Sama Srinivas' thesis, Let's Talk Periods: Practicing Menstrual Confidence Through Conversations, creates a variety of opportunities for menstruators and their communities to practice and build menstrual confidence through interventions such as literacy, humor, celebration, and love languages.

Yukti Arora's thesis, Democratizing Bharatnatyam: Investigating the Interplay Between Dance and AI, explores how Artificial Intelligence can bridge the gap in learning Bharatnatyam, a 2500-year-old Indian classical dance form, for today's dancers. Despite over twenty years of training under a renowned dancer since age four, Yukti felt a significant learning gap. Her survey of over 300 Bharatnatyam dancers, ages 18-45, spanning two countries, revealed that 97% shared similar learning gaps, with 92% discontinuing regular practice as they grew older due to various life commitments.

Driven by her background as a designer and inspired by AI's prowess in recognizing patterns, Yukti embarked on a journey to democratize Bharatnatyam. Collaborating with Bharatnatyam dancers and AI experts, she developed a suite of four AI-powered interventions—products, services, experiences, and platforms—to address this challenge and make Bharatnatyam more accessible to all.

In his thesis, Beyond the Right Stuff: Designing for Disability Inclusion in Space, Corey McClelland designed Wearable Anchoring solutions for individuals with mobility disabilities in microgravity environments. Space exploration has traditionally excluded individuals with disabilities. With an increased focus on inclusive and universal design, Corey aims to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to participate in space exploration and research.

Cathy Tung's thesis, Well-rounded: Using Art to Enhance Interdisciplinary Learning, sheds light on the potential of art-integrated education to promote the development of hard and soft skills in children. Cathy highlights that traditional education, confined within classroom walls, can be mundane and unstimulating for children to engage with. Conversely, incorporating resources from art museums as a location-based learning tool can provide an interactive and engaging experience that presents opportunities for interdisciplinary learning. This approach can also address the budgetary constraints public schools face in providing adequate art education, particularly in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated budget cuts.

At Wanted Design in New York City, the Class of 2023 debuted their semester-long group project, RE-ACTORS. Products of Design students present annually at the NYCxDESIGN Festival, and this year was unique since Wanted Design took place at the ICFF at the Jacob Javits Center!

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!

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.

The historical mindset towards people with physical disabilities has been one of pity and exclusion. While the notion of pity and exclusion is looked down upon in liberal societies, an understanding of what constitutes the objectification of people with disabilities, as well as a greater effort towards inclusion, is still not widespread. The voices of people with limb loss and limb differences (LL/D) are not part of an extensive ongoing conversation about their rights, needs and wants. Through her thesis Upgrade, Adya aims to create the conditions that lead to more open conversations about and with people with LL/D and their acceptance in society, as well as easier access to products and services that improve their quality of life.

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.