For Ellen Rose’s thesis, The Aha Movement: The Creative Process at Work, Ellen delved into an exploration of how design might be used to foster a team’s collective creative practice. She saw an opportunity to design products and services that cultivate creativity in the workplace based on the fundaments of trust, resilience and the chance for coincidence.

In his thesis, Closer Kin: Building Stronger Family Environments by Design, Kevin Cook explores how children’s outcomes could be improved by strengthening family relationships. Kevin argues that for children facing adversity, products promoting positive socio-emotional validation in the home could make children more resilient, allow space for healthier development, and ultimately reduce future inequalities.

For his thesis, There and Never Back Again: Design in the Next Age of Space Exploration, John Boran Jr. designed for “a future that is still far enough to be exciting, but close enough to design for: going to Mars.” John designed practical tools as well as products that addressed the emotional wellbeing of travelers to, and inhabitants of, Mars.

As it does in the physical world, violence against others occurs in VR spaces. While designers may not be able to expunge this from human nature, Phuong Anh Nguyen believes that we can design tools for victims to gain agency over their harasser. Through her thesis Power Play: Designing for Agency and Empathy in Virtual Environments, she aims to introduce empathy-building products and experiences to shape respectful behaviors in current and future virtual environments.

In his thesis, Before you click: Design for Better Decision-Making in Online Shopping, Zihan Chen examines the problems of product design in online shopping, to provide online shoppers with tools of various kinds for making better purchasing decisions. His thesis explores interventions that make online shopping less impulsive, more mindful and more social.