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.

Gummy Bugs is a delicious fruity treat made with real bugs. Students Jiani Lin, Juho Li and Louis Elwood-Leach created these edible treats as a way to get highly sustainable and nutritious foods into children’s regular diets.

The Water Token Project is a cryptocurrency basic income program designed to create a more equitable distribution of water. Outlined as a policy proposal for the state of California—a notoriously problematic and overextended watershed—the Water Token Project would use an array of machine learning algorithms to constantly recalculate the gallon-value of a water token on a monthly basis and sustainably distribute these tokens to corporations and citizens alike.

For a long time, when Doug Fertig heard people talking about wanting to live a healthier life, he perceived a problem: the conversation would focus on building better habits around diet and exercise. Through personal experience and research, however, Doug knew that this was only part of the solution. Taking into consideration the fact that one in four people will suffer from a mental health issue in their life, he argues, "'making healthier choices' are not choices that are simply healthier for our body, but rather also healthier for our mind."

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.

As part of SVA Products of Design’s partnership with Veterans Affairs (and held through the Design Research and Integration class taught by IDEO’s Lawrence Abrahamson), designers Smruti Adya, Bernice Wong, Lassor Feasley, Juho Lee, Christopher Rand, and Kuan Xu designed a number of solutions to improve women veterans’ experience in three different areas specific to visiting the VA Hospital: Transportation to the hospital; Wayfinding once in the building; and Pre-appointment communications.

Building on the findings of over 20 first-person interviews with VA staff and discharged veterans, the group surfaced three principal insights: The first is that there is an opportunity to facilitate better communication between veterans—veteran-to-veteran. The team learned that information around the transition to civilian life, and around the available veteran services “is perceived better when it comes straight from a veteran,” the team argued. “Veteran-to-veteran creates a much stronger bond, and the ‘young veteran’ is more likely to pay attention and communicate interest when the information comes directly from the source.”

As part of SVA Products of Design’s partnership with Veterans Affairs (and held through the Design Research and Integration class taught by IDEO’s Lawrence Abrahamson) , designers Jiani Lin, Alexia Cohen, Teng Yu, William Crum, and Antriksh Nangia used design to examine gender and the military—creating two design proposals aimed at changing the way people “see” women veterans.

With over 2,655 bike share stations in 65 cities and 90,000 active commuters across the United States, bike commuting is an undeniable trend—but the market caters almost exclusively to men. Versi is a fashionable, durable, and versatile piece that can go "from wheels to work" in an instant.

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.

“At first, it was hard for us to relate to our target audience," comments Souvik. "But we quickly realized that underneath the sometimes strange behavior of denimheads—whether that was soaking their jeans in the bathtub in lieu of washing it in the washing machine to avoid losing too much indigo dye in their jeans, or participating in denim world tours where jeans would be sent around the world to be worn by different denimheads for a month at a time—there was an underlying theme of commitment to sustainability and authenticity...values that we could very much relate to.”