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.
Threshold: A Call For Action
If Manual scavenging, banned in India since 1993, persists due to caste discrimination, poverty, neglect, and weak enforcement. Lack of data and open dialogue hides the scale of the problem. Threshold, an atypical publication, addresses these realities through Vocalization (stories), Perceptions (facts), and Actions (future steps). Combining narratives with data, it focuses on fostering empathy, challenging biases, and calls for dialogue, dignity, and collective responsibility toward ending this human rights crisis. Designer: Priya Chaudhary RETURN TO GOOD INTERVENTIONS ’25 EXHIBITION
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Countering Rhetoric
This project implements a neoliberal notion of redistribution by proposing a new function for money that renders income tax redundant, directly redistributing wealth between people’s bank or savings accounts. In doing so, the system transforms trickle-down economics from rhetoric into reality. Friedrich Hayek, Margaret Thatcher, and Ronald Reagan would be proud. Designer: Dr. Austin Houldsworth RETURN TO GOOD INTERVENTIONS ’25 EXHIBITION
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MobiliMate
Inclusive Smart Mobility is a digital platform designed to empower individuals with mobility impairments by breaking barriers of ableism and promoting equality. Built with user-centered design, it offers interactive maps, real-time navigation, accessible parking reservations, and community-driven insights. By enabling independent mobility, social participation, and informed decision-making, this platform fosters inclusion, enhances mental well-being, and redefines accessible travel for local and international destinations, turning mobility into freedom. Designer: Hoda Solati and Shima Solati RETURN TO GOOD INTERVENTIONS ’25 EXHIBITION
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Bringing The Bread Home
Bread Economics draws parallels between building a thriving economy and baking sourdough bread. Using flour and water as metaphors for labor and capital, we explore how Adam Smith’s free-market economy can shift through invisible forces and interventions. Inspired by J.K. Gibson-Graham’s alternative economic theories, we reimagine economies as living systems, like sourdough starters, that thrive through continual care, sustainable practices, and more balanced approaches to markets, enterprises, and labor. Designer: Maryam Ashraf, Nakshi Shah, Vidhi Shah, Youngjun Shin RETURN TO GOOD INTERVENTIONS ’25 EXHIBITION
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From Stories to Systems: A Participatory Design Intervention for Student Wellbeing in Under-Resourced China
This project explores participatory storytelling as a tool to reshape student well-being within the regimented K-12 education system in China. Responding to rising mental health challenges, it critiques how schools often equate adapting to rigid structures with well-being. Collaborating with a middle school in Guigang, the project developed a four-component framework to amplify student voices. It offers a replicable model to surface student stories as a bridge between lived experience and systemic action in constrained educational environments, reframing the narrative around student well-being. Designer: Polly Xu and Xuanxuan Huang RETURN TO GOOD INTERVENTIONS ’25 EXHIBITION
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But They Built Roads
But they built roads…” is often used to justify colonialism, suggesting its infrastructure benefited colonies or excusing its violence. This project challenges that myth by analyzing the economic legacy of colonial transport networks in Africa through a slime mold simulation model. The findings reveal how colonial railroads, built for extraction not connection, still constrain African economies—highlighting the need for indigenous infrastructure and critical reassessment of inherited colonial systems. Designer: Mohamed Berrada RETURN TO GOOD INTERVENTIONS ’25 EXHIBITION
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MS SDM Panel Discussion
Be comfortable being uncomfortable: Reflections from the MS SDM Peer-to-Peer Panel Starting a new academic year invites fresh questions about what strategic design looks like in practice. We opened the semester with a Peer-to-Peer Panel designed to meet those questions head on, pairing an opening conversation with Professor Edward Cardimona with a student panel that traced real paths through the first year of MS Strategic Design and Management. The brief for the session was simple, be specific, be honest, and share what actually helped. What emerged was a clear through line, growth follows discomfort, and strategic design is a practice…
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Rooted – 2025
Rooted reimagines the everyday tote as a platform for sustainability, creativity, and connection. Each bag is made from biodegradable jute and features artwork by student artists selected through curated contests. A QR code inside links to the artist’s story, creating an emotional connection between creator and user. This bond encourages people to keep and reuse the bag, extending its lifecycle and reducing waste. While the model begins in academic institutions, Rooted has the potential to scale, offering a replicable system that blends storytelling, circular design, and visual appeal into a product people are proud to carry. Studio Instructor Johann…
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Sustaina360 – 2025
Sustaina360 is a B2E (Business-to-Employee) mobile app designed to help companies foster sustainability engagement among employees and partners, supported by powerful dashboard and community features. We believe sustainability starts with every employee. By implementing Sustaina360, companies can embed sustainability into their organizational culture, making it a valuable asset in driving meaningful change from within. Studio Instructor Johann Verheem Designers Diane Lee
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CityLens – 2025
CityLens is a digital sense-making tool for urban management that helps users identify opportunities in building retrofits and sustainable transitions by providing an aggregated view of available data collected from various sources. The tool will enable decision-makers in deploying resources where they are needed, and help gain a better understanding of conditions of the city’s built infrastructure. Studio Instructor Johann Verheem Designers Anis Amir
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