Class of 2023 student Cathy Tung has created Mousk—a digital product, platform, and brand that addresses the facial expression and nuance forced by the pandemic.

Avocados are highly nutritious but also increasingly controversial. Controversial?! Those of us who love avocado toast might be shocked to learn the truth: From its high food mileage to giving rise to "green gold" cartels, the rising popularity of the fruit has significant environmental and social implications. When first-year student Charvi Shrimali researched these issues further, she became motivated to find local alternatives to high export produce in her native India. Her proposed solution? Closer Home Eats is a speculative startup that proposes popularising and rebranding the Indian variant of avocado known as butter fruit. The project aims to counter the high food mileage and extinction of plant species due to rising monoculture.

Since 2014, MFA Products of Design has been thrilled to have an incredible partnership with the Museum of Modern Art. Each year, the students are challenged to design products for possible inclusion in MoMA’s Wholesale Catalog, and every year, products make it through all the way to the catalog and store shelves! We’ve done our best to document some of the highlights over the years, but here’s a roundup of some of the special moments. We are unbelievably grateful to MoMA for this relationship, and we can’t wait to see what the students will come up with next!

Haggl.ing is a network and app that creates an ecosystem for people to facilitate transactions in their neighborhood using negotiations and trade—all without cash. The project imagines a future cashless economy while building social capital and connections within one's own community. Second-year student Siddhant Goyle created Haggl.ing as part of his MFA thesis—an exploration into the grey market (or the informal economy) and building systems for cashless transactions.

Kuddle is a wireless phone charger that encourages couples to spend more meaningful time communicating face-to-face. Designed by second-year student Crystal Ching Yi Lo, the dock only charges when two phones are placed side-by-side. “If only one partner puts their phone down, the device won’t charge,” Crystal explains. “Like a metaphor of a relationship, the phones will only charge if the two are close together on the dock.”

Hot on the heals of the recently-released Roller Coasters, the latest product to come out of MFA Products of Design’s ongoing partnership with MoMA are Class of 2019 Eugenia Ramos Alonso’s “Fenestra” Bookends. Check them out on the MoMA Store website!

Timescape is a speculative neural hacking kit that aims to deconstruct the notion of linearity in perceived time. It consists of injectable proteins that temporarily alter the brain's neural plasticity, which changes various perceptions of time—including sequence, direction, change, and duration. Second-year student Karan Bansal created Timescape as part of his MFA thesis—an exploration into time poverty, colonialist origins of timekeeping, and ways to augment time that restore choice.

Second-year student Regena Paloma Reyes is currently hard at work on her MFA thesis—an investigation into the factors that promote city-dwellers' resilience during crises. Finding herself in New York City at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Regena was inspired to create two garment projects that blur the lines between protection and fashion: Covered and Anti.

Water Surface is a DIY atmosphere lamp that creates hypnotic ripples of light when touched. First-year designer, Qiting Fang, says the device is intended to “be placed on your table, shelf, or bedside to create a harmonious ambiance and absorbing experience.” Indeed, the lamp simulates the relaxing sensation of watching ripples appear on a placid lake.

Orbt is a set of convenient writing instruments, specifically ballpoint pens, that minimize their environmental impact by avoiding single-use plastic and promoting reusability. Inspired by the geostationary orbits revolving around the earth, Orbt is designed to, quite literally, stay around the user for years. The iconic Reuleaux Triangle shape of the stylus and its magnetic stand’s matching profile nudge the user to place the pen back in its home, preventing misplacement, use after use.

SARAPOSO is a speculative company that increases access for international migrants to source, cook, and eat from their 'home' cultures while residing in a new locale. First-year student—and self-described urban international migrant—Margarita Zulueta was inspired to create SARAPOSO based on her own experiences.

Bonding is a mental health consultant platform for Chinese seniors suffering from depression, and for their children who want to support them. Joey Hang Yuan designed the app as part of his MFA thesis, which focuses on redesigning experiences to keep older adults engaged in social relationships despite the digital divide.

Imagine solving pet accidents at home by building your own DIY electronic device. First-year student Jingxuan "Susan" Zhang set out to do just that when she designed NoPeeNow to correct her cat's bad behavior. Using Arduino and ultrasonic sensors, the product detects where a cat is peeing and creates noise to frighten them away from that area, thereby changing the undesirable habit.

The Aquarius is a speculative seasoning controller designed to curb salt and oil overuse for better health. The precise bottle design allows the user to only pour out the recommended daily amount—not a drop more. First-year student Gaoming Lyu says her product design started with a traditional Chinese recipe, the tomato scrambled egg. "It's a favorite dish that my parents often cooked during my childhood," she explains. "I noticed that the flavor of this dish began gradually changing, becoming much saltier than before. I discovered that my father was adding more and more salt with each passing year." This experience in her family's kitchen attracted Gaoming's attention to how people's tastes become heavier as they age—a significant issue as salt intake in China is confirmed to be among the highest in the world.

Oasis Market is an online grocery service that delivers affordable, fresh food to residents living in food deserts. First-year student Stephen Joyce says his speculative company's solution to food apartheid involves combining empathy with economic relativization, investing directly into the communities they serve. "We seek to be an authentic and homegrown voice in our city, and we believe strongly that our primary duty is to our community, not our investors."

First-year student Anne Keating created SafePub, a speculative project that commits to women and vulnerable minorities’ safety. Prioritizing the well being of women and LGBTQ+ individuals, the project envisions a network of allies in the form of pub owners, staff, taxi drivers, and local law enforcement.

Have you ever wondered about those little “do not eat” packages of silica that accompany many shipped goods? That’s desiccant (from Latin, to “make thoroughly dry”)—widely used to absorb moisture from the air and reduce the humidity inside sealed containers. Desiccants are typically made from non-biodegradable materials like silica, but first-year student Qiting Fang reimagined a more sustainable solution. Tea Waste Desiccant is a speculative company aiming to transform tea leaf waste into natural desiccant and replace common non-biodegradable silica desiccant worldwide.

First-year student Zekun Yang’s Living Pixels light frame was recently featured on the Arduino Blog. The article opens with, “As smart devices become more ingrained in our everyday lives, it’s perhaps only natural that we start to think of them as living things. What if such gadgets actually did have personalities and emotions that we as humans don’t ever see?” Zekun’s Living Pixels project illustrates this idea in luminescent style, as a picture frame that shows a static pattern of lights when anyone is nearby. When people aren’t present, and the device is left alone, it displays a range of emotions on its 16×16 LED matrix—from sleepy, relaxed, and even angry.

TRIGG≠R is a digital product suite that addresses language dissonance by translating American political terms in conversation. Created by first-year students Margarita Zulueta and Stephen Joyce, TRIGG≠R focuses on contested phrases to bridge the language divide through educational translation via an app and plugin.

Frubo is a fruit bowl with a modern aesthetic and a hidden agenda. Masquerading as a simple piece of home decor to store fruits and vegetables, Frubo creates a space for the user to store fruits that they want to consume immediately on the upper platter, and fruits that they would save for another day in the bottom portion of the container. Frubo is designed to live everywhere except the kitchen, with the intent of treating fruits the same way that we treat flowers: as pieces of beauty to be enjoyed at the height of their bloom.