Students
Students come to the Parsons MS SDM program from all over the world. Their experience combines studios, seminars, networking, events, symposia, and more. This page will inform you about student projects like First Year Studio and Second Year Studio, student resources, and other opportunities.
Caketopia – What’s Your Baking Point?
Caketopia is a gamified way of learning and exploring the impact of platforms in the modern economy. Players create personalized infrastructures (cake recipes) within a platform (the board), experiencing the unpredictable nature of this environment due to changing regulations and economic unrest. Players understand the interdependence of the platform economy, acting as both buyers and sellers and realizing their actions affect the entire dynamics of the game. Designers Bhumika Keswani, Tanmayi Dreshmukh, Samaksh Jain, Laura Martinez RETURN TO GOOD INTERVENTIONS ’23 EXHIBITION
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Black Diasporas Naarm-Melbourne
Story-telling has always been a political act, whether intentional or not. For decades main-stream narratives about people of African heritage living in Australia have perpetuated tropes of nefarious ‘gang members’ or exceptional heroes. What is most dangerous about the status-qou is it’s distortion of our self-perception. The Black Diasporas geolocated-storytelling platform is a more nuanced representation of the 50,000+ of us living in Naarm-Melbourne: our voices telling our stories. Designers Kholisile Dhliwayo and Sandra Githinji Contributors: Alimba, Amanda, Amarachi, Amaryllis, Angela, Araba, Awale, Charity, Dozie, Esther, Eve, Fatuma, Hanad, Hope, Idil, James, Jay, Joseph, Joshua, Kwame, Mahtut, Moey, Mohammed, Monica,…
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Ripple.ai: AI for design researchers 2023
Our research and strategy development aim to address the challenges and frustrations faced by design strategists and researchers in conducting interviews. Through our design research process, we identified several key areas where innovation and improvement were needed and based on the research and insights over the year, we have developed an MVP of our startup idea. . The main innovation and opportunity we identified is integrating cutting-edge AI technology into the interview process. We recognized that the shift towards online communication has led to a loss of human connection during virtual interviews, making it difficult for design strategists to fully…
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Cannabiz: Business incubator for social justice and equity in the emerging legal cannabis industry 2023
The Cannabiz Legacy team uncovered a significant opportunity to promote social equity within the cannabis industry, particularly for legacy operators or veterans who have operated in the illegal sector and face challenges such as educational gaps, limited opportunities, and discrimination. To address this pressing need, our project aims to establish an innovative incubator space that offers a comprehensive toolkit to help them start a business and address the emotional challenges they face as entrepreneurs and their intertwined stories with the cannabis industry. Cannabiz Legacy aims to bridge the gap between the new legal cannabis opportunities and the communities most impacted…
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Ai.ly 2023
Ai.ly, the Chrome plugin to excel at job interviews, emerged from comprehensive research and a strategic approach targeting the most concerning worry for young adults: navigating the labyrinth of job interviews within an AI-dominated recruitment ecosystem. The innovation stands as a groundbreaking beacon of hope, serving as a testament to facilitate this endeavor for recent graduates and broader audiences. This voice-enabled AI chatbot bridges the gap between powerful corporate recruitment entities and individual job seekers, democratizing access to sophisticated AI-empowered tools that have traditionally been the exclusive domain of enterprises. The mission of Ai.ly is multi-faceted. It not only serves…
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La Vie Perlée 2023
La Vie Perlée (The Pearled Life) was born from the realization that Black Women are facing a stress epidemic that significantly impacts our mental, physical, and emotional health. Black Women’s health is affected twofold by the social stress that comes with existing as Black and as women in American society, compounded by health and socioeconomic disparity. I set out to further investigate the causes and effects of stress on Black Women and legitimate interventions for stress management. In my research, I discovered psychotherapy and holistic therapy, which encompass various proven methods that help treat and empower individuals to better manage…
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Refab – A Marketplace for Repurposing Leftover Fabric 2023
Our project aims to tackle the waste generated by the fashion industry and promote a more sustainable fashion landscape. During our initial research on waste management practices in the fashion industry, we discovered that the current fashion resale sector primarily focuses on reselling used clothing. We identified a crucial yet overlooked area in the early stages of the supply chain: unused textile waste. Recognizing this opportunity, we set out to create a positive environmental impact while also generating value for businesses. Our concept focuses on diverting textile waste to channels of reuse, effectively reducing waste on a larger scale and…
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Care Hive: Improving Universities’ Community Care Performance 2023
US universities are in crisis. Anxiety disorders, isolation and financial insecurity have become pervasive on college campuses for students, faculty, and staff. To address these complex problems we first need to understand the precise way in which universities as organizations contribute to this. Drawing on extensive research and testing involving over 150 participants over an 8-month period, we have developed Care Hive. Care Hive is an innovative organizational tool designed to make care performance within universities tangible and addressable. The tool consists of three main components: Care Indicators – these are contextualized metrics that serve as a set of system…
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Just Jackets 2023
Project Description: A playground for customers to co-design their jackets with modular pieces and reinvent their older clothes while remaining in-trend responsibly. Research and your strategy development: One of fashion’s biggest problems is overconsumption and even with all the clothes we buy, we are still left feeling overwhelmed and frustrated with our overflowing closets. In this IS2 project, we worked on reimagining how we produce, use, and discard clothes. We explored the question: What if customers could co-design their clothes instead of simply buying what the brands and designers are incessantly selling them? Additionally, what if consumers could bring their older clothes and repair and refurbish them…
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Parent Playground 2023
Research links higher parent engagement to improved students’ academic achievement and social behavior (The Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2022). Most factors limiting family engagement in NYC schools are rooted in language barriers, cultural differences, socio-economic conditions, and app fatigue. Parent Playground aims to design for improved accessibility by unifying all virtual and in-person communication between families and schools. We accomplish this by introducing a range of activities, varying in effort level, that promote stronger accountability. Parent Playground measures engagement by integrating itself as a plug-in on existing channels, effectively tracking and translating engagement into redeemable incentives. This concept was co-designed…
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