SVA MFA Products of Design LookBook Vol. 1

MFA PRODUCTS OF DESIGN SCHOOL OF VISUAL ARTS NEW YORK CITY

five years young

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

Kona: New Angles to Learning

by Vidhi Goel Attempting to change the pedagogical structure and interaction in public school classrooms, Kona: New Angles to Learning, is designed to engage small groups of children, aged 8-12, in collaborative and constructive thinking and doing. She developed 4 broad aspects of learning and creativity: Investigation—learning about everything around us; Reflection—learning about ourselves; Imagination— envisioning a new world; and Revision—for a new way of testing and recapping.

Game play is simple yet rich. If one choses the “Imagination” game and picks the card ‘A trip to Mars,’ for example, the yellow die asks, “What we are excited about” and then the green die challenges us to “Think about our fears and apprehensions.” The blue die prompts action—suggesting different tasks such as “Draw a cartoon” or “Make a paper model”. In this example then, based on this combination of dice, children imagine themselves on a trip to mars and draw cartoons representing the dangers that may await them when they get there—and then perhaps triumph over them!

2ND YEAR THESIS: KONA Changing Perspective on Learning in India

THESIS

Let’s Go On a Mission

by Vidhi Goel

Children in India are often conditioned and pressured to choose socially-prestigious careers like doctors and engineers. Through an experience design intervention, Let’s Go On A Mission, Vidhi explored how children could expand their future aspirations to pursuits “beyond the boxes of career choices we have created for them. Here, they could choose to be explorers, inventors, healers, and so much more.”

The event took place at Madison Square Park in New York City, where children chose stickers and emblazoned their cloths and hats. The stickers represented various spirit animals, favorite activities, and “super tools.” Armed with their choices, the children inhabited their new avatars and set out on imaginary missions.

Based on this experience and on her past design explorations, Vidhi realized that children not only needed permission to be who they are, but also needed the opportunity to have conversations around who they are.

2ND YEAR THESIS: KONA Changing Perspective on Learning in India

DESIGN DELIGHT WITH EMILIE BALTZ

Surrogate

by Lucy Knops

The objective of Lucy Knops’ master’s thesis, The Void: Finding Value in Nothing, was to reframe the “role of absence” in people’s daily lives. She began on a conceptual level by asking simple questions: What if nothing could be something? What if we could add to our lives by taking away more? Can absence give us substance?

An iteration went so far as to replace people’s phones with non-functional ones. Surrogate is a cement replica of one’s phone. It is intended to be swapped out for the phone, but carried just as a regular phone. One of the test subjects used the cement surrogate as a way to put away his phone when arriving home from work. “It enabled him to concentrate on spending time with his family,” Lucy remarked, “while still giving him the tactile ‘feeling’—the security—of feeling the phone in his pocket. So yes, we live in a world where a fake phone can have significant value.”

2ND YEAR THESIS: THE VOID Finding Value in Nothing

THESIS I WITH ALLAN CHOCHINOV AND ANDREW SCHLOSS

Structured Nothing

by Lucy Knops

Structured Nothing is a public intervention that took place inside a New York City subway car during an evening commute. 136 pieces phone-shaped pieces of Foamcore were surfaced with bubble wrap on one side, and were handed out to subway passengers, inviting them “to take a minute to do nothing.”

2ND YEAR THESIS: THE VOID Finding Value in Nothing

DESIGN DELIGHT WITH EMILIE BALTZ

Fostering Absence: Penelope

by Lucy Knops Fostering Absence, built upon the research into the cognitive benefits of doing nothing. Following the facilitation of a co-creating session with members of her target audience, Lucy developed a series of speculative narratives imagining the role of absence in the future.

Penelope was the final offering for fostering absence. It is an “endless weaving loom” that speculates a future where our cultural attitudes towards absence have shifted; where absence is valued as a critical mental state. When using the loom, process takes precedent over the output of one’s work. In Homer’s Odyssey, in order to keep unwanted suitors at bay during his absence, Queen Penelope secretly tended to her love for Odysseus by weaving all day and unraveling her work by night. With Penelope the loom, one privately tends to her or his practice of absence.

2ND YEAR THESIS: THE VOID Finding Value in Nothing

SPECULATIVE FUTURES WITH ELLIOT MONTGOMERY

A Minute

by Lucy Knops

A Minute is a mobile app that provides a means for friends to send and receive minutes to do absolutely nothing. It recognizes that our phones are the source of much of our distraction, but aims to utilize the device as an ally—the necessary structure for accessing the void.

2ND YEAR THESIS: THE VOID Finding Value in Nothing

DESIGN FOR SCREENS WITH BRENT ARNOLD

Uniformd

by Lucy Knops

As an inescapable way to bring The Void into her daily life through subtraction, she spent the entirety of her thesis—a total of 228 days—wearing a strict uniform she curated for the project, titled Nothing to Wear. The purpose of Nothing to Wear was to design absence into her own life “by subtracting from her routine the daily decision of what to wear.”

Over the course of eight months, the benefits of wearing a uniform became obvious, and so she designed and tested ways for others to tap into the benefits of “uniform.”

Lucy developed the service offering, Uniformd. Its aim is to challenge the fact that, as a culture, we spend far too much time, resources and cognitive energy on producing, advertising, buying and choosing what we wear. As part of the service, Uniformd agents provide members with guidance and an allotment of quality garments that are selected specifically because they will wear well over time.

2ND YEAR THESIS: THE VOID Finding Value in Nothing

THESIS I WITH ALLAN CHOCHINOV AND ANDREW SCHLOSS

LookBot

by May Sun

LookBot is a smart robot that lives in a woman’s purse. It is constantly scanning its surroundings, looking for people’s faces.

1. LookBot analyzes nearby people’s faces—whether the user is walking around the city, in the office, or at a social gathering.

2. LookBot compares what it sees with information from social media-networking sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook, matching online profiles with the faces that it sees.

3. When LookBot identifies a potential networking candidate (based on the user’s own social and work profile)—say an industry leader, mentor, role model, or business partner— it sends a notification to the user’s smartphone or smartwatch with the appropriate information, such as the person’s name, occupation, company, and specific location.

It can even suggest a “meet up.”

2ND YEAR THESIS: HER SENSE Women, Technology and Intervention

THESIS WITH ALLAN CHOCHINOV AND ANDREW SCHLOSS

Puppi

by May Sun

May Shuchang Sun’s thesis is aimed at helping women in the workplace by creating technology that builds confidence. The thesis work grew from her initial question: “How can we build and strengthen the relationship that women have with technology?”

Puppi is a robotic interface that intermittently spreads a woman’s scent in a space—marking her territory—so that she feels like she owns the room. Users first fill puppy with their favorite perfume (or better, their pheromones if available), and then let it go!

2ND YEAR THESIS: HER SENSE Women, Technology and Intervention

THESIS WITH ALLAN CHOCHINOV AND ANDREW SCHLOSS

Round Table

by May Sun

Round Table is an online networking platform that fosters team-building and outlines frameworks for technological entrepreneurship. The target audience for the platform is young female professionals, graduate and undergraduate students who want to build a start-up after leaving school, and young mothers, staying at home, but who also want to maintain their professional growth. The first-time experience of the app let’s users choose their expertise, and then displays the teams that the user might be interested in, based on that expertise. If users don’t want to join an existing team, they can choose to build a team. Here, they can create a topic or a theme—the business framework will be provided—and then invite people with different backgrounds to contribute to the team. May envisions Round Table as a platform that will create opportunities for its members to learn and gain experience from one another—to share, build, and support one another.

2ND YEAR THESIS: HER SENSE Women, Technology and Intervention

DESIGN FOR SCREENS WITH BRENT ARNOLD

Giggle Up

by Berk Ilhan

Giggle Up is a design performance and interactive experience that explores the idea of spreading contagious laughter. The event took place on March 28th, 2015, in the Flatiron District of New York City. Three actors dressed in white Tyvek suits carried wooden frames equipped with on/ off toggle switches and LED indicators. The conspicuous outfits and equipment attracted curiosity, and many people stopped and watched the show with delight. As the audience became more engaged with the actors and began to engage with the switches—the actors laughed loud when “triggered”—the audience began to laugh. As a takeaway, people who participated were given paper stickers—providing them with a no-tech “giggle up” button.

Spontaneously, they then started to play the game with each other, pushing each other’s buttons and laughing along the way. The device worked to great effect.

2ND YEAR THESIS: UPLIFT Happiness & Communication in the Context of Cancer

DESIGN DELIGHT WITH EMILIE BALTZ

Smile Mirror & Smart Smile System

by Berk Ilhan One cancer survivor Berk interviewed told him that in the first days since her initial diagnosis, “it was weird to look at myself and acknowledge that I had cancer in my body.”

These words inspired Berk to create a playful mirror that allows you see yourself...only when you smile. By employing a smart material and prototyping the interaction using Arduino, Berk tested a working prototype to observe user reaction.

Another research discovery of Berk’s—and perhaps intuitively persuasive—is the fact that smiling actually makes us happy. According to the “facial feedback hypothesis,” our facial expressions affect how we feel.

Indeed, if we flex our facial muscles to smile, our brains think that something good happened, results in us feeling happiness. Arguing that as a result, “we should smile more!”, Berk created the conceptual Smart Smile System. Through a series of investigative trials, the final form was born: a mountable smile detector that functions as a “start button” for daily household appliances.

2ND YEAR THESIS: UPLIFT Happiness & Communication in the Context of Cancer

THESIS I WITH ALLAN CHOCHINOV AND ANDREW SCHLOSS

Farmhand

by Vidhi Goel, Lance Green and Julia Plevin Farmhand is a service that helps farmers and local food producers make their dream projects a reality. Farmhand is designed to make uploading projects—and supporting those projects—frictionless and easy. And one of the ways it does that is by removing “the hassles of rewards.” “I don’t want to have to mail a wedge of cheese to everyone who supported me,” reported a dairy farmer at the Union Square Green Market, revealing that the burden of giving rewards to funders is one of the current barriers to entry for farmers interested in crowdfunding campaigns.

Farmhand makes it easy for farmers to support each other, and for farm lovers to support farmers. Both the web platform as well as the mobile app create the pitch—the project creator—by combining factual information with video, automatically stitching them together into compelling narrative. “In an earlier iteration, we positioned ourselves as Kickstarter consultants for local food producers,” said Vidhi Goel. “We had someone who was interested in our services, but we quickly realized that people who are raising money don’t have funds available to pay for a bespoke service.

So we designed an app and web platform that did more handholding, but was more automated.”

2ND YEAR PROJECT

BETTER BY MEASURE WITH REBECCA SILVER AND JEN VAN DER MEER

Freelance Chair

by Lance Green

Lance Green’s master’s thesis, Great Space, focuses on the spaces in which urbanites often find themselves—working between the home and the office. The project’s design offerings encourage user adaptation within these spaces by removing feelings of displacement and helping to adjust to new or unfamiliar working environments. Grey Space is an exploration into the places that encourage us to be most at peace within ourselves and within the world around us; the spaces that allow us to rebalance and make sense of a disorder, to inspire us, and perhaps to provoke new thought.

The design of the Freelance Chair was inspired by the mobility of the freelancer, navigating the environments we often discover between the home and the office: parks, rooftops, or even sidewalks. The Freelance chair was designed to free the freelancer, transforming potential Grey Spaces into makeshift workspaces. Laptops fit comfortably within its collapsible, hinged structure, and together are easily portable to newly-discovered locations.

2ND YEAR THESIS: GREY SPACE

THESIS I WITH ALLAN CHOCHINOV AND ANDREW SCHLOSS

Sensory Stimulation

by Lance Green

Design for Smell Smell was the first sense to be explored—specifically our relationship to the smells that have been shown to influence a person’s ability to be happy. Indigenous medicinal practices have long harnessed the power of plants for medicinal purposes, and many believe that there are mental and physical remedies to common ailments such as stress and mental fatigue through the burning of incense, drinking teas, or inhaling aromatherapeutic scents and essential oils.

Design for Light Lighting has been shown to influence productivity and attention in both the work and education environments.

Reducing lighting in specific ways can result in a more “personal atmosphere,” and have the power to designate private spaces within public environments. Conversely, as lighting becomes brighter, the more public, or open, the space can seem. Colors, when introduced into lighting, have a variety of effects on the human body. Some researchers have found that blue can encourage focus and is energizing; the body responds with positive thoughts to the warmth of the color yellow; certain hues of pink and green can be used to relieve anxiety and stress; and red can cause excitement and alertness.

2ND YEAR THESIS: GREY SPACE

THESIS I WITH ALLAN CHOCHINOV AND ANDREW SCHLOSS

Branding Legalized Marijuana

by Lance Green Lance Green’s master’s thesis, Great Space, focuses on the spaces in which urbanites often find themselves—working between the home and the office. The project’s design offerings encourage user adaptation within these spaces by removing feelings of displacement and helping to adjust to new or unfamiliar working environments. Grey Space is an exploration into the places that encourage us to be most at peace within ourselves and within the world around us; the spaces that allow us to rebalance and make sense of a disorder, to inspire us, and perhaps to provoke new thought.

With regard to the psychological sides of Grey Space, Lance saw an opportunity in the recent legalization of marijuana across numerous states within the U.S., and in a speculative partnership with New York State Senator Liz Krueger, created a cohesive brand identity for legalized, over-the-counter medicinal marijuana. Harnessing the health benefits of legalized marijuana and leveraging the power of branding, the goal was to take something viewed by a large majority of the public as negative, and reframing it in a way that promotes its benefits and educates its users.

2ND YEAR THESIS: GREY SPACE

THESIS I WITH ALLAN CHOCHINOV AND ANDREW SCHLOSS

Virtual Office for 2030

by Lance Green

Lance explored a speculative future of work “that is almost entirely stripped of the human senses.” This is a world where the virtual office has been widely adopted, and designers are able to create in an alternate and virtual reality. This is a space existing between the home and the office—a territory that involves both physical and digital tools.

Here, Grey Space as a virtual platform questions a not-toodistant future in which our bodies will be stressed in new ways through the frequent use of gestural interfaces and rapid body movements. Analogous to the repetitive stress disorders found with the introduction of the first computer mouse and keyboards, Lance posited that the long-term effects such constrictions and tightening of the hands would have on our limbs would introduce a new form of rheumatoid arthritis.

In this future, “osteoculus” becomes another classification under a growing list of chronic inflammatory disorders; it’s a form of arthritis that has emerged due to the over-usage of the gestural interfaces used in virtual reality environments.

The disease commonly occurs in the arms and hands where flexible tissues at the ends of bones wear down. The design of the apparatus features a body harness,attached to the rear waist of the user and extending upwards over the shoulders. This keeps the hands weightless and extended out in front of the body.

2ND YEAR THESIS: GREY SPACE

SPECULATIVE FUTURES WITH ELLIOT MONTGOMERY

Totem Bathroom Set

by May Sun

As part of last season’s partnership with the Museum of Modern Art to design product concepts for the MoMA Wholesale Catalog, May Sun created a bathroom set that is both contemporary and instantly classic.

Inspired by a combination of modern and retro styles, the Totem Bathroom Set is finally a set of cleaning tools beautiful enough for you to be proud to have out. Plunger, brush, and soap dish. 6w x 6d x 18”h.

2ND YEAR PROJECT

MOMA X PRODUCTS OF DESIGN

Tape of Honor

by Jung Soo Park

Tape of Honor explores the notions of value, recognition, and pop culture. Appropriating the iconography of medals, Jung created stickers of recognition on a tape spool—rendering them disposal, yet spontaneous. “If you could acknowledge accomplishment or valor, or simply give someone a thumbsup in a way that was frictionless and social, what might you reward?” he asks.

Taking a cue from the collectables world, Jung then created a blind assortment package of pre-cut medals, designing 12 different designs of varying rareness, and therefore “value.”

He placed his prototypes in retail environments to learn more about how they would appear and how they might be perceived.

Ultimately, it was the interaction through the product that won the day, with students presenting—and applying— stickers on disparate occasions: A nicely-built prototype by another student; a well-taught class by a faculty member; a “thank you note” for participating in a group project.

2ND YEAR PROJECT

AFFIRMING ARTIFACTS WITH ALLAN CHOCHINOV

Göz Ecosystem

by Berk Ilhan

Göz is a family of smart, home-monitoring devices aimed at making the bathroom a safer place. Göz consists three elements: a smart, motion-detecting LED bulb, a smart, motion-detecting bathtub drain, and a companion app and platform. The smart bulb detects falls in the bathroom and then calls for help, and the smart bathtub drain detects falls, or lack of motion in the tub area, and automatically pops up to drain the bathtub, preventing drowning.

Here’s how it works: Users screw the bulb into any overhead light fixture, and drop the drain plug into any existing bath fixture. The user then downloads the mobile app and selects which family members and friends should be called in case there is a fall in the bathroom.

The smart bulb automatically detects falls using proximity sensors. Its built-in speaker and microphone—located at the midpoint of the bulb—turns the device into a 2-way speakerphone, providing a hands-free way for the injured person to communicate her or his needs effectively, and helping the people who are on the way over to be better prepared. Additionally, the phone communication provides a way to give psychological support before help arrives.

2ND YEAR PROJECT

BRAND, PRODUCT AND EXPERIENCE WITH RINAT ARUH AND JOHAN LIDEN

Add Color Plate

by May Sun

In her work, Add Color, May Sun has blended a paper plate with the form of an artist pallet to create an eating surface that plays off of the idea that food can be a work of art. May Sun researched the history of plates—from ceramic surfaces of ancient China to modern disposable plates, and found that while throughout history the plate is connected by the function of holding or serving food, the myriad variations of plates carry different meanings and serve different social purposes. In the case of some traditional ceramic plates, for example, the plate might be designed with detailed decoration—as a sign of status, a connection to tradition, or to tell a story; the paper plate, on the other hand, is purely functional, and does not aim to carry any deeper meaning. While she appreciated the idea that traditional decorations can bring some expression or a deeper layer of meaning to a meal, May found that when a plate has decoration, this decoration takes the focus—rather than the food on the plate. This is where she introduces the iconic symbol of an artist pallet: the shape playfully implies that the food is like an artist’s paint, which gives the plate an expressive quality,= but also keeps the focus on the food...the colorful part of the item.

2ND YEAR PROJECT

AFFIRMING ARTIFACTS WITH ALLAN CHOCHINOV

Lucky 8 Tape

by Lusha Huang

Products of Design MFA student Lusha Huang’s master’s thesis, It’s Chinese to me: Luck and Cultural Empathy, explores the disconnect between Chinese and American culture. As a Chinese student in an international design department, Lusha enthusiastically took on the role of messenger—eager to share her country’s tradition and philosophy with others. Her over-arching goal is to be part of building a cultural bridge, fostering understanding between Americans and Chinese.

Numbers have always played a significant role in Chinese culture. ‘Ba’ means “fortune.” In Chinese, 8 (or “fa”) is regarded as the luckiest number. Lusha designed sticky tape with the number 8 on it—sure to appeal to Chinese. It’s intended to be used when wrapping gifts, or simply to send a positive message.

2ND YEAR THESIS: IT’S CHINESE TO ME

THESIS I WITH ALLAN CHOCHINOV AND ANDREW SCHLOSS

Lucky Clinic

by Lusha Huang

Lusha set out to find ways of communicating to shoppers in Chinatown which specific items might address their particular needs. Lusha created tags with information to accompany the items in order to educate shoppers. In conjunction with the Harmony Gift Center located at 63 Bayard Street—which sells Buddhist statues and other ritual objects—she conducted the “Chinese Lucky Clinic.”

Owner Ben Chen cooperated with her efforts, letting her use his shop and providing guidance along the way.

Lusha used the practice of Chinese palm reading as an ideal gateway to the experience; it’s interactive, and quickly attracts an audience. She provided readings free of charge, using her iPad to scan a hand with left from the app “Chinese Palm Reader.” She began by drawing the lines of their hands on her iPad accompanied by an intriguing sound. When the scanning was complete, the app began its analysis. Following the analysis, and acting as the “prescriber of good fortune,” Lusha wrote a prescription based on the results of the palm reading. The subjects, if they chose to, could then purchase a charm or other object associated with what was said to be lucky for that individual.

2ND YEAR THESIS: IT’S CHINESE TO ME

THESIS I WITH ALLAN CHOCHINOV AND ANDREW SCHLOSS

Pizza Plate

by Lusha Huang

Luck and sharing with others are extremely significant to the Chinese. Sharing food is perceived as caring and considerate—as a way of promoting harmony between people. This is very different from how Americans primarily eat out, which is largely ordering individually. The exception here is pizza.

To help Americans adapt to the concept of sharing food, Lusha designed “a gateway culture adaptor” with pizza integrated into the concept. On a large, round pizza plate is the pizza base. The individual orders, such as steak, chicken, spaghetti and fish, are distributed on each section of the plate.

2ND YEAR THESIS: IT’S CHINESE TO ME

THESIS I WITH ALLAN CHOCHINOV AND ANDREW SCHLOSS

Color Droplets

by Lusha Huang

In Ayse Birsel’s 5-week Deconstruction/Reconstruction course, students are asked to create a novel, modular system or “language” to describe their lives—something algorithmic and additive.

Lusha Huang’s inspiration drew from a rainbow palette of color, which she used as a metaphor of the current status of her life. Using different colored inks as the base modules, she gave each color a specific meaning: Pink represents love, for example, white represents herself, yellow represents you—the viewer.

The modules interact inside a water-filled vessel, representing the fluid and vital element of life. When different color inks were dropped into the vessel, a distinct message is formed. The message, “I love you”, for example, is represented by the droplets of white, pink, and yellow inks.

Finally, different quantities of color drops can be used to extend meaning. For example, where one drop of yellow ink means “you”, two drops mean “you” in the plural, and three mean “friends”. One drop of pink is “love”, but three drops is “family”. In this way, the language can be broadened, and the messages can become more complex.

2ND YEAR PROJECT

DECONSTRUCTION RECONSTRUCTION WITH AYSE BIRSEL

Kneading Tools

by Miguel Olivares

Inspired by the work of neurologist Frank Wilson and philosopher Martin Heidegger, In Knead focuses on the influence that the hands have on how we engage in our daily lives. It’s a case study in creating purpose through cooking, and is explored as a set of tools, a digital interface, a public experience, and a business enterprise.

Miguel began his investigation into how intent can affect the meaning of objects by shaping clay into “gestures of generosity.” He then began a self-imposed diet where he only ate the foods that he loves if they were made from scratch. This series of material studies, along with the diet, inspired a set of bread-making tools that illustrated the notion that “our tools are shaped by the intent we knead into them.”

Miguel’s next iteration analyzed the touchpoints where tools would improve the process. Inspired by watching artisanal bakers in Mexico, he identified techniques that would inform his designs. The final designs are hand-crafted Mahogany bread tools, in keeping with the artisanal bread-making process he practices and is inspired by.

2ND YEAR THESIS: IN KNEAD

Re-building Intent in Our Relationship with Food

THESIS I WITH ALLAN CHOCHINOV AND ANDREW SCHLOSS

Elements

by Miguel Olivares

Miguel Olivares’s thesis, In Knead: Rebuilding Intent in Our Relationship with Food, examines the importance of how food can be a material for design.

Elements is a digital worktable where you can practice, play, and perfect your cooking techniques. By combining the ingredients of projection technology with haptic feedback, Miguel created an educational tool that was also a delightful cooking experience. Miguel’s research and interviews with professional chefs, restaurant owners, and cooking class experts lead him to focus on simulating manual cooking techniques for the software—differentiating Elements from other digital interfaces which only focus on leading individuals through recipes, rather than the development of skills.

2ND YEAR THESIS: IN KNEAD

Re-building Intent in Our Relationship with Food

DESIGN FOR SCREENS WITH BRENT ARNOLD

Food Experience

by Miguel Olivares

Miguel Olivares’s thesis, In Knead: Rebuilding Intent in Our Relationship with Food, examines the importance of how food can be a material for design. Inspired by the work of neurologist Frank Wilson and philosopher Martin Heidegger, In Knead focuses on the influence that the hands have on how we engage in our daily lives. It’s a case study in creating purpose through cooking, and is explored as a set of tools, a digital interface, a public experience, and a business enterprise.

Miguel created a series of experiences that allowed participants to create delightful, playful dishes

2ND YEAR THESIS: IN KNEAD

Re-building Intent in Our Relationship with Food

DESIGN DELIGHT WITH EMILIE BALTZ

Kiko Kitchen

by Miguel Olivares

Coupling his 12 years in the grocery business with his passion for food, he created Kiko Kitchen. KiKo Kitchen is a market, a fermentation bar, and a kitchen space designed to bring us closer to the way we grow, prepare, and share our food. Kiko Kitchen offers educational workshops, shared meals, and company events that are designed to be memorable, immersive food experiences.

Since The New York Times and other national publications have reported that fermentation is the “next big trend in 2015,” the menu at the fermented bar would have such drinks as Kombucha, Shrubs, and other fermented drinks from around the world. Miguel’s Mexican background and rich cuisine heritage would also influence the menu. The merchandising and event space would take cues from the SHED in Northen California and The Brooklyn Kitchen.

2ND YEAR THESIS: IN KNEAD

Re-building Intent in Our Relationship with Food

BUSINESS MODELING WITH JANNA GILBERT

Blank Slate

by Elisa Werbler

“The act of recording information can be done in various ways—photos, videos, journals, audio and more” argues Elisa Werbler. In her project, she attempted to dovetail “record keeping” into an object this is already known to be practical, functional and great at doing its job: a tape measure.

Werbler wanted to created a physical object designed to be a living journal of measurements, memories, and process.

Writes Werbler: Through a series of sketches and initial prototypes, this concept was born by simply taking an existing tape measure and covering the surface with a piece of masking tape.

This marriage of materials created an opportunity to add an element of permanence and storytelling—in distance as well as time. But what physical form could this idea take?: A D.I.Y. activity that transforms the functionality of an existing measuring tool for a period of time, and which could be easily returned to its original state once the intended purpose of jotting down relevant measurements was over.

Think of it as a “hack” for creating a more useful tape measure.

2ND YEAR PROJECT

AFFIRMING ARTIFACTS WITH ALLAN CHOCHINOV

RADLABS: Heat Flow

by Lucy Knops, Andres Iglesias, and Brandon Washington Responding to the brief “to design a growth startup built upon the platform of an existing company” in their Lifecycle and Flows: Better By Measure course, designers Andres Iglesias, Brandon Washington, and Lucy Knops looked at Nest—creators of the smart thermostat, along with other innovative home monitoring devices. Through system mapping, the team identified two gaps in Nest’s business model and created a new, speculative platform: RADLABS. The team focused in on the customer segment of people renting older apartments in the Northeast—where it can be scorching hot in the summer, and freezing cold in the winter. The temperature efficiency in these apartments is very low (technologies are chronically out of date), and renters are often at the mercy of building owners and superintendents to set the temperature range. “Heat Flow” is the first product kit in development. It maximizes a steam radiator’s output by using a fan array to redirect the hot air and properly circulate it throughout the room. Each Heat Flow kit is designed to be easily assembled, installed, and then de-installed so that renters can move it with them from apartment to apartment.

2ND YEAR PROJECT

LIFECYCLE AND FLOWS: BETTER BY MEASURE WITH REBECCA SILVER AND JEN VAN DER MEER

McDonald’s French Fries

by Lance Green

The McDonald’s french fry box served as the base artifact that led to an in-depth analysis of what it truly is, and what it can be: an improved packaging design, a mass-media campaign, a tool for corporate/consumer food production, and a newly introduced food product for public purchase and consumption. Looking beyond the basic wants and needs of the artifact itself, the project focused on the context and power of design decisions in order to create a more impactful final product. Through ideation, user research, prototyping, testing and refinement, the product was redesigned based on context-specific requirements rather than obvious wants and needs.

Continued research led to an evolution of McDonald’s signature fries into a new product: a McDonald’s “take” on the baked potato that offers a more healthful alternative to deep frying. At first, a consumer product version of the potato cutter device needed to achieve the effect was explored. (Gridded blades cut into chosen potatoes when firmly pressed down; arched handles pay homage to the original architecture of restaurants with a wraparound packaging design that features the architectural structure and gridded windows of the iconic building design.)

2ND YEAR PROJECT

AFFIRMING ARTIFACTS WITH ALLAN CHOCHINOV

Clamor

by Panisa Khunprasert and Louise-Anne van ‘t Riet Although crying is a healthy, natural, and ancient way of expressing and processing both positive and negative emotions, modern society often regards tears as a sign of weakness and vulnerability, particularly in women. Clamor, a speculative new beauty brand, seeks to restore dignity to tears with a line of ‘after-cry’ products that empowers women to embrace the catharsis of crying without shame or fear. Clamor offers two products, each presented in sleek frosted resin cases: a set of brass pebbles for immediate treatment and a set of ceramic pebbles as a long-term remedy. The conductive brass pebbles are soaked in either hot or cold water and placed on the eyelids to reduce puffiness after crying. The ceramic pebbles are paired with essential oils extracted from cucumber, rose water, tea, potato, and milk—natural ingredients with healing properties—to treat dark and tired eyes over time.

3RD YEAR PROJECT

PRODUCT, BRAND & EXPERIENCE WITH RINAT ARUH & JOHAN LIDEN

Clara

by Belen Tenorio and IxD students Josh Sucher and Marcelo Mejia A Cobo

A new tool for those who struggle with concentration and focus, Clara is a smart lamp that uses EEG technology to visualize your state of mind. Clara translates brainwaves into light and sound, giving feedback as you work. Clara interprets distraction by glowing red and humming quietly; a cool blue light and ambient music indicate clear focus.

Tasked with developing a product using memory and executive functions, the designers found a common interest in the pursuit of mindfulness and focus. After research revealed a link between light temperature and the ability to focus, they decided to create a lamp that would illuminate more than just your space: it would reveal your level of concentration.

3RD YEAR PROJECT

SMART OBJECTS WITH TED ULLRICH AND PEPIN GELARDI

Adagio

by Jenna Witzleben

First year student Jenna Witzleben was inspired by her own inability to make time for dance—her lifelong stress reliever—and consequently created Adagio. Adagio is a product-mobile app pairing that blends schedule optimization with physical intention-setting. It assists in helping the user form strong habits around stressrelieving activities—all in a mindful and tranquil way. In the application, users can create daily optimized schedules— incorporating task lists, calendars, and mindful activity goals. After entering in the tasks that the user wants to complete during the day, she selects from multiple schedule options for accomplishing those tasks, all with mindful activities bookending her meeting and class schedule.

4TH YEAR PROJECT

DECONSTRUCTION RECONSTRUCTION WITH AYSE BIRSEL

Transmission

by Jenna Witzleben

Transmission is a two-piece wearable device and digital display system that tracks your creativity based on how much you draw. It happens far too often that that the creative process for designers, makers, engineers, and hobbyists is stunted by overthinking and mental road blocks.

In sympathy with the Product of Design mantra “Get out of your head and into your hands”, the device addresses the importance of sketching in order to further your idea Transmission is a two-piece wearable device and digital display system that tracks your creativity based on how much you draw. It happens far too often that that the creative process for designers, makers, engineers, and hobbyists is stunted by overthinking and mental road blocks.

In sympathy with the Product of Design mantra “Get out of your head and into your hands”, the device addresses the importance of sketching in order to further your ideas. One particularly important use case of the device is for people new to the field of design as a way to establish sketching as a critical part of the innovation process. And since the motion sensor component is wearable on the wrist (versus a smart stylus or digital table surface), users are able to experiment with any drawing tool and any canvas—from dry erase markers, to pencils, to Sharpies or even finger paint! s. One particularly important use case of the device is for people new to the field of design as a way to establish sketching as a critical part of the innovation process. And since the motion sensor component is wearable on the wrist (versus a smart stylus or digital table surface), users are able to experiment with any drawing tool and any canvas—from dry erase markers, to pencils, to Sharpies or even finger paint!

4TH YEAR PROJECT

MAKING STUDIO WITH BECKY STERN

Breezefinder

by Alexa Forney

Breezefinder logs windspeed data wherever it goes, reading kinetic energy through its anemometer on top. When it detects wind speeds high enough to support an energyproducing wind turbine, the device sends its GPS location and wind speed to Twitter. “Big business isn’t going out surveying the city for wind energy, and municipalities aren’t going to look into it without a big shift in policy. So it’s up to ordinary citizens to ensure that this data is available.”

Looking to citizen science for answers to this challenge, Alexa envisioned a device that could log data on the go— for all to see and use. Possibilities for Breezefinder are as vast as municipal energy planning, and as small as teaching schoolchildren about sustainable energy. As more data comes in from the Breezefinder project, it will become possible to visually map locations where wind energy harvesting makes the most sense.

4TH YEAR PROJECT

MAKING STUDIO WITH BECKY STERN

Cavities

by Dayoung Hong

Cavities is a series of prototypes in response to a design brief around creating a book on the theme of “containers.”

(The title of the series is a play on words between a kind of container and a kind of oral hygiene consequence!) In the book, different fruits and vegetables are featured in portrait—each revealing a sweet center or sweet surrounding. Using vivid colors, the book is intended to reframe vegetables in a vernacular that children are already affectionate toward. Will they eat their vegetables now?

Perhaps not, but they may not be able to look at a head of broccoli in same way ever again. We aren’t!

4TH YEAR PROJECT

MARK MAKING WITH BENJAMIN CRITTON

Crowdstorm

by Louis Elwood-Leach

Crowdstorm is a brainstorming platform designed to foster fresh ideas, encourage global perspectives, and provide a unique space for collaborative ideation. Crowdstorm addresses the issue of solitary solution making by empowering ideas with varied perspectives. According to Louis, “Crowdstorm takes ideas out of our heads and grows them within a diverse community.” Louis created a simple taxonomy that reflects the amount of participation that an idea receives: “The darker and deeper the weather gets, the heftier the storm. A cloud with one raindrop reveals that an idea has at least five contributors. The two-drop cloud icon represents an idea with over one hundred contributors, and the lighting bolt cloud shows an idea that’s been pondered by over one thousand users!”

5TH YEAR PROJECT

AFFIRMING ARTIFACTS WITH ALLAN CHOCHINOV

Project Dao

by Isioma Iyamah Ziyun Qi and Oscar de la Hera Project Dao is a free, alternative learning platform aimed at empowering children of minimum wage earners through valuable, targeted educational content, along with resources to enhance their entrepreneurial potential and employability.

Project Dao uses a gamified, digital platform to connect users to teams led by specialized, industry-relevant mentors.

These mentors customize their users’ journeys by creating a series of digestible, micro-objectives in the form of timed challenges—such as skill building intensives and short workshops. Users participate in these challenges—both team-based and individual—to build a toolkit of successfully acquired skills. The Project Dao platform can then provide services in the form of an alternative marketplace for companies who are looking to hire such skilled earners.

3RD YEAR PROJECT

DESIGN RESEARCH WITH SARAH LIDGUS

Hip-Hop Heads

by Oscar Pipson

Cuddle Me Drake is an interactive Drake pillow inspired by the artist’s emergent influence on pop culture. Hug, pat, or stroke Drake and he will play comforting samples from his many hits including Hotline Bling, Marvin’s Room, and Best I Ever Had. Leave drake alone for more than 30 minutes at a time and he’ll play angry samples to try and get you to embrace him.

Get the cuddling started with everyone’s favorite rapper!

Cuddle me Drake is soft and cuddly, and he sings emotional lyrics whenever his hair or beard are touched. Be careful though! Adorable Cuddle me Drake, isn’t always so adorable.

Leave Cuddle me Drake alone to long and he’ll sing aggressive lyrics until you comfort him some more.

Cuddle me Drake Pillow comes with instructions. Suitable for children between the ages of 20 — 50. Requires 2 “AA” batteries (demo batteries included).

4TH YEAR PROJECT

MAKING STUDIO WITH BECKY STERN

Embodied, A Fair!

by Marianna Mezhibovskaya

Grounded in performance art and interactive experience, Marianna envisioned EMBODIED: A FAIR, a safe space for people to learn, share their insecurities, and create positive habits in a variety of physically-engaging events. The fair takes place on Governors Island, celebrating the beautiful bodies we are in during the exact dates that Fashion Week works to fit them into an unrealistic ideal. The event would be supported through partnerships with organizations such as the National Eating Disorder Association, American Psychological Association, Dove: The Campaign for Real Beauty, and Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move Campaign.

Beyond programing such as Eating Disorder Colloquia, LGBT Body Identity Center, and various performances, body image improvement manifests itself within the context of sitespecific events that encourage fairgoers to use their actual bodies. These interactions include a Daily Runway Show for people of all shapes and sizes to strut their stuff, Mirrored Graffiti area where people can cover their reflections with inspirational words and drawings that emulate their true identities, and a Nude Spa for relaxation and shared body exposure.

3RD YEAR PROJECT

AFFIRMING ARTIFACTS WITH ALLAN CHOCHINOV

Yawnie

by Ziyun Qi, Roya Ramezani and IxD student Nic Barajas

Yawnie is a smart device that helps people develop good sleeping habits. Yawnie tracks users’ sleeping conditions, and reminds them to go to bed on time by triggering them to yawn. “In modern culture, over-working and poor sleep habits are sometimes a point of pride, but too many people can falter under those pressures and suffer from lack of sleep— leading to poor health, low productivity, and depression,” reasons the team.

Indeed, yawning is contagious through multiple triggers: hearing the sound of yawning; looking at a picture or video of someone yawning; watching an animal yawn—even simply viewing the written word “yawn”. “This is a kind of mysterious power we wanted to take advantage of,” adds the team. “When it’s time to sleep, Yawnie opens and closes along with playing a yawn sound through its speaker. It continues to yawn at regular intervals—until the user has acknowledged it—hopefully persuading them to go to bed.”

3RD YEAR PROJECT

SMART OBJECTS WITH TED ULLRICH AND PEPIN GELARDI

Meow

by Josh Corn and IxD students Song Lee and Shane Strassberg

Meow (“Men’s Empathy Of Women”) is a digital platform that looks at the rampant street harassment of women along with the common prejudice that women ‘ask for’ that harassment based on the way they walk, dress, or behave.

“Of course, the problem lies with the men involved,” the team argues. So they framed their work a challenge: How might we address street harassment, acknowledging men as the problem, but somehow “empowering” men to be the solution?

Women simply pin the Meow Recorder onto their clothing in the manner of a brooch—though various form-factors were explored—before going out. Once activated, the device continually records and buffers the last 15 seconds of sound on a loop...until its button is pressed. When a woman experiences vocal street harassment, she hits the button, and the device immediately grabs and sends the audio clip as a text message to the male friends and relatives that she has preselected from her contact list in the accompanying MEOW app. The men receiving the message then listen to the clip of the offensive message that she just experienced—in practically real time. “The hope is to put men in the shoes of a close friend or loved one who was just—in the last 30 seconds—personally street harassed,” says the team. “Then perhaps, the next time they or a friend think about catcalling someone, they will remember how their friend was catcalled...and stop.”

4TH YEAR PROJECT

SMART OBJECTS WITH TED ULLRICH AND PEPIN GELARDI

IDOID

by Sowmya Iyer

It is a small interactive fun product that looks like a piggy bank, but its actually an “idea bank�. It comes with a companion App called IDOID from which you can record all your brilliant brainwaves, thoughts, inspirations and ideas on the go! So every time you record an idea from your app, the idea bank blinks to urge you to put coins in it. This way your ideas are making you richer by the day. Literally! The most exciting part of this experience is that the inspiration is on demand. This means that when you shake the idea bank, the app tells you how much you have saved as well as gives you a combination of 3 ideas from your previously recorded ideas.

This way you can mix and match your inspiration to think of innovative ideas.

HOW DOES THIS WORK: The idea bank connect to your phone through Bluetooth. So, imagine you have recorded 2 ideas and when you come home, it blinks twice to indicate that you have to put 2 coins for the number of ideas recorded.

It has a IR Led based coin counter circuit which recognizes the type of coins and exactly tells you how much you have saved. It transmits the information to you phone and works on an simple 9V battery. It also has a motion sensor that detects that you are shaking the idea bank for inspiration and feedback. This information is visible in you phone as your savings and ideas.

5TH YEAR PROJECT

MAKING STUDIO WITH BECKY STERN

Saratoga Apples Tasting Room Experience

by Sowmya Iyer Three step method to enhance the experience 1. Experience: Telling the story through the Brand and its Products.

By giving the products and services an identity by capturing and sharing the stories they really are, target audience go on a journey they yearn to experience. This helps the consumers to form a personal connection with the brand.

2. Engage: Interacting and Engaging with Customers through play.

The puzzle coasters tell the complete story of the 5 generations. This is instrumental in bringing people in the tasting room together. It is a medium of interaction and ice breaking between strangers and also a fun way to get to know more about the origin of the ciders.

3. Cherish: Letting customers create their own stories and memories.

The giveaway package includes a bag of handpicked apples, a voucher which customers can redeem the next time they visit the tasting room and a beautiful wooden box made of recycles crates which contains personalized postcards. The customers can go on a tradition apple picking tour around the orchard and they can post their pictures on Instagram (social media promotion). This is printed and made into a set of postcards of memories for the customers to share handwritten stories of their experience with their loved ones.

5TH YEAR PROJECT

DESIGN FOR SUSTAINABILITY AND RESILIENCE WITH CLAIRE HARTTEN AND KATE BAKEWELL

Eez Clock

by Smruti Adya

It’s probably the biggest cliché—and the biggest truth—that a long-distant parent wants to know if their kid has eaten, if she’s home or at work, and basically if they’re all okay.

First-year student Smruti Adya’s clever Arduino-based invention—the Eez Clock—solves the problem by notifying the concerned parent about the general whereabouts of their distant child and whether that child has eaten all the meals for the day.

There are two different indicators on the device: The “clock hand” and the strip of LEDs. Using the location data from the child’s smartphone, EEZ turns its clock hand to one of three positions: Home, School or Elsewhere.

(These labels can be customized depending on the user’s frequented locations.) The three LEDs on the clock hand—representing the three meals of the day—light up based on buttons pressed by the child on their phone. “At the end of the day,” Smruti offers, “if all three lights are on, the parent will be relieved and happy to know that their kid has eaten.

Based on my personal experience, this would come as quite a comfort!” At midnight, the device automatically resets, and turns the lights off.

Eez works with Adafruit’s Feather Huzzah Wifi board, in conjunction with If This Then That (IFTTT) and Adafruit IO (a platform to create simple Internet of Things devices). Location-based applets on IFTTT send data to a feed on AIO, based on where the user is, and DO buttons on the user’s phone can be triggered manually each time s/he has a meal,—which is sent to another feed on AIO. These feeds communicate with the Huzzah board, and cause either a servo to move to the appropriate location, moving the hand, or the relevant LED to light up.

5TH YEAR PROJECT

MAKING STUDIO WITH BECKY STERN

Be.Cause

by George Crichlow

CHALLENGE Today many non-profit organizations have trouble connecting with young professionals. Many rely on guilt or antiquated fundraising tactics that don’t resonate with their lifestyle. They face the challenge of growing their donors younger.

SOLUTION Reward people for things they already enjoy. Be.Cause is a branded experience that raises awareness for social causes in a non-intrusive way.

It’s a concept that test a new social enterprise business model. For every beer sold at a bar, $1 of the sale was donated a non-profit organization.

HOW IT WORKS A guest orders a drink from the bar. The bartender starts a tab and thanks the guest for donating to the charitable foundation by giving them a branded coaster with information about the charity. Each coaster is branded a provides some additional information about the organization.

The guest is pleasantly surprised, has a new conversation starter and enjoys their beverage a little bit more.

INSIGHT Interviews with fundraiser for non-profit organizations revealed that one of the biggest challenges they face is around raising awareness for their causes with young upwardly mobile audiences. A large portion of their donations come from charity events, but most of those attendees are already emotionally and financially invested donators. In the world of social responsibility were emerging social enterprises that built social good into their business models.

2ND YEAR THESIS: ORGANIZING PRINCIPLE

THESIS

Luminesce Organic Lighting

by Joseph Weissgold

Luminesce is a carbon-negative off-grid modular lighting system. It could be used as an alternative to neon, for backlit signage, or for wayfinding quite effectively. Working off the existing model for farming algae, which is currently done for biofuel, Luminesce houses the algae in clear tubes and a small pump keeps a steady flow of carbon dioxide flowing through.

Rather than using a material that depletes as it emits light, this algae actually multiplies as it glows. The CO2 pump that you see at the back of the tube runs off solar power, so the whole systems can exist off grid. The modular system makes it such that malfunctioning segments can be replaced or repaired without detriment to the whole system. The organic nature of this product makes its lifecycle intrinsically regenerative. And most importantly it’s restorative. It consumes carbon dioxide and emits oxygen.

Luminesce presents an opportunity to make a dent in that statistic that lighting is one-fifth of our global energy consumption, and hints at a future where we don’t need to consume energy to make light, rather by making light, we are restoring our balance with nature.

1ST YEAR PROJECT

LIFECYCLE AND FLOWS WITH REBECCA SILVER AND JEN VAN DER MEER

Pop-Up “Sophie The Giraffe” Packaging

by Charlotta Hellichius In the 2nd-year Lifecycle and Flows Class, Charlotta Hellichius took on the sustainability of an infant toy and redesigning a part of its ecosystem to decrease its environmental impact. “Sophie the Giraffe”, manufactured

by Vulli, is a French teeth-er made out of natural rubber—and a bit of a phenomenon.

The rubber Sophie is made from is sourced from the Malaysian Coast. It is transported to a small manufacturing facility in Rumilly, France, and then the finished product is exported to many foreign markets. To end up in American stores, Sophie travels far; Charlotta set out to minimize the impact of her journey. As Sophie is one of the most gifted child toys, it is firstly individually packaged, then typically gift wrapped and put in a bag to bring home. The project aimed to reduce the layers of packaging and reduce material resources.

Sophie is made of an elastomer, and is therefore flexible. Charlotta reimagined the placement of the toy in a “warped state”—it’s giraffe neck bent down in its box. Upon opening, the neck out spring back, returning to its original shape. This created an opportunity to significantly minimize Sophie’s packaging.

Since the product is targeted at giftgivers, Charlotta’s design provides Vulli with an opportunity to both reduce materials, increase nesting and shipping efficiencies, and provide the user with a dramatic “pop up!” delightable when the recipient opens the package. Using 1/6th the amount of packaging, the re-imagined packaging of Sophie complements the existing Vulli offerings, and creates a new consumer experience whilst minimizing its environmental footprint.

1ST YEAR PROJECT

LIFECYCLE AND FLOWS WITH REBECCA SILVER AND JEN VAN DER MEER

Critter Bitters: Insect-Based Cocktails

by Julia Plevin and Lucy Knops Critter Bitters are handcrafted cocktail bitters made with toasted crickets. There are four flavors in the product line: vanilla cricket, cacao cricket, toasted almond cricket, and for the most adventurous -- pure cricket. Each flavor yields a unique, multifaceted taste profile and can be readily mixed into cocktails or consumed with soda water. The corresponding coasters serve to elevate bitters from a hidden cocktail ingredient to the piece de resistance.

The The UN FAO 2013 Report titled “Edible Insects: Future Prospects for Food and Feed Security” inspired designers Lucy Knops and Julia Plevin to find a way to introduce insects to American culture.

The report cited a need to overcome “the disgust factor” in order for western society to willingly consume insects. With the insight that distillation, fermentation, and mixology are among the most creative industries and people are naturally more open-minded and experimental when they are drinking, it seemed most natural to normalize entomophagy through alcohol.

From scorpion vodka to cochineal made from beetles to mezcal with a worm, there is a precedent for insects in alcohol. Critter Bitters is a nod to an age-old tradition and a leap into the future.

2ND YEAR PROJECT

DESIGN FOR SUSTAINABILITY AND RESILIENCE WITH KATHLEEN BAKEWELL AND CLAIRE HARTTEN

Desert to Dessert: Eating Honey Ants

by Berk Ilhan & Jung Soo Park Although the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations proposes insect consumption as our future sustainable source of nutrients, the biggest challenge of insect consumption by those not accustomed is overcoming the “yuck factor.” Class of 2015 students Berk Ilhan and Jung Soo Park approached the challenge from a visual and experiential lens—exploring through form and ritual the ennobling of insects as a unique food offering.

The designers chose the honey ant—an ant that stores large amounts of sweet honeydew and nectar in its elastic abdomen (later fed to nest mates).

Calling their series of offerings “Desert to Dessert,” the work serves as a gateway for western cultures by introducing the delicate and precious honey ant through an event called “Dessert of the Night,” and then through an effort to feature the dessert in high-end restaurants. The designers’ goal was to change the perception of insects from being seen as dirty creatures to something desirable—even noble.

In order to emphasize the preciousness of the honey ant and to create initial and media-genic demand, the designers imagine introducing a “new dessert” at a United Nations special event, inviting diplomats and celebrities to taste these delicate, jewel-like insects in front of the world press.

After creating awareness, press and intrigue, the next step of the project is to provide honey ants to gourmet restaurants to be featured on their menu. Here, Berk and Jung designed a pedestal for presenting the dessert. Elevating the honey ant (which can be as large as a grape) from the surface of the table, the design creates new, delicate rituals at the end of a meal.

2ND YEAR PROJECT

DESIGN FOR SUSTAINABILITY AND RESILIENCE WITH KATHLEEN BAKEWELL AND CLAIRE HARTTEN

MINE Condoms: Designed And Branded For Women

by Rona Binay, Willy Chan, Mansi Gupta, and Emi Yasaka As part of the Design for Social Value course and in collaboration with the CDC (Centers for Disease Control), Rona Binay, Willy Chan, Mansi Gupta, and Emi Yasaka worked on addressing behaviors that support gender inequities in sexual health. Sexual behaviors can be inhibited by stigma and double standards, and design can be used as a tool aimed to create a positive shift in women’s sexual health.

Through a primary survey of 207 respondents, insights showed that women are largely embarrassed to purchase condoms, and that some women judge other women who carry condoms to be promiscuous. The group chose to target condom packaging, which is either typically generic or overtly targeted toward men. How might they make a less embarrassing condom purchasing experience for women?

The work resulted in “Mine”—condoms you don’t want to hide. Mine attempted to create a line of products that is gender-neutral, attempting to dilute gender stereotypes and shift the imagery of current condoms in the market. Mine products are packaged in a way that women feel comfortable to have them out on their bedside table, or in their grocery bags. The packaging is refillable, and reminds women to stock up on supply when out. Mine is sold in stores, but also through online channels where a subscription model and a gifting experience are offered. Further, Mine would be available at other e­-commerce channels popular with women such as Groupon, Soap.com, and Fab.com.

Additionally, Mine provides additional product pairings, such as selling condoms and tampons together, providing a combined caddy for the bathroom home and further decreasing the embarrassment of instore purchasing. As an implementation strategy to the CDC, the group suggested partnering with gynecologies around the major cities to gather initial product feedback. As a next step, mine could partner with existing condom and feminine hygiene companies to bring the product to mainstream markets.

1ST YEAR PROJECT

DESIGN FOR SOCIAL VALUE WITH KYLE FULLENWIDER

Unintended Consequences

by Vidhi Goel

Unintended Consequences is a video created by class of 2015 student Vidhi Goel, as a response to the latest United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization proposal promoting Entamophagy—the act of eating insects. As a solution to solving the challenges of hunger and food security, the strategy seems profound and convincing, but may not be the best answer to a complex system like food.

Food and food culture are unquestionably tied directly to our environment and ecological balance; our food system impacts both at a personal as well as global level. But the food industry has grown to bear little resemblance with natural food or ways of eating, and the amount of waste generated in food production and distribution is everincreasing.

Introducing a new species of protein—insects—as replacement for other sources may prove to be an unwise step. In this video, Vidhi illustrates potential futures and impacts by comparing the introduction of insects with the historical reality of the introduction of shrimp to western cultures. Vidhi writes, “Designers need to have a more deliberate and responsible role in this world. They create products, change the way things work and alter behaviors— but all of these can have vast implications. This project aims to bring thoughtfulness and contemplation into our solutions. It talks about precedent and learning from our previous actions. Designers need to listen to history as much as talking about the future.”

2ND YEAR PROJECT

DESIGN FOR SUSTAINABILITY AND RESILIENCE WITH KATHLEEN BAKEWELL AND CLAIRE HARTTEN

Transforming Chandelier

by Jung Soo Park

Designer Jung Soo Park’s first Kinetic Movement Study for his Transforming Chandelier is a wall-hanging sculpture.

Taking the vernacular of a traditional chandelier, Jung flattening the structure to be “just recognizable of its shape.” By exposing the mechanical geared parts for kinetic movement—driven by a small motor—”the overall design portrays a kind of dystopian luxury,” comments Jung.

The contours of chandelier are controlled by six arms, propelling the shapes to move up and down as the gears spin the arms. Jung used Solidworks CAD software to choreograph the structure and simulate its motion; the size and positioning of the gears were modeled in computer in order to have the ability to modify the structure and it shape as the design progressed, changing the form to preclude pieces running into each other throughout their motion.

After the design was modeled, digital fabrication tools were used in its construction. All of the acrylic pieces were created flat using a laser cutter and were stacked to create elements such rails and stoppers in the structure to hold them all together.

The entire process was photographed and published on Instructables.com so that anyone who’s interested in making the project has access to it. A large part of the learning, Jung adds that “by sharing the work process and the digital files that were created in the process, people can become involved in the project and help advise its next steps.”

2ND YEAR PROJECT

MAKING STUDIO WITH BECKY STERN

Running Errands: Reshaping Americans While They Shop

by Lucy Knops, Brandon Washington and Jung Soo Park Running Errands is a speculative intervention designed to activate, educate and motivate Americans to increase physical activity during their weekly shopping trips. More than 35 percent of adults and 17 percent of children in America are obese (Source: CDC.gov). 90 percent of Americans live within 15 miles of a Walmart and more than 100 million Americans shop in Walmart every week (Source: Walmart.com). This intervention hopes to reach those millions of Americans through a campaign for Walmart called “Stay Fit.” The two core components of the Stay Fit initiative are the physical “Burn + Earn” Shopping Carts, and the Stay Fit digital platform. Users of the system carry a “Burn + Earn” Membership Card containing the shopper’s profiles and activities on the platform. The carts feature an interactive touch screen centered on the handle of the cart that shoppers log into by tapping their card on the built-in reader. The carts track the calories burned by the user during each shopping trip, and customers are rewarded with discount points for healthier food options. By learning about shoppers over time—logging their trips and reconciling them against their purchase profiles—the software provides personalized tips, and points them (literally) to discounted healthy options. Additionally— analogous to a Nike+ FuelBand—the system tracks their miles walked and calories burned over time so that shoppers can track their continued progress at home via a web portal or mobile App. Unique to this system is that the carts provide “guided journeys” through the store, moving shoppers along prescribed paths that increase their calories burned, and direct them toward discounted Great for You items—a labeling system for healthier options launched by Walmart in 2012. As customers travel through the store, the touchscreen on the cart will ping shoppers when they are about to pass these discounted healthy options, offering more detailed information and suggested recipes.

2ND YEAR PROJECT

INTERVENTION INTERACTION WITH SIGI MOESLINGER AND MASAMICHI UDAGAWA

Loop: Haptic Directional Arm Band

by Kathryn McElroy and Joseph Weissgold Loop is a directional haptic feedback accessory. The device and system emerged out of a challenging brief to design a “branded consumer product” that would help in the context of a protest.

The opportunity that Joseph and Kathryn identified was that demonstrators often go into a protest with the presumption that it will be peaceful and non-violent, but given the provocative nature that defines demonstrations, violence can often ensue. In addition, Kathryn and Joseph argue that “one of the strategies for public protesting is that strength is evidenced by the participants’ ability to ‘stay in formation’—a kind of ‘you can’t take us all’ mentality.” And inspired by the motions of schools of fish and bird flocking patterns, the designers saw a parallel in the animal kingdom—a kind of “you can’t catch us all.” Here was an opportunity to use technology to address the challenge of protesters staying together when a demonstration gets disturbed; where forces try to “break up” the event.

Since humans don’t have the kind of subtle instinct that allows them to move in spontaneous unison, Kathryn and Joseph designed a productservice pairing that that would provide just such a capability: a soft, close-fitting armband that provides haptic feedback to the user, plus a smartphone app that geo-locates the user and affiliated users immediately around around them.

“Loop,” at its brand essence, offers users a kind of “directional animal instinct” through the use of technology, while allowing the engagement with that technology to happen without the use of screens. Comment the designers, “Loop leverages technology to allows users to be fully present where they are.” Perhaps that’s the best technology of all.

1ST YEAR PROJECT

BRAND, PRODUCT & EXPERIENCE WITH RINAT ARUH & JOHAN LIDEN

Canary: Online Dating Platform

by Gaïa Orain, Matthew Barber, Charlotta Hellichius and Clay Kippen Several studies point to a potential relationship between the rise in new sexually transmitted infection (STI) cases in North America over the last decade and the increased popularity of online dating over the same time period. While it is difficult to draw a concrete connection between the two, the bottom line remains that people use the internet to meet new sexual partners, people are having more sexual partners in their lifetime, and new STI cases continue to escalate.

Canary, an app-less subscription service designed to compliment the online dating landscape, is inspired by subscription services such as weather site Poncho. Canary sends subscribers “prompts” that nudge them with upbeat and friendly messages to help them establish positive sexual health routines.

At sign-up, Canary asks a series of simple questions to help create a dater profile for its users, prepping the platform to send them relevant information tailored towards their dating lifestyle. Users can then choose to receive their prompts either via SMS or email. Through this passive, yet convenient, delivery of information to its subscribers, Canary does not need to be opened or consulted in order to deliver these prompts—ideal for the busy online dater.

1ST YEAR PROJECT

DESIGN FOR SOCIAL VALUE WITH KYLA FULLENWIDER

BlackBox: Design For Protest

by Charlotta Hellichius and Matthew Barber BlackBox is a product and platform that scrapes, records and saves information sent and received from your smartphone in situations where you may either be at risk of losing your device or having it taken away. It system has two components: the “black” box and its companion, the “white” box. The black box is a portable digital storage unit worn as inconspicuous jewelry on your body. It collects all digital data transmission from your device and transmits it to the white box for storage when they’re reunited. The black box is reset after this interaction and is ready to record the details of your next outing. BlackBox is managed by an app that allows you to customize exactly what information is stored—from geo-location to photographs, from tweets to Facebook updates.

Protesting is increasingly becoming a social exhibit of deep personal and collective belief. The rise and wide adoption of social media provides a powerful catalyst for change, and creates new opportunities for technology and design to take positive roles. When governments, police, and military groups censor their communities, protesters’ stories may become the only authentic record of what transpired.

BlackBox ensures their preservation.

Designed to fit inconspicuously into one’s wardrobe, BlackBox functions as a wearable, digital capture and storage device. It has a WhiteBox counterpart stationed at home or work where it functions as a receptor of all digital information and as a permanent storage device.

1ST YEAR PROJECT

BRAND, PRODUCT & EXPERIENCE WITH RINAT ARUH & JOHAN LIDEN

Pix: Design for Protest

by Rona Binay and Willy Chan

Pix is a mini wireless video camera that allows for livestreaming of protest events. It provides the tools for citizen journalism and documents media for use over social networks. The front of the device features peel-able stickers of different textures and patterns, allowing the camera to camouflage itself in multiple environments. The back of the unit has layers of adhesive strips so that Pix can be reused multiple times. Unlike handheld, conspicuous handheld video cameras that demand one’s attention, “planting” the Pix device on a nearby vertical surface provides a kind of dependable, anonymous witness to events.

Prior to the start of the project, Binay spent weeks in Turkey amidst the recent protests, and saw first-hand the powerful role of social media in documenting and disseminating live events. Smart phones and frictionless platforms turn participants in citizen journalists, but these devices are often confiscated by the police. (Further, when fleeing from police, hand-holding a phone is not practical.)

Pix is a wireless camera that provides a live video feed video to a nearby paired computer with built-in in Wi-Fi, micro usb charging port, 8-hour battery life, and 720HD pixel quality lens. When there is no nearby computer, the device records to 4GBs of internal memory. Echoing the internet meme, the official motto of the Pix brand is “Pix or it didn’t happen.”

1ST YEAR PROJECT

BRAND, PRODUCT & EXPERIENCE WITH RINAT ARUH & JOHAN LIDEN

Able: Design For Protest

by Samantha Moore

Able is a suite of products that affords you the ability to display printed matter in the urban environment. Inspired by simple mechanisms such as paperclips and clothespins, Able turns the urban environment into a land of opportunity where poles, crevasses and brick ledges become the scaffolding for the display of two dimensional matter.

A protestor’s #1 resource is the environment around them, and a message that is not seen is a message that may not be heard. With the majority of public protests taking place in urban settings, signs are often lost in a sea of visuals, and the movement of protestors precludes the ability to “brand” environments with lasting visual messages. Moore decided to create a set of tools that allow protestors to take advantage of the environment around them and to display their messages in lasting, dependable ways.

Able is suite of product affordances, taking various forms and used in myriad contexts. Hook, Clip, Bridge, Tie, Wedge and Lasso are each named to express their function, and together they are built to last, yet “priced to leave behind.”

Sold at retailers such as Home Depot and Target, the products come in canvas bags that can be worn on the belt for quick and convenient deployment.

1ST YEAR PROJECT

BRAND, PRODUCT & EXPERIENCE WITH RINAT ARUH & JOHAN LIDEN

Totally Hacked Possibility Pack

by Zena Verda Pesta and Clay Kippen The Totally Hacked Possibility Pack is a kit of modular toys that facilitate open-ended play for kids. Designed by Zena Verda Pesta and Clay Kippen, the product stands in protest of conventional toys that prescribe their use and limit the opportunities for free exploration, and as such promotes independent and creative thinking from a young age. The brand embodies a spirited, inquisitive, and honest essence— one that adapts to the needs of open-ended play.

When conducting research and surveying toy stores, the designers were overwhelmed by the prescriptive nature of the majority of toys. These types of products—especially dress-up kits and role playing games—often come with premade worlds replete with fixed conventions of behavior. The Possibility Pack, as an alternative, provides a platform of interchangeable components, purpose-built for kids to use in myriad ways.

To create a broad palette of materials, textures, and ergonomics, the kit contains natural materials such as wood, wool, and rope, along with synthetic materials such as Velcro, Spandex, and brass. Parts and pieces can be combined and explored in infinite ways, and children can invent both practical and fantastical uses for the elements and constructions.

1ST YEAR PROJECT

BRAND, PRODUCT & EXPERIENCE WITH RINAT ARUH & JOHAN LIDEN

B.Super Utility Belt

by Damon Ahola and Richard Clarkson B. Super imagines a world where participants can feel “equipped” for speaking out. Taking the form of a tongue-incheek utility belt, the product provides of a variety of tools that “allow you to hope for the best, yet be equipped for the worst.” Designers Damon Ahola and Richard Clarkson became intrigued with the trope of the iconic superhero, along with the personality and styling elements of street culture and the underground world of skateboarding.

Each of the B. Super system elements can aid the protester with a specific task; some serious, others ironic. The respirator mask “Breath,” for example, helps protesters survive airborne toxins, while “Relieve”—a lemon juice dispenser—is used to allay the sting of pepper spray in the eyes. To elude authorities, “disguise” is a fake mustache kit at the ready, while “Hide” provides a larger mask to protect the protester’s identity. “Declare” provides a pull-out marker board for ad hoc signage, and “Repair”—a duct tape dispenser—rounds the lineup for all manner of jerry-rigging.

For product packaging, Ahola and Clarkson designed a set of premium brown paper bags featuring large graphic icons and minimal text. A strip of color at the bottom of each bag indicates the color of the product within, and a freestanding point of sale display presents the product line as a serious yet playful brand. The B. Super product line is targeted at fashion-forward shops such as Opening Ceremony in New York City, as well as in premium skateboard shops like Homage Brooklyn.

1ST YEAR PROJECT

BRAND, PRODUCT & EXPERIENCE WITH RINAT ARUH & JOHAN LIDEN

KOPI Portable Silkscreening Kit

by Emi Yasaka and Gaïa Orain Kopi is a portable silkscreening kit for users who want to artfully express themselves on the go, allowing for individual expression while providing the assets needed to produce a unified visual language. Unlike most silkscreening kits (which are designed for arts and crafts applications), Kopi compacts the product and streamlines the experience so it can be taken anywhere. While the physical product helps people communicate their message quickly and repeatedly in real space, the product is supported by an online community—the Kopi Project—where Kopiests can share and learn the limitless potential of their toolbox.

Kopi was initially inspired by the cultural impact of the art of protest. The art of protest is located in the aesthetics in the orchestration of a social movement, and also found in the visual culture produced to promote a message and create awareness. Specifically, Kopi looks at that the successful impact of the 2012 Quebec student protest—also known as the Maple Spring. The Maple spring was most notable in Montreal, a city of the arts. The movement developed an aesthetic, a visual language and ultimately a brand with the popularization of the red square and its supporting visual assets. This simple, yet striking branding facilitated the delivery of the message on a large scale. Further, this refined aesthetic reached a broader demographic than those directly implicated in the movement.

For the novice, silkscreening can be challenging if the user does not have access to the tools or the space required for traditional methods. The Kopi kit contains the following items: A slim exposure unit that doubles as a lighting table, a featherlight silkscreen, a sturdy work surface, a kit of pigments, letter sets and stencils, and additional tools and substrates designed to fit perfectly with the system.

1ST YEAR PROJECT

BRAND, PRODUCT & EXPERIENCE WITH RINAT ARUH & JOHAN LIDEN

TRMTAB

by Mansi Gupta and Cassandra Michel TRMTAB is a bracelet system that helps you and a friend make and maintain a pact for positive change. Designed by Mansi Gupta and Cassandra Michel, the product attempts to address the “loss of momentum” frequent in post-protest scenarios. Employing a buddy system, each upcycled leather bracelet comes as a pair, joining its two wearers in a kind of social action pact. On each bracelet is a series of six holes, allowing for six different pacts to be made. The stud that stands for each pact serves as a reminder for both wearers. For broader social support, TRMTAB also provides an online platform where stories, pacts and inspirations can be shared.

Throughout their research, the designers were inspired by the notion that small changes, collectively, can lead to larger impacts. Specifically, they turned to designer, architect, systems theorist, and futurist, Buckminster Fuller, who in a 1972 interview for Playboy magazine talked about the importance of the individual to make change. In the interview he made the analogy that the individual is like a trimtab—a tiny rudder on a ship—which can change the direction of a large ship with just a tiny amount of pressure applied. Fuller believed that a people could be trimtabs, and famously said, “Call me trimtab.” Henceforth the name of the bracelet system seemed apt: TRMTAB. The bracelets, made from upcycled leather factory waste, and are packaged on 100% post-consumer cardboard. For point of sale, the designers identified Madewell as an ideal retail store for the product, and, recognizing a growing online marketplace for sustainable, purposeful products, proposed Zadie.com and Tom’s new marketplace for online purchase.

1ST YEAR PROJECT

BRAND, PRODUCT & EXPERIENCE WITH RINAT ARUH & JOHAN LIDEN

SVA Works With the Camden Coalition of Healthcare Providers The healthcare industry is one of the country’s largest and fastestgrowing industries. Recent reform with the introduction of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has been one of the most hotly contested and polarizing pieces of legislation in the past decade. ACA aims to transform the cost, distribution, and delivery of healthcare services with the overarching goal of reducing cost and increasing access to care for millions of uninsured Americans. How, to whom, and at what cost healthcare is delivered is one of the most explicit ways that politics influences the design of complex systems. We aimed to explore all of these issues in our workshop with the students.

The workshop was designed over the course of three days starting with a full-day observation and immersion session in Camden. After a few preparation meetings in New York, all of us crammed into one 15 passenger van at 6am and headed for New Jersey. After a quick 2 hour drive to Camden, the students jumped into the morning routine as if they were part of CCHP’s staff.

Though our process was collaborative, much of the time was spent with the three groups working to design interventions at specific points in the system. Organically, each group addressed a different point in the system, but each of the solutions was directly related to the other interventions. After the two-day workshop, the students had three, well-conceived concepts centered around 1) mapping the patients social network 2) building community through group care and networks and 3) transportation services that utilize graduates. Each concept was thought of from the perspective of multiple users: the patients, CCHP, and the system itself.

The students presented their interventions to four CCHP staff members in New York on February 4, 2014. When the students presented the cluttered and complex system map that charted the journey for a patient in the healthcare system in Camden, CCHP members gasped.

1ST YEAR PROJECT

DESIGN AND POLITICS WITH NATALIE BALTHROP AND MANUEL TOSCANO

Energy Harvester

by Damon Ahola

In-depth research around physics, electricity and batteries led Damon to a technical paper entitled, “Movers and Shakers: Kinetic Energy Harvesting for the Internet of Things.” The paper was coauthored by John Kymissis, an electrical engineering professor at Columbia University (and who ultimately became Damon’s off-campus thesis advisor). In the paper, researchers placed accelerometers in the shirt pockets of 40 participants, each running for 20 seconds. The energy generated through the participants’ movement resulted in a median reading of 813 microwatts— or about 0.0000407 of a Joule. The study illustrated that it would take 16.5 minutes of jogging to power an LED for a disappointing 10 seconds only.

Using this rating as a benchmark, Damon decided to build a quick energy harvester for himself—but this time through electromagnetism—attaching components of a shake flashlight to the sides of his running shoes. He was able to produce approximately 0.05 of a Joule through his movement.

Here, Damon calculated that he would have to walk almost 200 miles in order to charge his mobile phone, and a lengthy 3,100 miles to fully charge his laptop battery. Balancing the fact that the energy volumes generated from human movement with current technology are quite dismal, Damon took inspiration from a provocation during his interview with Cameron Tonkinwise, Director of Design Studies at Carnegie Mellon. Tonkinwise stated, “Little bits add up to a lot.” Using this notion as a springboard, Damon committed himself to creating a system that would leverage the power of numbers: Looking at the opportunity on a macro, global scale with billions of people harvesting power from constant movement and activity, he envisioned a product, platform, and system called “Harvest.”

1ST YEAR THESIS: HACKING THE ORCHESTRA OF LIFE A Movement for Capturing Ambient Energy THESIS

Energy Harvesting Stones and Watch

by Damon Ahola Damon began by investigating the small but growing landscape of existing energy harvesting products, both real and speculative. Through ideation drawings, four distinct areas began to emerge: tools, transportation, human movement, and animal movement. Damon investigated activities requiring micro movements—such as chewing gum, to macro movements—such as harvesting the massive power of a jet engine. (He even imagined a speculative New York City catch-and-release rat program, where rats with embedded, kinetic-powered Wi-Fi transmitters provide internet access to subway riders.)

He then took to observing and documenting human behaviors, and particularly the ways in which people move.

He designed a set of speculative energy stones, carried in pockets and backpacks, capturing and storing converted kinetic energy to internal batteries. After moving all day, users empty their pockets, placing the stones in a tray that then inductively charges their electronic devices. Looking at emerging trends around wearable technology, Damon designed a conceptual watch that harvests kinetic energy and stores it to a modular system of stacked removable batteries.

1ST YEAR THESIS: HACKING THE ORCHESTRA OF LIFE A Movement for Capturing Ambient Energy THESIS

Harvest

by Damon Ahola

Harvest transforms a user’s daily movement into quantifiable energy. Using an electromagnetic process, energy is stored to a micro rechargeable lithium-ion battery called a “pod,” which is embedded in footwear, apparel and bicycles. The energy is stored to the Harvest pod battery, and users can check their progress and metrics using the Harvest app. Harvest—supplying the energy harvesting technology—partners with footwear, apparel and bicycle companies such as Nike, Lululemon and Trek. Harvest users become members of the platform, uploading their energy by visiting “Harvest Hotspots” such as Nike and Lululemon stores, as well as Whole Foods, Starbucks and other likeminded, progressive organizations.

Harvest Hotspots utilize the existing infrastructure of the Square point-of-sale kiosk system, and the harvested energy is transferred and stored to a green energy bank.

Once enough energy is accumulated, a Renewable Energy Certificate is created. The certificate is then sold on the energy market, and the proceeds are donated to a set of philanthropic and charity organizations such as The American Red Cross and 1% for the Planet.

1ST YEAR THESIS: HACKING THE ORCHESTRA OF LIFE A Movement for Capturing Ambient Energy THESIS

Taxi Hack

by Damon Ahola

Damon found a number of other promising sources for energy harvesting—beyond shoes and clothing. Embracing a more experimental, hacking side of Harvest, product concepts and working prototypes fell under the brand of Harvest Lab. Here, he explored “moving objects” within the urban environment, reframing the rotating wheels of taxis as both a literal and figurative “vehicles for capture energy.”

Building a working prototype titled TaxiHack, Damon was able to receive a small charge to his cell phone battery by attaching the prototype energy harvester to a car wheel that traveled only six blocks. Here, the idea of “energy pirating” became very intriguing, where one can envision a world where Harvest users attach their pods to all manner of moving objects—school buses with regular routes, shopping carts with predictable nesting stations, revolving doors in public buildings—and then remove them at the end of the day when they’re all charged up.

1ST YEAR THESIS: HACKING THE ORCHESTRA OF LIFE A Movement for Capturing Ambient Energy THESIS

[Better]’

by Mansi Gupta

(BETTER)’ is a service that creates a story that factories will want to tell, by unveiling business opportunities in the factory’s existing system through experimentation, branding and storytelling.

(BETTER)’—the service—is a multi-tiered platform for improving production practices and increasing transparency in factories. It seeks to transform the stigma surrounding manufacturing that sees factory work as necessarily monotonous, devalued, and unsustainable. (BETTER)’ seeks to undertake this work on a number of levels—economic, systemic, practical and social.

On an economic level, (BETTER)’ helps the factory find a business opportunity that results from the adoption of better production methods.

Changing or introducing a new production method includes switching costs, and (BETTER)’ understands the importance of providing a way of financially supporting the changes through a new revenue stream.

(BETTER)’ is also cognizant of the fact that factories may not necessarily know how to market their new business opportunity or product, and therefore provides a marketplace to help them kickstart their product/new business venture.

On a systemic level, (BETTER)’ suggests changes and business opportunities to factories within their existing system through small, systemic interventions.

On a practical level, (BETTER)’ introduces the system intervention to the factory as an experiment. (BETTER)’ realizes that any change will require prototyping and iteration in order to be successful, and by framing the change as an “experiment,” (BETTER)’ creates room—and permission—for failure and learning.

1ST YEAR THESIS: BETTER

The Prejudices & Practices of Mass Production

THESIS

[Better]’ Labeling

by Mansi Gupta

Inspired by Shona Quinn of Eileen Fisher, Gupta defined sustainability as continuous incremental change and created (BETTER)’, a platform and ecosystem that spoke to factories, consumers, producers and brands. (BETTER)’ began as an accessible labeling and certification system for factories that were producing product using a ‘better’ method of production. It was an education platform for all stakeholders of the system. It also served as a crowd-voting and storytelling space - for factories to tell their stories, for for consumers to have a voice and support sustainable initiatives that they wanted to see come to life.

1ST YEAR THESIS: BETTER

The Prejudices & Practices of Mass Production

THESIS

Prachi

by Mansi Gupta

(BETTER)’ was prototyped with Prachi Leathers, a leather factory and tannery located in Kanpur, India. A visualization of the existing system at Prachi helped to identify a story that producers would want to hide, and (BETTER)’ transformed it into one that they would want to tell.

Identifying leather scraps—waste that resulted from the factory’s everyday production, and which usually ends up in landfill—as a story that they would want to hide, served as a fitting opportunity to prototype an initial small change.

Working with the factory’s sample team, (BETTER)’ brainstormed ways in which the scraps could be put to use. Because of their skill and leather craftsmanship, the sample team turned out to be an invaluable asset in this experiment. Through several mockups and prototypes with the sample team, (BETTER)’ and Prachi created a line of upcycled leather goods by stitching and weaving together the leather remnants. Worker voices told the story of Prachi and their process of creating a better product from waste material. Collaborating with her colleague Cassandra Michel, Gupta branded the experiment “TRMTAB.” (TRMTAB has recently launched on Kickstarter.)

1ST YEAR THESIS: BETTER

The Prejudices & Practices of Mass Production

THESIS

The Manufacter Movement

by Mansi Gupta

As a final piece, Gupta created a design performance response to the perception of factory workers. Through her year of work and research, she found the perception of factories to be predominantly negative—most people imagine factory workers to be faceless victims of monotony and sadness. But since Gupta grew up seeing factory work as proud, dignified work, she wanted to see if dance could contribute to a more constructive dialog. She created ‘The Manufacture Movement’ as a way to appreciate the dignity of factory work—in the ways that the workers appreciate it themselves.

Factories are a great first step, Gupta believes. The values of accelerating incremental change, transparency and appreciation can be applied not only to fashion, but to all kinds of manufacturing systems as well. Through these steps, Gupta envisions building conversations, experiments, brands and products that will continue and strive to be... even better.

1ST YEAR THESIS: BETTER

The Prejudices & Practices of Mass Production

THESIS

Concierge

by Kathryn McElroy

Concierge is a smart phone, tablet, and computer app that synchronizes Internet and notification controls across all of the user’s devices—streamlining the ability to control and limit all distractions. With current devices, it is conspicuously difficult to turn off notifications; users must manually turn off each and every individual app in the settings menu. Concierge solves this problem by providing the ability to disable all notifications at once, toggling notifications on and off in a global manner for predefined durations. “Providing focus during tasks saves time,” Kathryn argues, “and that time can then later be spent on more enjoyable endeavors. When you’re trying to get something done, Concierge lets users ‘focus on what’s important.’”

1ST YEAR THESIS: BETTER

The Prejudices & Practices of Mass Production

DESIGNING FOR SCREENS WITH BRENT ARNOLD

Cortex

by Kathryn McElroy

Cortex, is a speculative software intervention that pairs with off-the-shelf EEG-sensors, providing a way to control a user’s display monitor when undertaking tasks at work.

EEG sensors, worn on the head, detect electrical activity resulting from neurons firing inside the brain. (These sensors can detect and distinguish between many channels of brain waves.) An increased or decreased in specific activity can trigger events, and Cortex uses this input to prompt focus: When a user becomes distracted and begins to lose focus on their task at hand, the Cortex algorithm kicks in and slowly dims their computer screen. When the screen darkens, the user must focus her or his mind in order to brighten the screen and resume their work.

1ST YEAR THESIS: BETTER

The Prejudices & Practices of Mass Production

THESIS

Tempo

by Kathryn McElroy

The final experiment of the thesis was Tempo—a haptic pacing armband. Through small vibration motors that create gentle “pulses” onto the arm, Tempo creates a personal, user-determined rhythm for users to help them through their daily activities. Kathryn designed and created four working prototypes throughout the semester, testing each one with a new group of users to gain feedback and improve functionality.

Research revealed that when users were initially introduced to Tempo, there was a slight feeling of anxiety; “People equated the feeling to their phones vibrating,” reported Kathryn. “But after just a little bit of continued use, the sensation became soothing and relaxing. Each person who tried Tempo came up with a unique use for it in their life, including counting poses and breathing during yoga practice; regulating their pace when walking or running; using the device as a silent metronome for musicians; to help them fall asleep; to time tasks; or to breathe deeply and slow down when giving presentations.” Kathryn designed a smartphone app that lets users wirelessly adjust the pulsing rhythm and intensity of the device, along with a selection of rhythm pre-sets for specific activities such as exercise or relaxation.

1ST YEAR THESIS: PRESENCE

How to Use Digital Technology to Live a More Analog Life

THESIS

Juice Bar

by Kathryn McElroy

Kathryn explored the social ramifications of technologybased distraction through an experience design intervention called Juice Bar. Popular, organic solutions to social distraction have emerged recently—including the “cellphone basket” (where each person places their phone in a basket when entering a house for a party), or the “cellphone stack” (where members out to dinner lay their phones in a stack at the center of the table; the first person who reaches for their phone pays for dinner!)

Instead of treating the smartphone as the villain in such social situations, Kathryn explored how to design a delightful experience for both cellphone and owner in an energizing pop-up social hour. Juice Bar invited students from three graduate programs to take a much-needed break to recharge during their finals week. The event energized the students through conversations and fresh vegetable juices, while charging their phones through an inductive charging lounge bar. The smartphones were occupied during the event (with a beautiful view of wheatgrass); the humans were liberated to engage with one another, technology-free.

1ST YEAR THESIS: PRESENCE

How to Use Digital Technology to Live a More Analog Life

DESIGN DELIGHT WITH EMILIE BALTZ

Lucid Pinhole Camera

by Clay Kippen

Reflecting on the trial-and-error process he learned in the darkroom, Clay turned to prototyping cameras as a means of exploring his thesis project.

He started to build both film and digital devices by pulling from tutorials at Instructables.com, as well as camera calculators from Stanford University and Mr. Pinhole. Prototyping cameras was an exercise in building tacit knowledge; Clay went out and tested his models, finding that certain aspects of his designs yielded better results than others, depending on a variety of factors. Parameters such as the diameter of the lens, the distance from the lens to the sensor plane, and the shape of the camera have a direct effect on the images that a camera can capture.

Clay soon realized that this design process involved more than exploring photography, but rather required him to delve into the physics, chemistry, and mechanics of camera design. With subsequent iterations of his first 35mm film camera, the models yielded more consistent results. Over the period of the spring semester, this exploration resulted in a series of 3D-printed pinhole cameras.

A pinhole camera is a light-tight box with a small opening (lens). When light is reflected off of a subject in the front of the camera, the light travels in a straight line through the pinhole until it hits the film/sensor plane on the opposite side. If the pinhole is the correct distance away from the film/sensor plane, then each ray of light hits its own spot, creating a recognizable image. Sometimes, however, a pinhole photograph will appear fuzzy or blurry. This occurs because the light rays overlap each other as they strike the back of the camera, indicating that the lens is not at the optimum distance from the sensor. As the light is passes through the pinhole, it continues in a straight line, resulting in an image that appears upside down. This phenomenon occurs in all lens-based optics, including our eyes. (When we see, it is our brain that “flips� the image back right side-up for us so that we can feel properly oriented.

1ST YEAR THESIS: LUCID

Seeing as a Tool for Learning

THESIS I WITH ALLAN CHOCHINOV AND ANDREW SCHLOSS

Lucid Modeler

by Clay Kippen

Clay felt that the best way to do this was to merge the old magic of analog photographic apparatuses with the new magic of digital devices. The result was the Lucid Modeler.

The Lucid Modeler is a platform designed to teach the inner workings of cameras and images through a browser-based reactive 3D modeling tool, where everything is connected via parametric relationships. The Lucid Modeler is simple to use: you upload a photograph—or choose a photograph from a series that is available on the site—and then software generates a 3D model of the camera that would have produced that photograph. On the right side of the screen is the camera model, and on the left side is the image.

Underneath both the camera and the photograph are sets of sliders. When you adjust one parameter in the interface, you see how it directly affects everything else—thus demonstrating specific relationships that camera design and creative effects in photography have with one another.

1ST YEAR THESIS: LUCID

Seeing as a Tool for Learning

DESIGNING FOR SCREENS WITH BRENT ARNOLD

ClayObscura

by Clay Kippen

Continuing the pursuit around the potential of gathering community through the art of photography, Clay began building large-scale versions of the pinhole camera for a public experience. These performative objects became a vehicle to teach people about how cameras work in true physical space. He started with the idea of a public photo booth, incorporating lens-less pinhole cameras. He then built a series of prototypes, where light would enter through the pinhole in the front of the camera, and users could place their mobile phones to capture the resulting image projected on a screen at the back. The High Line Park was chosen as the sight for the public experience; (Instagram reports that the High Line was one of the most photographed locations in the world in 2013). The final Prototype was titled #ClayObscura, and was documented on video, and the #ClayObscura hashtag provided a “real life Instagram filter� for people to experience in physical space.

1ST YEAR THESIS: LUCID

Seeing as a Tool for Learning

DESIGN DELIGHT WITH EMILIE BALTZ

Lucid Platform

by Clay Kippen

As a final gesture of the thesis work, Clay proposed Lucid as a broader platform for learning. Since the Lucid Modeler proved that much can be learned and appreciated when we move from physical to digital and then back to physical again, Clay wondered what else, besides photography, could be taught through this transposition; through the re-physicalization of phenomena. Inspired by the work of other artists experimenting in this, space such as Amanda Ghassaei (who wrote an algorithm translates digital music files into 3D-printed records), Clay proposes that Lucid could be tailored to teach many subjects beyond that of photography. Perhaps the Lucid platform could be used as a visual tool to understand physics, or chemistry, or sustainability, or civics? Since the purpose and literal definition of Lucid are “to make clear,� the possibilities for the platform seem limitless.

1ST YEAR THESIS: LUCID

Seeing as a Tool for Learning

THESIS

Superhero Gym

by Richard Clarkson

In order to further explore the concept of character strengths, Richard looked towards exhibition design, proposing a night of experiential art/ design as the final offering for his thesis work. The event was to have seven Superpower simulations for participants to work their way through—in the context of a Superhero Gym. Each simulation aimed to reveal a different character strength within each individual, where participants brought their own unique set of skills, interpretations and values to the experience as a whole, and where their journey through the simulations was uniquely tailored. For instance, the flight simulator emphasized a feeling of curiosity; of truly wondering what it would be like to explore the world from the skies. It allowed people a glimpse at the feeling of flight that inspires the curiosity character strength. The aspect that made the experience unique was the ‘second level’ of the simulations, which were activated when the character strength reflected in the simulation aligned with the character strength the participant most associated with in the beginning of the journey.

On Friday 25th April 2014 guests, general public and participants were guided through the very first Super performance, with actors playing roles drawn from Joseph Campbell’s Heroes Journey structure. The final outcome and takeaway from the performance was a membership application packet for the ‘Superhero Gym’ they had just toured. This packet included information about the specific power that had been revealed to them through the experience.

In the end, the event helped participants realize their own true potential; that they possessed unique superpowers that could aid them in challenging life’s larger obstacles, and that they could use the understanding of their own power to steer towards the moments in life that make it so incredible to be alive.

1ST YEAR THESIS: SUPER. Moments of Remarkable

DESIGN DELIGHT WITH EMILIE BALTZ

Superpower Surveys

by Richard Clarkson

Early research on Superpowers was comprised of conducting surveys of a range of participants in order to find out what they considered to be their superpower, their superhero, and their supervillain. These conversations were invaluable in identifying this thinking space—where people could have conversations about very intimate aspects of their lives without feeling vulnerable. A key insight into the topic came from a conversation with design thinker John Thackara, who encouraged Richard to split the terms ‘Super’ and ‘Power’ into two separate definitions. Thakara helped to identify ‘Super’ as an extraordinary external experience, and ‘Power’ as internal latent strengths. These ideas developed into a collection of interactive objects based on a range of superhero poses, gestures and actions. These objects included a password activated lamp, a flight simulator, a color changing chair, an ‘Iron Man’ style light glove, and a power-pose activated bulb.

1ST YEAR THESIS: SUPER. Moments of Remarkable

THESIS I WITH ALLAN CHOCHINOV AND ANDREW SCHLOSS

Let it Out

by Samantha Moore

The insight that many don’t seek relief until their health is affected by stress inspired the Let it out Service. “Venting Machines,” located on the city streets and in subway stations, diagnose the user’s stress level and prescribe an object for providing relief. Taking this further and rethinking the prescription landscape, Samantha created the overthe-counter line, Let it Out, available in leading drugstores such as Duane Reade. These accessible and inexpensive pill bottles are filled with objects that act as catalysts for crying, laughing or screaming—healthy ways of letting out stress. This exploration revealed that the world in which Samantha is most comfortable designing is one where reality is abstracted into the absurd. Investigating modalities in which to continue the work, Samantha landed on the medium of cartooning.

1ST YEAR THESIS: AROUND

Drawing out Relief and Engagement in the Urban Environment

THESIS I WITH ALLAN CHOCHINOV AND ANDREW SCHLOSS

Around Platform

by Samantha Moore

Inspired by Comics of Invention, created by Rube Goldberg, Dominic Wilcox and Steven M. Johnson, as well as Comics of Observation, created by Nathan Pyle and curated by Bob Mankoff of the New Yorker magazine, Samantha drew her own series of comics. Spanning the topics of commentary, invention, delight, escape, they referenced previous work by using New York as the setting for the narratives. Through this process, Samantha experienced the benefits of this medium—not only for the reader—but also for herself, taking the form of humor, accessibility and therapy. This realization prompted Moore to create a platform in which New Yorkers could draw their own ideas around what would make the city better, and let other readers view them.

Research revealed that only $1 in every $100 of government spending is backed by evidence that that money is being spent in a useful way. Samantha asked, “How might we connect New Yorkers with city government to create change that is wanted and needed in the city?” The platform, “Around,” allows New Yorkers to upload an idea for New York in the form of a drawing. 49.1% of New Yorkers do not speak English at home, and drawing is a way to connect this population through a universal language. Readers who are not comfortable drawing can still be a voice by clicking on the “Make it Real” button, voting on the ideas that they would like to see brought to life in the city. Crowdsourcing these ideas and opinions helps the the people of New York create for the people of New York, and once an idea gains traction, partnering organizations such as the Department of Transportation or the Department of Parks and Recreation can take the idea on and work to implement it in the city.

1ST YEAR THESIS: AROUND

Drawing out Relief and Engagement in the Urban Environment

DESIGNING FOR SCREENS WITH BRENT ARNOLD

C Train Installation

by Samantha Moore

Samantha created an interactive installation on the subway as another lens of the cartooning medium, addressing the frustration she heard many times about the ride. “When we are on the subway, we are detached from the city above,” she argued, and took this response as an opportunity to devise a plan to connect the subway ride below the city (the “subplot” of the city) with the world above (the “plot”) in the form of an immersive comic experience. The performance took place between 14th Street and 72nd Street on the C train—Samantha choosing this train because it’s the line The New York Times called “the least loved train in the subway system.” Celebrating the train by providing appreciation for the path that the C train actually takes, Moore, along with three associates, installed an oversized comic at the center of the car. As the train moved along its path, the comic was unrolled, and the buildings and personality of the street above was revealed. Passengers were charmed and intrigued with the experience, photographing the buildings and smiling as the comic was unwound.

Taking this project forward, Samantha imagines partnering with the MTA to create a living comic in the subway tunnels, the buildings above shown below as the train passes through the tunnels. In addition, she envisions the web platform implemented in different cities, such as Chicago and Los Angeles in the United States, and in London and Paris in Europe.

1ST YEAR THESIS: AROUND

Drawing out Relief and Engagement in the Urban Environment

DESIGN DELIGHT WITH EMILIE BALTZ

Third Place Fireplace

by Samantha Moore

Initial research led to examining relief in the form of escape, diagnosis and prescription. Inspired by Ray Oldenburg’s book The Great Good Place, Moore thought about the “third place,”—a place of refuge between home and work—and how this idea could apply to the on-the-go lifestyle of New Yorkers by creating a speculative portable room-scape that people can take with them.

1ST YEAR THESIS: AROUND

Drawing out Relief and Engagement in the Urban Environment

THESIS I WITH ALLAN CHOCHINOV AND ANDREW SCHLOSS

Huddle

by Emi Yasaka

Huddle, is an information and place-making station. The core concept is to promote the use of the lesser-known parks that exist near low-income neighborhoods, and to encourage residents to frequent these parks. Huddles are comprised of visually striking objects and public elements that influence the navigation and flow of the park—providing visual cues to initiate activities for visitors.

One example, a drum­like object with a 3D moiré pattern, engages users by creating a mesmerizing optical illusion when it is rolled. Site-specific and deliberately public, huddle elements are interactive and playful in nature, encouraging users to incorporate body movement without making them “feel” like their exercising.

1ST YEAR THESIS: IN THE RUNNING Human Mobility in a Sedentary World

THESIS I WITH ALLAN CHOCHINOV AND ANDREW SCHLOSS

Torch

by Emi Yasaka

Torch, was catalyzed by an interview with Tracy E. McMillan, past president of Team USA Arizona, and a co­f ounder of Adidas McMillan Elite. Taking the form of a mobile app, Torch is a collection of inspiring stories of local runners aimed at motivating people everywhere to run. Users enable location services on their device—or input their zip code—and the app pops up a selection of biographical stories of local athletes specific to that geographic location. After listening to a story, users can tap to try out that local athlete’s specific workout, or listen to more stories. The app has several social features aimed at creating an active social group that forms around an inspiring local athlete. From an historical perspective, Torch is a platform that delivers stories of lesser-known athletes—often-overlooked, or unheard through traditional media or the larger popular sports industry.

1ST YEAR THESIS: IN THE RUNNING Human Mobility in a Sedentary World

DESIGNING FOR SCREENS WITH BRENT ARNOLD

Pacer

by Emi Yasaka

Pacer, was inspired by her research and observation of the NYC dog community, and by the city’s unique geographic layout. Pacer is a dog running service that offers non-­d og owners the positive psychological and health benefits of dog ownership by providing them the chance to exercise with a dog—and receive payment for it! The service is useful for people who need extra motivation to get outside, and for those who are self-conscious, preferring to exercise by themselves.

Dogs, by nature, love to be active and outdoors, so they make for very faithful exercise partners. Pacer provides a personalized and enhanced dog exercising experience by allowing the dog owners to suggest where the dog runner takes the dog. The running route is trackable via RFID chips embedded in Pacer dog tags and check-in stations, and the platform addresses the trust factor through user profiles and reputation ratings.

Through the design of environments to activate space, mobile applications to build supportive communities, and lowering perceived barriers to exercise, Emi hopes to reimagine a more invigorated lifestyle for the general public and its less-advantaged populations. She believes in a pluralistic expression of design, and envisions a future where human mobility is more highly valued and celebrated through design.

1ST YEAR THESIS: IN THE RUNNING Human Mobility in a Sedentary World

THESIS

Lesson Design Workshop

by Joseph Weissgold

Joseph sought out the opportunities that teachers do have to collaborate, and so entered into a relationship with the Department of Education’s iZone (Innovation Zone).

The iZone hosts affinity group meetings for affiliated schools to share best practices around flipped-classrooms, coaching, socio-emotional skills, and many other subjects.

Attending these meetings, Joseph noticed that teachers were coming together to learn from each other, but when it came to actually planning, it was still largely a solo task. The exceptions he found to this were independently organized planning groups, predominantly involving teachers of technology or art. In any case, most schools were not providing teachers with the support they needed to successfully apply their professional development to their teaching.

To address this, Joseph organized a workshop, inviting teachers around Prospect Heights and Park Slope to plan lessons together using a design process at their local library—the Central Library at Grand Army Plaza. The workshop totaled three-hours and walked teachers through the method Joseph had developed for Lesson Design. Again, the challenge he faced concerned the balance of structure and freedom. “The feedback I got was that they really wanted more structure. I was reluctant to be too strict with the timing and the order of the things, but in that reluctance I made the workshop too open-ended to be highly productive,” he reflected. “It’s a balance; they wanted me to act as the teacher, but I guess I wanted to present an alternative model of ‘teacher’.”

1ST YEAR THESIS: THE TEACHER’S LOUNGE

THESIS

The Lounge

by Joseph Weissgold

Using the design strategies and skills he’d developed throughout his higher education, Joseph formulated his “lesson design” method,which he manifested in a variety of media, as a digital application, and a physical workbook.

He revised the method over the course of several months, conducting experiments with teachers and other educators.

“I knew that I didn’t want to tell teachers how to teach,” Joseph explained, “they know what works with their students better than I ever could.” So his goal was to provide them with a template that would be structured enough to relieve some of the anxiety of the many choices to be made, but open-ended enough that teachers could apply their specific knowledge and interests to the process.

This balance of “structure and freedom” would become a central theme in Joseph’s work.

1ST YEAR THESIS: THE TEACHER’S LOUNGE

THESIS

Last Words

by Matthew Barber

Barber introduced a conceptual platform called Last Words.

Last Words imagines a world where the delivering of a life-long secret, a last wish, an apology, or a confession can be as easy as writing a Facebook update—but, of course, with feedback that the sender will never know.

By investigating the permanence of such digital artifacts, as well as the blurriness of the consequences of these artifacts, Last Words poses the questions, “How can personal expression live on after death?” and “Does this expression ultimately add to or detract from the value of our lives?” And importantly—especially at this historical moment in technology-fueled social media—Last Words stands as a speculative provocation pointing to the challenges around online accountability. Ultimately, it asks us to consider the ethics of “dying in a digital age,” and what designed artifacts we are willing to live (and die) with.

1ST YEAR THESIS: THE END

THESIS I WITH ALLAN CHOCHINOV AND ANDREW SCHLOSS

BIG

by Matthew Barber

Barber introduces the idea of Big Yourself, a publishing platform that profiles your digital doppelgänger—as a character that parallels your life in the form of a passively written novel. The novelty is that this version of your self lives on after your passing, acknowledging to the permanence of digital records and the universal access to them. Big Yourself uses our personal data, and the digital breadcrumbs each of us leaves through our everyday activities, to draw an accurate and parallel life of our own.

Part simulacra and part recording, this concept speculates how our lives are defined through our personal curation, and then how one’s legacy is affected if personality is removed from the equation.

1ST YEAR THESIS: THE END

DESIGNING FOR SCREENS WITH BRENT ARNOLD

Finished

by Matthew Barber

Returning to the physical artifact, Barber reframed his thesis in the form of Finished. Finished is an event that ritualizes and celebrates the small fragments of life that accumulate to form a legacy. “What if we celebrated those moments that create a life, abstracted and ennobled ,and each on its own terms?” Barber asks. Here, a series of sealed token vessels carrying physical messages are passed on in a prescribed ritual—read alongside the destruction of the vessel at a point in the future.

Throughout this process, Barber prototyped and tested the validity of these concepts against the idea born from KüblerRoss’ writing—reframing death as growth. By investigating how the physical and digital artifacts we leave behind act as a final record of this growth, Matthew created a suite of objects that celebrate both the life of the deceased as well as the relationships affected by that life.

1ST YEAR THESIS: THE END

THESIS

Thinpoint

by Cassandra Michel

Thinpoint is a mobile app that encourages urban dwellers to go outside into nature and green spaces. The app provides users a way to pinpoint, archive, and share their thin points.

Because these unique places are made up of sights, sounds, smells, and textures, Thinpoint allows users to search for them via their senses. For example, they can search for the smell of eucalyptus, or the sounds of crickets. When arriving at a thinpoint, users can choose to “save the spot,� wherein their phone will sit in silence by turning off notifications.

It will also automatically capture a time-lapse of the view, along with other important data. Finally, users can choose to share the thinpoint or keep it a secret.

1ST YEAR THESIS: FIVE+

An Exploration of Mindful Experi- DESIGNING FOR SCREENS ence Through the Lens of Sense WITH BRENT ARNOLD

Meditative Group Dinner

by Cassandra Michel

Cassandra designed a sensorial and meditative group dinner.

She built a unique dinner table with ten embedded speakers, replaced the charcoal from the previous study with food spices, and asked guests to submit recorded stories of their memories. Dinner guests were blindfolded and asked to participate in a guided meditation on the sound, smell, textures, and color of the spices. They then sprinkled the spices on the table, and when the sounds of their memory played, the spices danced across the table creating a moment of surprise and delight.

1ST YEAR THESIS: FIVE+

An Exploration of Mindful Experi- DESIGN DELIGHT ence Through the Lens of Sense WITH EMILIE BALTZ

Five

by Cassandra Michel

Cassandra conducted further research into how senses shape our experiences and thus our neural networks and our brains. In “The Desert of the Real,� an essay by John Thackara, Cassandra discovered the work of philosopher and education reformer, KB Jinan, who proposes that there are two types of people: Text Cognites and Sense Cognites. Jinan believes that children are sense cognites and navigate the world primarily through the senses. This direct relationship with the senses allows for an authentic human experience. Jinan hypothesizes that adults need to reconnect with their own senses and use them as the primary way of understanding the world.

Rolling up this research, Cassandra conducted an experiment where she asked participants to meditate on their individual senses while molding clay, smelling teas, tasting fruit, and framing specific views.

1ST YEAR THESIS: FIVE+

An Exploration of Mindful Experience Through the Lens of Sense THESIS

Critters

by Cassandra Michel

Cassandra asked peers to mold their personal “critters” out of clay, to describe to her what the critter says, and to try to articulate what features and qualities the critter has. The goal of the exercise was to create a taxonomy of critters, but through this research it became apparent that the act of molding the critter had therapeutic elements in itself. The tie to art therapy, which uses art as a medium for therapy, became apparent in the process.

There seemed to be many benefits: The action of stretching and shaping the clay was stress relieving; the tactile nature of the clay and its malleable qualities served as a helpful focal point for attention; the creation of the critter served as a conduit for conversation about stress and negative thought patterns; and finally, the ability to give the intangible nature of thought a visible form served as a useful metaphor. This led to a fundamental insight for the thesis: there could be other methods for practicing meditation—beyond focusing on the breath. And the tactile nature of the exercise pointed to the notion of focusing on the senses as focal points.

1ST YEAR THESIS: FIVE+

An Exploration of Mindful Experience Through the Lens of Sense THESIS

Summit

by Charlotta Hellichius

Summit—a platform to help people combine the factors of cue, change, and reward—by strengthening their agency and developing habits within a social context. At its heart, Summit is a service that makes connections between the seemingly unattainable and the factual and actionable— helping participants follow through on their promises by connecting them to others who share the same goal.

Charlotta employed the metaphor of ‘mountain climbing’ and creation the of ‘an expedition’—harnessing a community to embark on a journey with shared responsibility, burden, and celebration around positive habit formation.

At sign-up, users onboard through an interface that asks them to define current behaviors, decide on a future, large-scale goal, and then suggests small, crowd-sourced, daily habits to lead them there. After choosing the small behavior, members are presented with a realistic timeframe and asked to define a strategy to integrate the new small thing into an existing routine. The Summit platform then presents crowd–sourced options for behavioral cues, linking new, tiny habits to an already existing one. And given the importance of social support in habit formation, members are then introduced to the Summit community where they can choose to create an expedition of their own, or to be grouped with peers that share the same goals and cues.

1ST YEAR THESIS: WHATEVEREST

Exploring the Landscape of Apathy and Agency

DESIGNING FOR SCREENS WITH BRENT ARNOLD

Cue. Change. Reward.

by Charlotta Hellichius

Charlotta set out to design a strategic framework in which people could take part—implementing a way for people to experience small successes in their everyday lives.

Research reveled that the most effective way of creating a strong sense of agency is through “mastery experiences,” where successes build a robust belief in one’s personal efficacy. These small successes are achieved through the implementation of tiny habits. Tiny habits are the minimal viable option of changing a behavior. By starting small and building up, people have a greater chance of implementing change. And design can help people succeed at these small changes by instantiating these self-efficacy principles into products and other design offerings. “If design can assist people with what to focus on and how, they’d be set up to ‘win’—increasing their sense of self-efficacy and empowering them to make additional, larger changes.

The spiral of negativity would transform into a pattern of positive reinforcement,” Charlotta argues.

Habits have three building blocks: Cue, indicating that you should do something; Change, the actual behavior; and Reward, the gratification of completion. Charlotta’s subsequent work explored these different aspects of habitual behavior, toggling between objects, embodiments, and curricula that each explored how to create rewards for positive habits that are not yet intrinsically engrained.

A framework was created that allowed for people working and living in close proximity to divide a goal, take ownership of a part, implement it as a personal habit, and collectively celebrate successes.

1ST YEAR THESIS: WHATEVEREST

Exploring the Landscape of Apathy and Agency

THESIS

Choice Overload

by Charlotta Hellichius

Charlotta’s initial explorations created a commentary on how this choice overload problem is reinforcing apathetic behavior. She asks, “When we can’t see the impact our behaviors have on the world, how do we know that they make a difference? This lack of feedback—from large to small—is reinforcing our apathetic behavior. There needs to be more opportunity to connect large-scale issues to small-scale changes. We can’t climb all these mountains at the same time, but if we can choose to be selectively engaged, we can start to connect the issue of overfishing, for example, with the tuna sandwich I had for lunch.

“The small decisions are the most powerful moments where agency can make an impact. You can’t change global warming, but you can change lunch, and you implementing a change is dependent on you thinking that you can succeed at it.” According to self-efficacy principles, this can be done by moving away from being motivated by external factors towards being driven by internal motivation.

Research suggests that this can be done by acknowledging choice overload as an issue in itself, and choosing not to choose everything. “We live in a world that makes us scattered and divergent multi-taskers, overwhelmed by choices in a constructed environment,” she adds. “Choosing what to choose can sometimes feel like a mountain of a task in itself!”

1ST YEAR THESIS: WHATEVEREST

Exploring the Landscape of Apathy and Agency

THESIS

Wildspotting

by Rona Binay

Wildspotting is a citizen-scientist mobile application which crowd-sources data around instances of urban wildlife in New York City. Users snap pictures of an urban animal they encounter, and upload them to the platform along with quantity and specific location (beyond geolocation data).

Information aggregated from multiple users and different locations reveals hotspots of different species in the city, and future visitors to the hotspots receive pop-up notifications to help them become more conscious of sitespecific urban wildlife and urban co-habition in general.

1ST YEAR THESIS: COEXIST

Mixing With Urban Wildlife

DESIGNING FOR SCREENS WITH BRENT ARNOLD

Trace

by Rona Binay

Trace is a series of drawing stations that physicalize “present continuous time” by creating traces of real-life movements within the participant’s surroundings. The experience centers around observing living beings in realtime, filtering through body movements and resulting as line drawings on a shared canvas. The initial prototyping event took place in McCarren Park in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

1ST YEAR THESIS: COEXIST

Mixing With Urban Wildlife

THESIS

Finch

by Rona Binay

Finch is based on research and testing of various ornithologists, scientists and engineers’ previous work.

Many birds are tetrachromats—meaning that they are able to see the color spectrum in ultra violent length, which humans are not capable of. (Indeed, German glass company Arnold Glas markets Ornilux, a bird-protection glass that has a patterned, UV reflecting coating, making it visible to the birds while remaining virtually transparent to the human eye.)

The finch pen is filled with an invisible ink with UV characteristics. Birds are able to see the UV traces drawn by the human even in daytime—humans are only able to see the ink under blacklight—cautioning them to the window’s existence and precluding collision.

1ST YEAR THESIS: COEXIST

Mixing With Urban Wildlife

DESIGNING FOR SCREENS WITH BRENT ARNOLD

Urban Birdbath

by Rona Binay

Urban Birdbath is designed to elevate a bird’s water source and bathing spot using existing street infrastructure such as street lamps and traffic light poles. The water for Urban Birdbath is provided by rain, and additionally by people who volunteer to fill them up (much as a country-dweller might habitually refill a bird feeder with seed.) The first prototype of Urban Birdbath was hacked with a Chipotle fast-food burrito bowl, including an instruction for anyone willing to participate. A second iteration employed a 3D-printed vessel which was more more sturdy and strong, and also dimensionally flexible to fit different diameters of poles and trees.

1ST YEAR THESIS: COEXIST

Mixing With Urban Wildlife

THESIS

State of the Art Project

by Zena Verda Pesta

The State of the Art Project consultancy was formed to work with local businesses and schools to create job apprenticeships. These businesses see the value in “onthe-job learning” and in preserving their methods; they also disperse the responsibility of learning into a larger community. State of the Art Project set it sights on building strategies which are sustainable and resilient. It aspires to help young people understand their own capacity and to reframe questions about their education.

Zena partnered with Zachary Golper, the owner and operator of the French artisanal bakery Bien Cuit in Brooklyn, NY. Zachary, who prides himself on using heirloom grains, is dedicated to learning-through-doing, and had previously tried to start an apprenticeship program without success.

State of the Art Project’s role was to investigate the failed pilot, and use the thesis research, connections, and support to help build a sustainable model. A pilot was designed to test assumptions about a sustainable model in preparation for launch. It was a way to communicate the mission and vision to the stakeholders with accessible maps and infographics, build a peer support network, and gather pertinent information in digestible bits. Leveraging system thinking, the thesis examines The Department of Education’s internship programs in New York City, and how Bien Cuit could take advantage of these programs. Recommendation included strategies to intervene in the system, using the existing infrastructure, and then strengthening it with available resources.

1ST YEAR THESIS: STATE OF THE ART PROJECT Transforming Local Businesses into Learning Laboratories

THESIS

Beam Camp Workshops

by Zena Verda Pesta

Zena was investigating interactions between adults and kids in the alternative learning landscape. Rapid prototyping utilized low-resolution, high-fidelity surveys, conversation cards, curriculum development, and workshops leveraging alternative teaching methods. Zena brought ideas to life at Beam Center, where she curated and developed workshops that focused on two-way learning between adults and kids.

She entertained conversations about business models and alternative value exchanges with practitioners participating in these workshops. Eventually, overlapping areas presented points of intervention—places that could be looked at more closely and further evaluated. Through these conversations, Zena met Andrew Field of Rockaway Taco. Andrew shared his community-building strategy of employing local teens in the Rockaways. Around the same time, John Thackara, author and design thinking, remarked that “the most memorable and celebrated thesis projects are nearly always in-depth explorations of a real-life example.”

1ST YEAR THESIS: STATE OF THE ART PROJECT Transforming Local Businesses into Learning Laboratories

THESIS

Alive Prototyping

by Willy Chan

Willy went through a series of speculative prototyping, developing objects that were inspired by his findings from various animal specialists’ work, such as Temple Grandin and Claire Hartten. These objects included the measuring of care on a farm through RFID tags attached to the ears of animals, improving lust and animal sexual behaviors through biostimulation (using a braided necklace for a female sheep from the wool taken from her deceased mate), and toys that measure the play behaviors in farm animals. These objects acted as conversation-starters to get farmers to see a speculative future, where these products might play a part in our farms.

1ST YEAR THESIS: ALIVE Comforting your food

THESIS

Alive App

by Willy Chan

Alive is a mobile app that allows users to read personal stories about these small-scale farms, pinpointing farmers geographically closest to them as well as locating products sold by these farmers in nearby stores. Stories on the app are categorized by topic, and users are also able to watch live feed and personal messages from the farmers about their various farming methods.

1ST YEAR THESIS: ALIVE Comforting your food

DESIGNING FOR SCREENS WITH BRENT ARNOLD

Small-Scale Farm Practices

by Willy Chan

Willy began to search for small-scale farms around the Tristate area that genuinely care about their animals and how they are treated. He developed relationships with farmers over the span of his thesis, where he was able to engage in conversations around the topic. The first farmer he spoke with is Michael Yezzi, founder and owner of Flying Pigs Farm, who raises rare and endangered species of pig—of which only 2000 exist on the planet. Michael is not certified organic because, as Willy reflects, “he truly cares for his livestock and gives antibiotics to them when they are sick—just as he would for his children.” He uses no growth hormones or synthetic feed. Another farmer that Willy developed a relationship with is Ronald Kipps, a bison and elk farmer on Elk Trails Ranch who’s been a farmer for over 30 years.

Willy started to question whether these small-scale farms— who medicate their animals when necessary—are actually treating their animals with more care and than other organic certified farms, coming to the conclusion that it is small farms like Michael’s and Ron’s that truly provide added value—though neither is “certified.” Willy offered, “Perhaps it’s these small-scale farm practices that should be highlighted in our food-buying practices.”

1ST YEAR THESIS: ALIVE Comforting your food

THESIS

REI Flash Pack 18 Life Cycle Analysis

by Emi Yasaka Emi Yasaka used Sustainable Minds software to asses a hydration pack called Flash Pack 18, made by REI. The product is designed principally to transport water and a few extra items while running, cycling, hiking, and skiing long distances. REI is a company built by a group of 23 mountain climbing buddies, which is now the nation’s largest consumer cooperative. REI emphasizes passion and outdoor education; environmental responsibility and stewardship are also integrated into their core values.

Lifecycle analysis on REI’s Flash Pack 18 reveals that the backpack has high levels of carcinogenics and a higher impact on global warming due to the high content of synthetic material and transportation distance. The main material of the pack is Nylon 6, which is a versatile synthetic material that can be formed into fibers, sheets, filaments or bristles.

[1] Nylon 6 fabric is light in weight and durable; however because it is made from benzene [2], there is a generation of unwanted by-products very damaging to the environment.

Her recommendation for the redesign is the use of alternative materials, dyeing processes, and manufacturing locations.

She plans to incorporate a biomimicry framework to explore material selection and natural dying processes. REI’s core values revolve around sustainability and stewardship, so producing its private label products in socially and environmentally responsible ways align perfectly with the company’s mission and core values. Outdoor enthusiasts, who are the core customers of REI, care about environmental issues, and if given a choice, they would prefer to use a backpack made sustainably in America over a backpack with harmful agents made overseas.

1ST YEAR PROJECT

LIFECYCLES AND FLOWS WITH REBECCA SILVER AND JEN VAN DER MEER

Cycla Necklace

by Julia Plevin

Cycla is a celebration of a woman’s menstrual cycle and an effort to reclaim the period. To this day, society—and often the woman herself—misunderstands the menstrual cycle.

In order to change how society views menstruation, it’s imperative that women become more comfortable with their bodies.

Each of the 28 beads on the necklace represents a day of a woman’s cycle. The beads are color-coded to demarcate the days of period and ovulation. By shifting the clasp around the necklace, a woman can track where she is in her cycle, and better understand the physical and mental changes she may experience throughout the month.

The notion of counting beads comes from mala prayer beads while the look of the design is a nod to rosaries. The design of the necklace is subtle, so that only the wearer herself knows its true meaning.

In another interpretation, the necklace is a laser-cut postcard wrapped in string and handed out on the street.

The 28 “beads” are perforated, so that the wearer can pop each bead out and string her necklace.

2ND YEAR PROJECT

AFFIRMING ARTIFACTS WITH ALLAN CHOCHINOV

ALSO! Project

by Class of 2014

As part of NYCxDesign, the students of the MFA in Products of Design at the School of Visual Arts present ALSO!, a series of interactions that explore how we experience new design. The work comes out of a 5-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.

Through a roving set of mobile interventions—both cartbased and human-worn—visitors to the show participate in an unfolding narrative around celebration, sustainability, digital mediation, storytelling, and scale, each expanding the conversation around design beyond form, function, and materiality.

The work took flight at WantedDesign, and visitors can learn more at www.alsoproject.com, with full process documentation at alsodocumentation.tumblr.com.

1ST YEAR PROJECT: ALSO!

DESIGN PERFORMANCE WITH SINCLAIR SMITH

BOOM

by Class of 2014

The station titled “BOOM” explores the lens of NARRATIVE, and uses a “mock” boom mic and a set of backpack-mounted headphones. Here, visitors “listen in” on design objects, asking what the untold stories of artifacts might be. In other words, if a chair or a lamp could talk, what might it be saying? There are seven tracks in all—many confessional— along the lines of “I see you standing there, under the lights, looking at me, wanting me to be new and fresh every year, but next year you’ll be back and I won’t be, because you’ll want the ‘new’ chair, the new model...” Some are funny, some are poetic—all give new texture to he practice of design storytelling.

1ST YEAR PROJECT: ALSO!

DESIGN PERFORMANCE WITH SINCLAIR SMITH

Tiny

by Class of 2014

The station titled “TINY” explores the lens of UNSEEN DETAILS, and employs a hand-held digital microscope and display screen. Here, visitors are empowered to delve into the details that designers love and put so much heart and energy into, but in a massive exhibition like WantedDesign, often get overlooked. Students worked with booth owners ahead of time, helping them use the technology to provide information at a detailed level. (Several booth owners didn’t want the TINY teams to leave; it turned out that the devices were extremely successful in rendering the designers’ intentions in a way that made them salient and persuasive.)

1ST YEAR PROJECT: ALSO!

DESIGN PERFORMANCE WITH SINCLAIR SMITH

Lift

by Class of 2014

The station titled “Lift” explores the lens of DIGITAL MEDIATION, and uses a custom-design phone caddy, climbing rope, and pulley. Since people so often experience things through their phones (you ever notice how when a big crowd is watching something in the street, everyone is watching it on their phone?) the students asked themselves the following question: “If we experience so many things through our digital devices, could we actually create an experience that only our device could have? Here, visitors set their phone to movie mode and hit record; the students load the phone into the caddy and raise it up slowly to the top of the WantedDesign space (the ceilings are soaring), turn a pirouette, and come back down. Visitors enjoy a movie of the experience that their digital device had!

1ST YEAR PROJECT: ALSO!

DESIGN PERFORMANCE WITH SINCLAIR SMITH

Warp

by Class of 2014

The station titled “Warp,” explores the lens of ABSTRACTION, using a revolving kaleidoscope apparatus. Acknowledging that there is so much design to experience in a show like Wanted—that’s it’s just such an overwhelming, visual experience—the students wanted to create a lens to literally combine and abstract the show into something both beautiful and memorable. And since people are taking so many photos of the show anyway, “WARP” provides a spot where they could take a shot “of the whole show” and share it with hashtag AlsoProject.

1ST YEAR PROJECT: ALSO!

DESIGN PERFORMANCE WITH SINCLAIR SMITH

Here

by Class of 2014

The station titled “Here” explores the lens of CONTEXT, employing the beloved ViewMaster as the looking device.

In a design exhibition, so much design comes through the door—lots of it from across the globe—that it’s easy to forget that there is wonderful design all around us, all the time. Here, students traveled to exhibition space weeks ahead of time and photographed beautiful and precious design details that would normally go un-noticed—materials, textures, old harware, etc.—a kind of “UN-wanted Design” at Wanted Design! In each of the ViewMasters, a unique set of images, along with some short snippets of historical info click by. Contemplative and quiet, “Here” provided a respite from the cacophony of the show.

1ST YEAR PROJECT: ALSO!

DESIGN PERFORMANCE WITH SINCLAIR SMITH

Mask

by Class of 2014

The station titled “Mask” explores the lens of REPURPOSE and CELEBRATION, and uses a custom die-cutting apparatus. We know that lots of the materials that people collect at a design show often find their way into the waste bin, so students attempted to add value to these items by turning them into masks that people could celebrate with. Why masks? Well, the mask is another kind of lens, and though visitors come to a show to look at design, they also come to look at each other and collectively share an experience. Visitors pick a brochure that they think would work well, and die cut eye holes into it—posing, photographing, and sharing.

1ST YEAR PROJECT: ALSO!

DESIGN PERFORMANCE WITH SINCLAIR SMITH

Beegeebee: A Kid’s Watch for Monitoring Diabetes

by Kathryn McElroy and MFA ID candidate Rae Milne

For Carla Diana’s Smart Objects class Kathryn McElroy and Rae Milne (MFA Interaction Design candidate) created Beegeebee, a watch that allows kids to monitor their blood glucose levels.

Engaging kids in their own diabetes care is essential. The Beegeebee watch was designed to empower kids to be responsible for their own health. Beegeebee monitors blood glucose levels in a way that makes it fun and easy to manage diabetes.

Beegeebee (short for “blood glucose buddy”) starts with a continuous blood glucose sensor attached to the child’s torso. The sensor sends real-time information to the buddy watch the child wears. The face of the watch indicates blood glucose levels in an approachable and easy to learn way, with colors that go from cool (low blood glucose levels) to warm (high blood glucose levels). The watch has a variety of interchangeable faceplates that can easily match a child’s moods or trends at school. It beeps or vibrates to indicate the need for an insulin shot or a snack. The wristwatch also relays data to a smartphone app so the parent or caregiver can keep track of their child’s health, without being intrusive.

1ST YEAR PROJECT

SMART OBJECTS WITH CARLA DIANA

Serendipity Woods: A book about running

by Emi Yasaka Emi Yasaka’s book, Serendipity Woods, contextualizes an object she created for Deconstruction:Reconstruction, a class taught by Ayse Birsel in the fall semester. Emi identified flexibility, perseverance, and serenity as her strengths, and chose to express them as a movable screen of 4 laser-cut wood panels that can be configured into different shapes. In sympathy, the book is comprised of four chapters, each representing a panel with a story associated with the notion of serendipity. “Running has been a part of my life for a long time,” remarks Emi, “and something that I really love so I chose to design a book of stories about runners whom I admire.”

The four chapters of the book—Intersection, Maze, Field Lines, and Northwoods provide a visualization of runner’s journey, along with various photos taken by me and others found online. The first chapter, Intersection, is about Scott Jurek’s experience in the Badwater Ultramarathon, a grueling 135-mile race in Death Valley in mid-July where temperatures reach over 120°F. The intersecting lines represents his internal battle, or the turning point in the race.

1ST YEAR PROJECT

MARK MAKING WITH BENJAMIN CRITTON

Vice: A smart bike lock system

by Damon Ahola and SVA IxD student Jennings Hanna

In Carla Diana’s 7-week Smart Objects course, each of the MFA Products of Design students was paired up with a student from the IxD (Interaction Experience Design) department at SVA. As a team, Damon Ahola and Jennings Hanna had numerous discussions and brainstorm sessions leading to their pursuit of designing a smart bike lock. The lock—Vice—sits securely on the handlebars while biking.

The user unlocks the lock via their smart phone app, syncing the device to incorporate other value add features such as route navigation, destination progress as well as illumination. Semi-functional prototypes were created through 3D printing, with additional Arduino, switches and numerous LEDs. The prototype was used to shoot a user experience video throughout the streets of Manhattan, below. Check out the additional images to get a more comprehensive view of the project.

1ST YEAR PROJECT

SMART OBJECTS WITH CARLA DIANA

Nom: A Digital Boost for Amateur Cooks

by Gaïa Orain

and SVA IxD students Tyler Davidson and Shelly Ni

For Carla Diana’s Smart Objects course, Products of Design student Gaïa Orain and SVA IxD students Tyler Davidson and Shelly Ni examined the North American aversion to home cooking. “How might we help cooks new to the kitchen, or to a recipe, feel less intimidated and overwhelmed?” wondered Orain, a culinary arts graduate (who, along with Ni, is cocreator of Nautilus, an award-winning bowl for the elderly).

Their solution was NOM, a kitchen projection system that guides cooks through new recipes, kitchen skills, and meal logistics. Meal planning, grocery ordering and streaming instructional video are all orchestrated by touch from the chef’s illuminated dashboard.

1ST YEAR PROJECT

SMART OBJECTS WITH CARLA DIANA

The Cloud

by Richard Clarkson

For the Making Studio course in the MFA Products of Design program, Richard Clarkson created an engaging combination of electronics and form, simply called “The Cloud”.

Acting as both a semi-immersive lightning experience, or as a speaker with visual feedback, this nightlight/ nightspeaker hybrid introduces a new discourse for what a nightlight could be. Richard writes: “Advances in physical computing and interaction design hardware over recent years have created a new breed of smartobjects, which are gaining more and more traction in the design world. These smartobjects have the potential to be far more interactive and immersive than ever before. And what is exciting is that it’s becoming increasingly easier and cheaper to become a part of this new kind of making, with DIY and hacker community initiatives such as Maker Faire, Instrutactables and numerous others. This project aims to capture the essence of this kind of designing—where ideas and process are shared for others to use and expand upon.”

The cloud itself is made by felting hypoallergenic fiberfill to a sponge casing that forms the frame of the cloud, holding the speakers and componentry within. (A custom felting tool was constructed, made from the left-over sponge casing and four felting needles.) To control the functions of the cloud, users activate three tactile switches scattered along the base.

1ST YEAR PROJECT

SMART OBJECTS WITH CARLA DIANA

Storm Relief Tube

by Damon Ahola

As a volunteer with the Occupy Sandy collective in Coney Island, Brooklyn, Damon Ahola used his observations to produce these concepts for a portable relief supply tube.

The key insight to the project was the recognition that typical disaster supplies—water bottle, soup can, flashlight, batteries—all share the same cylindrical profile, making them an ideal match in terms of form factor.

Providing a tubular “case,” then, in the form of a corrugated tube, makes for an appropriate solution in terms of packaging and distribution.

Ahola’s research included interviews with on-the-ground managers of relief supply logistics and distribution. After assessing requirements specific to New York City’s shipping and delivery systems, he designed a sleek and durable tube made to service the stark human needs that both precede, and follow, natural disaster.

Contained supplies: Tubes may be packed with standard basic supplies to aid within the first couple of days post-disaster. Supplies can be catered as needs change throughout the relief effort. The label on the outer surface of the tube may be written on in order to document the contents, destination, name of volunteer who packed it, date, and other pertinent information.

Logistics: Relief tubes will be distributed to homes pre-storm throughout potential disaster areas. Additional relief tubes will then be shipped to relief hubs, from which individuals with then distribute to those in need.

Tube profile: The size and profile of the tubes are standard size & are being shipped around the world today. The city of New York must work with e-commerce suppliers as well as shipping companies to find an ideal logistics solution.

Supply and distribution should be handled locally, to cut down on cost.

1ST YEAR PROJECT

Pedal for Change

by Damon Ahola, Rona Binay, Richard Clarkson and Cassandra Michel Challenged to design a public intervention, students Damon Ahola, Rona Binay, Richard Clarkson and Cassandra Michel devised Pedal for Change, an installation that entices New York City subway riders to stop, sit and pedal while waiting for their train.

By pedaling a stationary cycle, users both enhance their health and earn credit on their MTA MetroCard. For every dollar of credit earned, MTA makes a matching donation to a local or national physical fitness charity. Select station mezzanine areas with ample space were selected for their high foot traffic, and ability to accommodate users with varying levels of fitness.

One learning goal of the class was to illuminate how shared resources mediate relationships. By encouraging charity, conversation and healthy citywide competition, Pedal for Change spurs new interactions while serving the public good.

1ST YEAR PROJECT

INTERVENTION INTERACTION WITH SIGI MOESLINGER & MASAMICHI UDAGAWA

Diptable

by Richard Clarkson

Classmates Gaïa Orain, Zena Pesta and Cassandra Michel inspired student Richard Clarkson to create the table as a final project for Claire Hartten’s Design for Sustainability and Resilience class. The class empowers designers to make artifacts that champion sustainable food and agricultural practices, and to generate knowledge and capacity beyond dominant models of production, consumption and disposal.

Orain, Pesta and Michel designed scrumptious bundles (dumplings, spanakopita, and handmade fig-brie wraps) as cues for messy snacking.

This project aims to provide a template for the display of food as art. The concept behind the Dip Table is that food can a valid subject matter for art. The table itself features ten subtle bowls in which food is presented and the audience can directly interact with it. In this way the table becomes an object with the ability to elicit conversation and critical thought within the context of food.

“The table creates mess, but it is pure mess, it shows the traces of the food, interactions and conversations”

1ST YEAR PROJECT

DESIGN FOR SUSTAINABILITY AND RESILIENCE WITH KATHLEEN BAKEWELL AND CLAIRE HARTTEN

U Stool

by Richard Clarkson, Zena Verda Pesta and Clay Kippen As part of the Material Futures course — MFA in Products of Design, SVA — and taught on site at Material Connexion, We created a stool that encourages active sitting, uses significantly less energy in the manufacturing process, and is compostable in such a way as to become land-art in its afterlife. It engages the participant by gently rocking, allowing them to use their abdominal muscles and feet for support. It is easier to sit for longer periods of time on the U Stool because the user is constantly shifting, reducing the amount of mechanical load on the back, hips and other parts of the body.

1ST YEAR PROJECT

MATERIALS FUTURES WITH ANDREW DENT

Anarchy of the Imagination

by Steve Hamilton

The Anarchy of the Imagination explores the psycho/ emotive landscape posited by Hans Monderman’s “shared space” proposal for designing urban intersections that lack markings and signals. Monderman and others suggest that increasing uncertainty concerning right of way at an intersection leads drivers to reduce their speed and pay more attention, thereby reducing the risk for everyone.

The system functions thanks to the many “negotiations in motion” described in Ole Jensen’s books Designing Mobilities and Staging Mobilities. During this experience, twenty-eight participants were guided through a movement exercise led by award-winning choreographer Jodi Melnick while responding to live music. Midway through the experience, just as participants were “finding a groove with each other,” they began to get fitted with “automotive avatars” designed and built by Hamilton. The avatars ranged in size from 2x3 feet to 5x8 feet, and were suspended by shoulder harnesses. The goal of the avatars was to focus awareness and question assumptions about the public spaces we share. As a result, participants examined their behavior towards others while navigating built environments.

2ND YEAR THESIS: ENOUGH IS THE NEW MORE Reframing Scarcity to Feel like Abundance

DESIGN DELIGHT WITH EMILIE BALTZ

Tools for an Unsustainable Future

by Steve Hamilton Using a 2x2 speculative future matrix, and imagining a future in which sustainability remains low and the price of gasoline is very high, Tools for an Unsustainable Future merges today’s consumerist narratives with hipster coffee culture. “It envisions a future of bicycle-based foragers,” Steve writes, “who gather spilled oil and process it into gasoline in DIY meth-lab-scale distilleries for sale and trade on the black market. Artisanal culture meets MadMax dystopia as a consumption-based society progresses unchecked despite shortages, pollution, and adverse climate-related effects.”

2ND YEAR THESIS: ENOUGH IS THE NEW MORE Reframing Scarcity to Feel like Abundance

SPECULATIVE FUTURES WITH ELLIOT MONTGOMERY

Music of the Spheres

by Steve Hamilton

Music of the Spheres harnesses bicyclists’ kinetic energy to generate a mobile symphony of sonorous sounds. The system alerts pedestrians to bicyclists’ presence and encourages bicyclists to cluster, subsequently increasing safety. Using geo-location or physical sensors, when other similarly-equipped bicycles came into proximity with one another, the tones harmonize—creating chords when riding together and exciting doppler resonances when passing one another.

2ND YEAR THESIS: ENOUGH IS THE NEW MORE Reframing Scarcity to Feel like Abundance

THESIS

Crossblock

by Steve Hamilton

Understanding this antipathy isn’t difficult. Observing any intersection in Manhattan for just a short time typically reveals several acts of intimidating—and often downright hostile—bicyclist behavior. Steve believed bicyclists could benefit from making the first overtures towards ending this conflict and prototyped a behavioral intervention called CrossBlock. Instead of running a red light, bicyclists stop perpendicular to their direction of travel, and assume a CrossBlock position, fists clenched in an act of defiance but arms open in a welcoming embrace. By positioning themselves between cars in the street and pedestrians in the crosswalk, CrossBlocking bicyclists emphasize that automobiles are not the favored form of transportation on New York City’s streets and send a message to pedestrians that we’re all in this together.

2ND YEAR THESIS: ENOUGH IS THE NEW MORE Reframing Scarcity to Feel like Abundance

THESIS

Distractings

by Brandon Washington

We are a society engulfed by the spectacle. The spectacle is rooted in a neoliberal capitalist ideology—a free market where you have to pay to play. Capitalism promotes the idea of consumerism as a means to build and strengthen an economy. The more society buys and consumes, the more jobs are created. More jobs allow people to feel secure as far as their needs are concerned, but also provide people more expendable income that can then be used to buy more stuff. The problem is that consumers do not understand when enough is enough. We tend to want more objects than others. We need a bigger house than our neighbors, a better car, a higher paying job, and newer things. We constantly play this game of “keeping up with the Joneses,” and it has, in effect, become the status quo; it has become the dominant ideology.

Brandon created a set of editorial products that, by turning them into “boobie traps,” make people stop and think. For example, “furniture that is impossible to take apart when nestled together” or a slippery welcome mat.

2ND YEAR THESIS: THE SPECTACLE

THESIS

Alt Boks

by Brandon Washington

Brandon wanted to give people the materials to question society. His conversation with educator, activist, and founder of The Journal of Radical Shimming, Sam Gould, helped guide this pursuit. Here, he encouraged Brandon to use art as a vehicle for creating spaces for questioning culture. As a result, Brandon created ALT BOKS. The ALT BOKS service is a mix between an arts CSA and a modern book club. ALT BOKS wants to make this experience more tangible. It’s is a subscription-based service that disseminates “the materials of art that foster free thinking, expression, and questioning to those who don’t have art in their daily lives.” ALT BOKS distributes free thought from people whose art and writing are not widely publicized.

2ND YEAR THESIS: THE SPECTACLE

THESIS

Projection

by Brandon Washington

Projection allows users to project digital content out into the real world—creating a new form of social media in the physical sense. Like on platforms such as Instagram and Tumblr, the content that you choose to display on your Projection makes up—and represents—who you are. Whether it’s a political statement, a diary of your daily activities, or promotional content, Projection shows strangers on the street your point of view. But instead of being able to hide behind an avatar as is possible digital social media, the product forces you to stand behind what you believe in. Of course, Projection is quite a spectacle, but its content also sparked conversation and interest among test subjects.

2ND YEAR THESIS: THE SPECTACLE

SPECULATIVE FUTURES WITH ELLIOT MONTGOMERY

Mobile Manifesto

by Brandon Washington

Brandon took the concept of a manifesto and turned it into an experience. He argues “in our fast-paced society, we leave little time to understand what we truly desire for our short, precious lives. Manifestos can uncover what we most want, and can become a roadmap for how to get there.” Mobile Manifesto is a traveling intervention, where participants craft a manifesto and walk away with an ID card that expresses their beliefs. “It’s is an experience to give people a permanent reminder of what they really stand for in this spectacle world,” he adds. The manifesto takes form of an ID Card, so that it can be kept it in a wallet, close at all times. The hope is that it serves as a reminder—a physical piece of evidence—that people are in command of their true desires, despite the outside influences bombarding them every single day. To keep the event mobile, Mobile Manifesto took place inside a truck. On the interior wall of the truck is a “Manifesto Mad Lib” on an oversized ID card. Participants chose inspiring words generated from aspirational manifestos and mission statements. Armed with a laptop, a smartphone, a printer, and a laminator, Brandon and his team were able to snap a picture in front of the giant ID card, and print it out on the spot.

2ND YEAR THESIS: THE SPECTACLE

DESIGN DELIGHT WITH EMILIE BALTZ

Searching for Words

by Brandon Washington

For the poster above, Brandon pays tribute to the designer/ artist Tobias Wong, referencing a well-known quote of his that represents Brandon’s own ambitions of carving out a life for himself, using design as a catalyst: “In a dream I saw a way to survive and I was full of joy.” Brandon aims to convert words into images as a way to create new meanings behind them by reflecting on his hero, the late designer Tobias Wong.

Brandon deconstructed Tobias’ process of taking existing creations and spawning whole new meanings for them.

While Tobias repeatedly did this with physical objects, Brandon thought of a way to manifest new design through words—and in a way that could ultimately be used by anyone—ultimately resulting the in creation of a graphic poster.

The images are gathered by a program built with Processing, and using Google’s search API. After typing in a “search term,” Google produces a large number of images relating to that search. An algorithm was created to downsample the images by counting the number of characters in the search term word, multiplying that number by ten, then selecting the image that corresponds to its place in the search result lineup. (For instance, the word “dream” will result in the 50th image in the set that Google returns.) Finally, the program renames the images as the search term along with the image’s number order, creating a file such as: “bowl_of_ fruit_00001.jpg”, for example.

2ND YEAR

DECONSTRUCTION RECONSTRUCTION WITH AYSE BIRSEL

Classical Conditioning Device

by Eliz Ayaydin Contemplating the future of healing, Ayaydin explored ways she could re-contextualize behavioral therapy methods into self-help tools. Eliz created a device based on this therapy by productizing behavioral conditioning so that survivors can create new emotional associations independently— perhaps without a therapist. Using scent as the stimulus, the device leverages the fact that smell is the most powerful sense for evoking memories.

By training the person to associate particular scents with specific levels of stress—and intentionally changing those stimuli at appropriate times—the device will help the person re-learn their traumatic memories with new reactions.

2ND YEAR THESIS: I WAS THERE WHEN

SPECULATIVE FUTURES WITH ELLIOT MONTGOMERY

I Remember Street Intervention

by Eliz Ayaydin In order to test how effective “sharing experiences” after a disaster can be, Eliz designed an experience for a disaster closer to home. On March 26, an explosion in the East Village of New York City left a block up in flames—injuring 19 people, killing two, and shocking the region. A few weeks after, Ayaydin posted a board across the street from the scene, inviting people in the neighborhood to share their stories. These tended to be uplifting memories about the neighborhood, or stories specifically from the explosion itself.

The piece prompts people to fill in the blank “I remember...”— became a channel for starting conversations. People wrote memories such as, “I remember getting on scene and having an immediate urge to help. Sad day.” One woman approached the board, pointed across the street to the building facing towards the empty block, and said, “You see the third floor window there? That’s my apartment. I still haven’t been able to move back in.” She wrote a note about how she’s thankful for the support she’s received from family and friends.

2ND YEAR THESIS: I WAS THERE WHEN

DESIGN DELIGHT WITH EMILIE BALTZ

Present Tense

by Eliz Ayaydin

Leveraging the power of social problem solving and resilience building—in combination with healing by reexperiencing a traumatic event—Eliz developed the service Present Tense, a real-time disaster story-sharing platform.

Using information and filters about their neighborhood, disaster type, and beliefs, survivors can talk about, and hear about, other people’s disaster experiences, and connect with those they can relate to. In addition to social sharing for healing, the platform is a place to deposit memories— creating an archive of recordings and journal entries for the survivor to reflect upon. These entries can be kept private, shared with the public, with friend circles, or with a volunteer mental health worker who would be able to provide instant support while having a holistic overview of their archived healing journey. The service also promotes “memory reconsolidation”—the brain’s practice of re-creating memories over and over again. The very act of remembering changes the memory itself; physically talking about trauma prevents the negative memory from being sealed over and repressed—which can lead to PTSD.

2ND YEAR THESIS: I WAS THERE WHEN

DESIGN FOR SCREENS WITH BRENT ARNOLD

Molotov Cocktail

by Andrés Iglesias

Andrés Iglesias’ masters thesis, Shift: A Proposal to Lift Community Morale, explores two principal ideas: the effect optimism has on the way people see their environment, and how focusing on “the good” around you—rather than focusing on the flaws—can be crucial for the recovery of depressed communities.

In order to lift a community’s morale, the proper tools and platforms must be in place for individuals to share and showcase what is good around them. Some of the tools he designed included a paint-filled Molotov cocktail, which, when thrown, creates a blank canvas to be filled with collaborative solutions, along with a slingshot that uses paint balls to cover the neighborhood in bright colors.

2ND YEAR THESIS: SHIFT A Proposal to Lift Community Morale

THESIS I WITH ALLAN CHOCHINOV AND ANDREW SCHLOSS

Chunche

by Andrés Iglesias

Andrés realized that designing platforms that acknowledge negativity’s role in reducing morale could create a shift in the community’s perception of itself. To further test his ideas, Andrés designed Chunche, a platform that allows users to “share the good going on in their neighborhoods through photos and stories.” Andrés originally pitched Chunche as a print publication. Each month, a new edition— showcasing one neighborhood’s moments of good—would be printed and distributed. The content of the magazine would be crowd-sourced; people in the neighborhood would be contributing the photography and content.

2ND YEAR THESIS: SHIFT A Proposal to Lift Community Morale

THESIS I WITH ALLAN CHOCHINOV AND ANDREW SCHLOSS

Hola

by Andrés Iglesias

Andrés Iglesias’ masters thesis, Shift: A Proposal to Lift Community Morale, explores two principal ideas: the effect optimism has on the way people see their environment, and how focusing on “the good” around you—rather than focusing on the flaws—can be crucial for the recovery of depressed communities.

In order to lift a community’s morale, the proper tools and platforms must be in place for individuals to share and showcase what is good around them.

Hola is one or three conceptual apps which looked at providing platforms and services that allow community members to collaborate together in group projects, speak their minds freely through live podcasts, and generate positive headlines about the good that they felt was being overlooked in their neighborhoods.

2ND YEAR THESIS: SHIFT A Proposal to Lift Community Morale

THESIS I WITH ALLAN CHOCHINOV AND ANDREW SCHLOSS

Yeti Ice Cream Pints

by Andrés Iglesias

Andres Iglesias’ Yeti Ice Cream explores the notion of creating awareness around food serving sizes and their relevance in living a healthy life. Ice cream pints—like in many food packages—tuck all their important information in the back. By making serving sizes easier to see and experience, people are deterred from binge eating—a habit that can lead to obesity.

The final prototype embodies that idea in a rather simple way. By creating separate levels inside the pint, people are slowed down and deterred from eating the whole pint in one sitting. It’s is a simple solution, with an honest and transparent mission: one spoonful at a time.

2ND YEAR PROJECT

AFFIRMING ARTIFACTS WITH ALLAN CHOCHINOV

Bud

by Vidhi Goel and Eliz Ayaydin Bud is a smart pregnancy companion that acts as a support system for pregnant women, making the invisible moments of pregnancy visible. At its core, Bud uses smart printer technology to print daily messages about the stage of the mother’s pregnancy and characteristics of the baby’s development and growth. Weekly tape measurements are used to correlate the size of the belly with the stage of pregnancy, insuring that the information provided on the device is perfectly synched with the mother’s and baby’s growth. The messages on the tape celebrate milestones for the baby (from when webbed hands become fingers to the emergence of teeth and hair) to important medical information (around nutrition, blurred vision, and weight gain). Bud shares these updates, along with quirky facts and other medical suggestions on a daily basis, providing a conduit for information that is timely, charming, and useful.

2ND YEAR PROJECT

BRAND, PRODUCT & EXPERIENCE WITH RINAT ARUH & JOHAN LIDEN

Chain-of-Custody

by Elisa Werbler

Chain-Of-Custody is a way to preserve your most valuable objects, and to communicate to your loved ones which things are most important to you and what you would like to be passed on. Think of it as a living will for your things.

It consists of a series of bags, ranging from the very small (something you might put jewelry in) to the quite large (large enough for furniture to fit in). Each bag has a label on it to indicate when and where it should go. A valve at the bottom is used to remove any remaining air once the bag has been sealed. The purpose of Chain-Of-Custody is to put a physical layer between you and your things. It’s an opportunity to question the value of your things while you’re still here, so that the burden of doing so is not left to the ones you love...when you’re not.

2ND YEAR THESIS: THINGS

THESIS I WITH ALLAN CHOCHINOV AND ANDREW SCHLOSS