Art Center Media Design Students’ “Design for UNICEF” Showcased in New York

Art Center Media Design Practices graduate students, in collaboration with the College’s Designmatters social impact department, were in New York last week, showcasing groundbreaking projects that feature insights from design research and prototypes created at the UNICEF Innovation Lab in Kampala, Uganda. The event was part of “Design for UNICEF” last Thursday, March 28, 2013 from 10 to 11:30 a.m. at the UNICEF House, located in the Danny Kaye Visitors Centre at the United Nations.

The seven students’ projects grew out of a partnership between Art Center’s MDP graduate program and the UNICEF Innovation Lab aimed at addressing issues of sustainability, access and equity. Faculty members Chris Csikszentmihalyi, Sean Donahue and anthropologist Elizabeth Chin head up the team. The student cohort — Jeff Hall, Maria Lamadrid, Judy Toretti, Betsy Kalven, Elizabeth Gin, Jacob Brancsi and An Mina — made multiple visits to Uganda and immersed itself in a broad range of issues challenging the country’s youth.

The cutting-edge program works to develop new methods and technologies that will help advance the efforts of UNICEF. Among the design-oriented solutions the students are developing: ways to empower youth through enhanced connectivity and data transfer; prototypes to expand women’s access to digital technology; and new spaces and tools for dialogue around topics such as nutrition and women’s rights.

“Thinking through making immerses students in works about ethnography, colonialism and post colonialism. They also delve into political economy, feminism, structuralism, post structuralism and other theoretical perspectives,” Chin told MetropolitanMag.com. “Key to this approach is taking the time to immerse ourselves in the culture and context as much as possible, rather than coming in with an idea of what needs to be done.”

While the overall goal of the MDP research is to strive for dramatic innovations and new technologies, there already have been suggested improvements that can make an immediate impact. For example, the students’ research revealed that women and girls are deterred from using Internet cafes in Uganda due to their male-dominated environments. As a result, UNICEF plans to redesign approximately 100 Internet cafes to address this issue. Additionally, UNICEF will begin revising aspects of its U-report system, which enables free speech via SMS technology.