Department Blog
Department news, events, and snapshots of student life at SVA in New York City.
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QUEER CHINA: Diminishing the Tension Between Chinese Queer Youth and Their Families
Through her thesis, Queer China: Diminishing the Tension Between Chinese Queer Youth and Their Family, Xuan set out to design interventions that bring comfort, provide support, and facilitate both personal and political conversations for Chinese Queer Youth and their families.
THE MOTHER LOAD: Owning Motherhood and Offloading Burden
Carly Simmons’s thesis, The Mother Load: Owning Motherhood and Offloading Burden, aims to redistribute the burden and responsibility typically held by women and mothers to other individuals in their social network. In her research, Carly engaged with over two dozen new mothers who expressed feeling an absence of community support during and after pregnancy.
NO DO-OVER: Designing Lives Without Regret
Tzu-Ching Lin’s thesis, No Do-Over: Designing Lives Without Regret, uses design to help people live with their regrets in peaceful coexistence. Through speculative product designs, an app, and a public experience, Tzu-Ching’s thesis provides tools for attaining perspective and making better decisions, in order to live a life of less regret.
SMALL BUT CERTAIN HAPPINESS: Finding fulfillment in a Low Desire Society
For his thesis, Small But Certain Happiness: Finding Fulfillment in a Low Desire Society, Runshi set out to create simple but delightful experiences that reduce the pressures in the day-to-day lives of Chinese youth who feel incapable of achieving goals in their careers and personal lives, so much so that they have been called the “low-desire society”.
UNAUTHORIZED PLAY: Design Provocations for Children in Crisis
Sophie Carrillo’s thesis Unauthorized Play: Design Provocations for Children in Crisis is a year-long exploration on the potential benefits of implementing more play into children’s lives, particularly for children who are growing up in adverse environments. From her research and conversations, two key ingredients of play emerged: risk and agency. This insight launched her into an exploration of what makes kids feel empowered and fearless. Sophie envisioned several design interventions within the play spectrum, ranging from entirely child-led ones to ones directed by schools and parents.
DENSITY IS DESTINY: Designs for Shared Experience in the Coming Age of Autonomous Vehicles
In his thesis, Density is Destiny: Designs for Shared Experience in the Coming Age of Autonomous Vehicles, André Orta envisions a future of optimized ride-sharing, where increasing the density of passengers per vehicle not only alleviates systemic issues like traffic, but also enables new community spaces to flourish inside the driverless, shared vehicles of the near future.
ALEXA, HELP ME BE A BETTER HUMAN: Redesigning Conversational Artificial Intelligence for Emotional Connection
Evie Cheung’s thesis, Alexa, Help Me Be A Better Human: Redesigning Conversational Artificial Intelligence for Emotional Connection, interrogates the status quo of the artificial intelligence (AI) space, and suggests pathways to use intersectional thinking to imagine new applications for the technology. Her thesis intends to help people connect with themselves and with other humans, through interventions that use conversational AI and natural language processing.
ATTAINABLE: Designing for Academic Engagement Through Sports and Exercise
Micah’s thesis, Attainable: Designing for Academic Engagement Through Sports and Exercise, uses methodologies from sports and exercise as a design toolkit to encourage academic engagement in students. Micah designed interventions that provide students with increased focus, communal support, and career opportunities.
PUBLIC SPEAKING ANXIETY: The Environments That Make or Break Us
As someone who has suffered from public speaking anxiety her whole life, Eugenia Ramos decided to face her fear and treat her condition as a case study and a personal challenge for her thesis, Public Speaking Anxiety: The Environments That Make or Break Us. She designed a set of tools that help people improve their communication skills, overcome the anxiety caused by public speaking.