Industrial and Product Design Commons^™

Smora: Breath As Memory, Pratikesh Pundkar

Masters Theses

Smora: Breath as Memory explores smell as a medium for memory, presence, and emotional communication in a world dominated by visual and audio stimuli. The project investigates olfactory interaction through multisensory design, proposing a tangible product system called Smora Cassette that captures, stores, and shares scent memories. Grounded in user research, expert interviews, and material prototyping, Smora speculates a future where smell reconnects us to the truth of lived experience, offering a poetic yet grounded alternative to AI-generated realities.

Evolving Design Critique For A Changing Industry, Sejin Hwang, Amy Ai, Leo Bang, Yuchen Chen, Kathryn Chen, Tiffany Chang, Stephen Jiang, Chloe Jo, Eileen Lee, Nicole Lu, Ray Liu, Kevin Wei, Elaine Zhang, Ellano Zhou

Student Work

This class serves as an exploratory practice in response to existing studies evaluating critique environments in the design industry. Previous studies identified three key limitations in the critique process: (1) a lack of experience for novice designers working with non-designers when reviewing their work, (2) an ineffective final review structure, and (3) a need for a more constructive and engaging feedback-sharing environment.1 To address these challenges, the course was designed to “critique” critique activities and develop strategic solutions to transform the way design work is reviewed, analyzed, and critiqued. The course was part of a pilot fall semester program called …

Modern Tools, Ancient Skills: An Attempted Dialogue Between Ai, Design And Traditional Craft, Paolo Cardini, Juan C. Noguera

Tradition Innovations in Arts, Design, and Media Higher Education

This study explores the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) tools in traditional craft practices, focusing on Guatemalan artisans. The research investigates how machine learning, specifically generative AI platforms like OpenAI’s DALL-E and Midjourney, can bridge the gap between traditional craftsmanship and contemporary design methods. Guatemalan artisans were trained to use these AI tools to generate design ideas, which were then translated into three-dimensional bronze door knockers. The study analyzes the impact of AI on the artisans' workflow, creativity, and business, highlighting both the challenges and benefits. Results indicate that AI can streamline the design process and inspire new creative directions, …

Dimensional Dialogues, Farida Abousteit

Masters Theses

Dimensional Dialogues, a multi-installation series, offers us a place to interact with language in a way that is whimsical and transcends our need to understand and comprehend language. We remove the tensions of language barriers by finding beauty and personal connection to typography, now scaled up to a human scale and reacting in real time to our movements. A process begins from ancient practices of designing Arabic Calligraphy, to creating Graphic Outputs of that calligraphy, to technologically heavy and new works in creating 3D models of these works that can be projected and respond to human movement. These installations, in …

Dimensional Dialogues, Farida Abousteit

Masters Theses

What does it mean to be, hear, interpret and understand language? And does it truly matter if we don't? This work explores linguistic translation and mistranslation, through the exploration of three-dimensional and interactive spaces that to create an opportunity to interact with language as an visual and felt environment; rather than language on a page or the spoken word.

When we stand next to typography, next to language, scaled up to a human-sized presence, do we find an immediate kinship and warmth towards it? Do we find ourselves more captivated and intrigued?

I believe that when we encounter the unfamiliar …

Less Water, More Holy: Tools For Sustainable Ablution, Faheem Khan

Theses and Dissertations

Prayer is an important part of life for many people, whether it takes the form of meditation or talking to God. Muslims pray five times a day, and before each prayer, they first clean themselves by performing ritual ablution (wudu). The eight-step purification process of wudu cleanses the body from head to toe. The Hadiths of Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim tell us the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ needed just one mudd of water (650ml) to complete wudu, but most people consume many times that amount—four-to-seven liters is more common today.

To visualize and better understand the nature …

Thinking And Designing With Design Thinking, Ahmet Can Ozcan, Yasuko Takayama

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

Design Thinking is a popular phrase especially for the last ten years penetrating into the discourse of management and design, business and academia in many ways. The contributions in the form of articles, commentaries and reviews in this MGDR Design Thinking Special Issue show us the examples, how and where we can use Design Thinking especially as an integral part of the design process. The area of design is expanding in diverse ways lately and sometimes it is causing the confusion such as Design Thinking is either a magical design tool, or another buzzword destined to go extinct after inevitable …

Redefining Sustainable Potential In Product Design, Alex Lobos

Presentations and other scholarship

Sustainability in product design is not determined only at the creation of an object; it can be acquired over time, just like a product that was designed with sustainability in mind is misused and underappreciated. Designers need to redefine how products and systems are created, and users need to reevaluate their relationship with them by engaging in sustainable behaviors at multiple points of their lifecycle. This paper introduces a categorization of products based on their ability to solve user’s needs and to minimize environmental impact across the lifecycle. Categories range from sub and ephemeral products, which don’t even serve relevant …

Introduction To Creativity: A Lecture And Curriculum Framework For Students Who Identify Themselves As Creative, Miriam Kelley

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

This project focuses on the creative person, process, product and press- the 4Ps of creativity as articulated by Rhodes (1961). A curricular framework was developed with an emphasis on enhancing the abilities of those who already identify themselves as creative, specifically undergraduate Freshmen and Sophomores looking to study various fields of Design at the university level. The objective of the framework is to not only identify the innate processes that may have led these students to identify themselves as creative- thereby choosing their major- but also to allow them to recognize, improve and be deliberate in those processes, to enhance …