stamp: marriage. Inspired by the phenomenon of green card marriages, this is the workaround, the fastpass option.

An umbrella is opened to create a ceremonial space and the guest is asked to say a vow and marry their friend (or one of the patrollers). The content of the vows is tongue in cheek, and alludes to the problems each of the interactions is addressing: at REVEAL, they agree to let their possessions represent them; at CONNECT, they vow to stay true to the English language and make no effort at international communication.

4TH YEAR PROJECT: ACCESS LTD.

DESIGN PERFORMANCE WITH SINCLAIR SMITH