Department Blog
Department news, events, and snapshots of student life at SVA in New York City.
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Rollling admissions still open! 〰️
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"Yawnie": The Smart Alarm Clock Makes You Yawn (and get to bed)!
Yawnie is a smart product that helps people develop good sleeping habits. Designed by Products of Design students Roya Ramezani and Ziyun Qi and Interaction Design student Nic Barajas, Yawnie tracks users' sleeping conditions and reminds them to go to bed on time by triggering them to yawn. Yawnie capitalizes on the notion that yawning is contagious, and uses it to help improve the sleeping habits of its user.
FINDING NORTH: Marrying Physical and Digital to Process Emotional Trauma
Products of Design MFA graduate Oscar de la Hera’s thesis, Finding North, plays at the intersection between Western, “social interventions”—such as help from friends, family or professionals—and Eastern, “introspective interventions”—such as yoga or meditation. The work aims to help individuals who have recently suffered emotional trauma transition to a more hopeful, happier, and healthier state of mind.
IN FLUX: Identities Under the Influence
In Flux, the master’s thesis of Isioma Iyamah, is about how we communicate our identities, both verbally and non-verbally. It’s about the myriad ways we create and conceptualize our spaces, using language and behavior to structure, categorize and tell our stories. And it explores the patterns of behavior that frame our social identities.
HERE, THERE & ELSEWHERE: A Design Journey Around Travel and Place
Here, There & Elsewhere is a masters thesis project about the experiences of travel and place. Leila Santiago was born and raised in São Paulo, Brazil, one of the largest and most complex cities in the world. There she trained as an architect and urbanist, studying the built environment and the complexities of the urban space. In the midst all of that, Leila also learned that the urban space "is a place for playing."
Orator: A Karaoke Platform for Public Speaking
Fear of public speaking is often cited as the most common phobia, outranking even the fear of death. As Jerry Seinfeld famously quipped, “That means that the average person at a funeral would rather be in the casket than giving the eulogy!” At the same time, the ability to express oneself clearly and confidently in group settings is highly valued and admired. To confront this dilemma, designer Julia Lindpaintner created an application called Orator: karaoke for public speaking. Conceived as a way to make the art of oration accessible and entertaining, Orator gives people the opportunity to improve their own speaking by imitating great rhetoricians of the past and present.
MASTERS THESIS: Uplift: Happiness & Communication in the Context of Cancer, by Berk Ilhan
Berk Ilhan’s master’s thesis, Uplift, addresses the quality of life of cancer patients—identifying opportunities that cultivate joy and happiness, and strengthening the support group around the patient. Based on his hypothesis that, through design, joy and humor can positively change most experiences—and inspired by the revolutionary physician Hunter Doherty (popularly known as “Patch Adams”), advocate of humor, fun, and love in healthcare—Berk’s work re-imagines hospital and outpatient experiences beyond conventional boundaries.