RISD Grad Thesis Exhibition 2017

Each year, RISD's graduating master's students from all disciplines convene on the Providence convention center to display their thesis work. The exhibition is always expansive in scope, true to the diversity of the 16 graduate programs at RISD.

This year, the graduating M.I.D. students displayed work encompassing commercial, responsible, experimental, and discursive design. Projects included, among others:

• a line of discursive clothing that allows wearers to express cultural values while addressing what it means to be a person of color in America today

• a series of personal ‘digi-chanisms’, inspired by biophilia and pocket accessories, to help young veterans transition out of military service into civilian life

• a suite of products for young parents and toddlers to help them navigate the double transition of parents returning to work and children spending time in new environments

• a framework to help digital (smart) objects be more mindful of the effects their presence have one us so they can interact with us more meaningfully

• a series of interventions to ease both patients’ and their companions’ mental and physical stress while they are in emergency waiting rooms

• a line of apocalyptic home furniture

• a connected fitness device that untangles the social motivators from the social discouragers in a fitness experience

• a connected service with digital devices to help us strengthen our closest relationships when living far from loved ones

• a series of devices that recapitulate historic communication technologies, like smoke signals or the telegraph, as a way of exploring how objects mediate human interactions

• a series of daily objects combined with realistic human features that make geometrical and indifferent things more enjoyable and intuitively functional