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Sammy the Social Mediator

Devin Curry

Fight your addiction to your smartphone by storing it in this electronic lock box, which requires two people to open.

http://www.devincurrystudio.com/sammypresentation/

Description

This project explores modern society's increasing urge to pay attention to one's smart phone rather than interact with live human beings. To control your urges to constantly check your phone, lock it in the case. The case's LCD screen displays inspirational quotes to help you feel better about being separated from your device, as well as a timer to keep track of your self-control. When you are ready to retrieve your phone from the case, you will need to ask another person a helping hand; the specially-arranged button array requires all buttons to be pushed at the same time to reopen the case.

Classes

Project Development Studio (Marina Zurkow)

Fluid Geometry

Wyna Liu

A set of sculptures about geometry, nature, and the forms that emerge through repetition.

http://wynaliu.tumblr.com/tagged/thesis

Description

These sculptures are my personal meditation on geometry and form. When the rules governing the symmetry and perfection of polygons and polyhedra are subject to extrinsic factors such as gravity and material properties, they lose their rigidity and begin to display a diversity of movement and behavior that resemble those found in the natural world. These simple shapes are essential to the creation of forms in nature at every scale. Fluid Geometry is my attempt to build from these elements and explore their intrinsic possibilities. Inspired by traditions of craft and learning through physical practice, each sculpture consists of hundreds to thousands of “two-dimensional” pieces, hand assembled to create an object in three dimensions.

Classes

Thesis

bodyRef

Tiffany Hewlett

bodyRef provides guidance to users on how to set and accomplish fitness and nutrition goals by utilizing a team of healthcare professionals (HCPs).

http://bubble.is/site/healthref/version-test/index

Description

With the assistance of a healthcare professional, users create a health profile and allow bodyRef access to their tracked data. bodyRef will annotate data summaries provided by the tracking device. Users can then accept or reject individual annotations noted on the data summaries. Accepted annotations will trigger personalized advice from HCPs who provide medical guidance on how to achieve goals throughout the week. To start, the intended audience will be high-risk individuals such as those diagnosed with metabolic disease. Moving forward, bodyRef audiences will be expanded to special populations such as pregnant women and the elderly. Even further down the line recovering athletes will become targeted users as well.

Classes

Creative Javascript, Thesis

Dovetales

Myriam Melki

Dovetales is a mobile application that allows couples living in different timezones to share mundane details with each other in the form of a daily story.

http://dovetales.io

Description

Dovetales helps couples, as well as close friends, living in different timezones maintain strong relationships by sharing the mundane things in life. Although often overlooked, this exchange of simple details deepens intimacy. A Dovetales story consists of several frames a day that form a single story. A frame can be composed of image, text or drawing. Like a letter, once created, the frame can't be edited. It can only be deleted. And much like a storyboard, frames are chronologically ordered and time stamped in the local time of the sender. At the end of each day, one single story is sent out. It is only received once, at a time chosen by the recipient.

Classes

Thesis

The Path of the Pirate

Brett Peterson

In this exhibit children ages 2-4 embark on a quest to become a pirate. Along the way, they engage in activities that reinforce early childhood development milestones including pattern matching, sequencing, counting and motor control.

Description

This project was inspired by and created for my daughter. We love going to museums and play together. I wanted to create something fun for her but that also focused on her learning and development.
I designed and created three interactive experiences, each imagined as a portion of a larger exhibit, that are tied together by the theme of a pirate quest. Kids encounter these activities that challenge them to apply skills of pattern matching, sequencing and counting — all key skills in the cognitive development of children between the ages of 2 and 4 years. At the end of the quest is an opportunity for the children to create their own pirate flag and print out a temporary tattoo to celebrate their accomplishment.

Classes

Thesis

Latex Pixels

David Tracy, Seiya Kobayashi, Haylee Jung

A swarm of pulsing, responsive physical pixels with minds of their own.

http://davidptracy.com/?portfolio=bridging-worlds-latex-pixels-in-progress

Description

‘Latex Pixels’ is a system for exploring swarm robotics, system intelligence, and cloud interaction.

An array of reconfigurable hexagon shaped modules are nested together in a configuration of the user’s choosing. Each pixel knows itself and recognizes its neighbors and then broadcasts what it knows back to the main micro-controller.

The interaction is facilitated by a socket connection with a user’s phone which allows them to interact with the installation in real time. There are several modes for the system: a passive mode for when there is no user interacting with the system, a communication mode that represents data of the user’s choosing, and an active interaction mode that allows the user to manipulate the system in real time.

Classes

Bridging Worlds: Constructing the Immersive Space, Dynamic Web – Server, The Nature of Code

Smart Hoodie

Rucha Patwardhan, Alina Balean

A sweater that texts.

http://alinabalean.com/smart-hoodie-wearable-phone/

Description

An alternative view of what is it to be a cell phone, this smart hoodie seeks to engage with the internet without the interface of a physical glass screen. The hoodie has it's own phone number and switches stitched into the sleeves.

Classes

Talking Fabrics, Field Testing, Towers of Power

Last Eats

Colin Narver

When selecting a restaurant, more options doesn't lead to better choices. Last Eats is a mobile web app that helps you choose a single restaurant based on the culinary knowledge, passion and loyalty showcased by your friends and extended network.

http://www.lasteats.com

Description

Most restaurant discovery apps operate with the idea that more options are better. Last Eats takes the opposite approach. By constraining choice to the single most important meal in a given city, Last Eats enables you to demonstrate passion and loyalty towards the restaurants that help define you. Last Eats connects you with your friends and extended network and allows you to see and share your collective choices.

Through a model based on scarcity and selectivity, Last Eats lets you discover the most essential, meaningful meals in the most useful way – one restaurant, one city and one choice at a time.

Classes

Thesis

Hack It Back

Patricia R. Zablah

A workshop mentoring program focused on teaching media literacy to teenage girls. The girls combat sexist media by creating their own, new media that "hacks it back" and portrays more accurate representations of women.

http://www.hackitback.com

Description

Hack It Back is a program that teaches women and girls to decode sexist media messages through observation and critical analysis of media, its creators and its effects. In the workshops, which range from eight hours to a month, teens are paired with mentors to create their own media. They use digital and analog tools to break stereotypical gender roles. At the end of each workshop, teens strengthen their confidence by presenting their projects to an invited audience. The projects are published online and made available for download, if applicable. Ultimately, Hack It Back fosters a better image of women, becoming a catalyst for participants to see themselves as leaders who can break through societal and cultural barriers imposed on them.

Classes

Thesis