2015 MDes Students in the Spotlight
While collaboration is at the crux of the Stamps MDes in Integrative Design program experience, there are many opportunities for individual accomplishments and pursuits. Here is a run-down of moments where students from the 2015 MDes cohort claimed the spotlight in their first year of the inaugural program.
A team made up of Kai Yu (MDes '17) and students from U-M School of Information were selected as 1 of 12 finalists in a student design competition at the world's top conference for human-computer interaction: ACM CHI 2016. Together, Kai and his team presented their smartphone-based, assistive technology to improve reading experience and social interactions for low-vision elders.
Kai Yu also collaborated with students from the U-M School of Public Health on an app that helped community health workers optimize activities to improve efficiency and community health. The app took second place at the U-M Innovation in Action competition, a five-month program hosted by the U-M School of Public Health that supports teams in the pursuit of bold ideas that address public health and education problems. During the summer of 2016, Kai is working as an intern at the School of Public Health.
MDes students Aditi Bidkar (MDes '17) and Elizabeth Vander Veen (MDes '17) were profiled by the U-M Center for Entrepreneurship for their thorough investigation into how engineers and designers could improve early collaboration in the ideation process. Aditi has an internship at Philips Healthcare in the Netherlands in summer 2016.
Ji Youn Shin (MDes '17) is currently working on a project with Stamps Assistant Professor Sun Young Park. The two are teaming up to develop a design guide to promote active, direct, and age-appropriate communication to preschool-aged patients with chronic diseases.
Lastly, MDes student Elizabeth Vander Veen (MDes '17) and Stamps undergrad Chris Withers (BFA '17) worked on a team with four other students to create a magnetic zipper replacement prototype called Zip+ for the 2016 U-M Integrated Product Development (IPD) Trade Show competition. This experiential, cross-disciplinary U-M course puts teams of students from Business, Engineering, and Art & Design in a competitive product development environment. The students are graded by how much profit their product makes in online and physical trade shows. The 2016 design challenge was the "One-Handed Household Device." The Zip+ team had the most profitable product in the class, later presenting their product to the CTO of Procter & Gamble, a sponsor of the IPD course.
A top-tier research university, the University of Michigan is uniquely suited to supporting cross-disciplinary design investigations. At U-M, new ideas are nurtured everyday through a culture of collaboration, both within the MDes cohort and with the university at large.