Students Erika Choe and Cheryl Zhang were disturbed to learn that 20% of adopted dogs are returned to shelters each year. “This tough transition not only strips dogs of their sense of safety—it also reintroduces negative stressors and potentially euthanasia.” In response, Cheryl and Erika designed Bowow, a 'Google Translate' app for dog owners to better understand the meaning behind their pet's barks.

Temporary loss of smell, or anosmia, is the leading neurological symptom and one of the earliest and most commonly reported indicators of COVID-19. It can negatively affect many aspects of daily life—most notably eating. “87% of COVID patients with anosmia said they experienced a reduced enjoyment of food,” remark students Sarah Hackett and Cathy Tung, who teamed up to design Chewful, an app providing ‘tailored dining journeys’ to help improve the experience of eating for those without the ability to smell or taste.

Stooping is a long-time New York tradition: someone discards their no longer needed belongings on the stoop or sidewalk in front of their home, and any passerby can salvage the items for free. During the pandemic, first-year student Kaylan Tran noticed that stooping became an Instagram phenomenon with thousands of users sharing their finds. Inspired by this movement, Kaylan created Trove, an app that aims to turn stooping into a fun, treasure-hunting, community-based experience.

First-year Student Jaemin Cho’s AromaClock and Aroma 4D Platform reimagines the use of scent as a triggering device for behaviors that users want to reinforce.

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.

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.”

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.

Theodore Scoufis developed FireLink, an information management ecosystem for firefighters that focuses on the 4 minutes and 30 seconds between receiving the call from dispatch and arrival on the scene. The purpose of the system is to provide firefighters with real-time insight into the conditions of the building they are responding to. Theodore explains that information gathered by FireLink allows firefighters to make more effective decisions more efficiently, which will reduce the threat to civilians, firefighters, and property. FireLink is a bifurcated system of data collection and information dissemination. Data is collected via the data standpipe and disseminated in two main modes: the Command Center tablet application and the helmet-mounted augmented reality heads up display (AR HUD).

37° Lab is a food memory database platform that records and preserves "chewing memories," bringing comfort to people who are living far from home by bridging the distance through sensory experiences. "Just one sip of miso soup brings me back to my grandma's couch," says first-year student and creator Baoqi Ding. "For me, food is an effective trigger of deeper memories containing feelings and emotions." The experience of living far away from home led Baoqi to explore how geographical structures define us and how we relate to them—prompting her to invent 37° Lab.

Eye Posture is a striking photographic series – created by student Chris Rand, to raise awareness of the ill posture that New York City commuters maintain habitually while looking at their cell phones. This series emphasizes the risks of the behavior that people willingly participate in for an average of 2.8 hours per day during their daily commute.

Design strategist and storyteller Roya Ramezani did not feel gender issues in the tech industry before she started working in Silicon Valley—where she found herself in a male-dominated environment in which women were not communicating their ideas. In contrast to the statistics, she joined a diverse team. After a month, however, she discovered something that changed everything: Even when they were equal number as men in the room, women weren’t contributing to the discussions equally. They were being quiet, and she thought of them as “not being present in the meeting room.” Roya’s thesis, entitled Exponent: Amplifying the Female Voices in Tech Discourse, attempts to address these issues using product design, service design design, and platform design.