Class of 2023: EDI Thesis Projects
Get an inside look at what each EDI student created for their final Thesis projects.
Each year, students in Northwestern's Master of Science in Engineering Design Innovation (EDI) program take the lessons they've learned and apply them to a topic of their choosing for their Thesis project.
Over the Fall and Winter quarters, students met weekly with Studio Leads Jim Wicks and Amy Schwartz. In the final ten weeks they also worked in small groups with industry mentors familiar with their projects and topics.
Learn more about what each student from the Class of 2023 produced for their Thesis.
Alexandra Andreiu - co
co is a holistic digital platform that helps grieving mothers navigate the experience of pregnancy loss with curated resources, one-on-one peer support, and a community of other moms who've had pregnancy loss. co learns about a mother’s loss story and how she wants to be supported in order to curate an experience where accessibility and personalization do not have to be mutually exclusive.
Autumn Basinger - Uplab
The concept of waste is a human one. Nothing is inherently waste, but it becomes so once we cease to imagine and implement its use. Uplab is a digital community hub that aims to inspire and enable people to reuse and transform furniture so that new value and purpose is gained for what might have otherwise become waste. For those involved in furniture upcycling, or simply intrigued, Uplab provides a set of integrated tools that help people source, visually reimagine, and practically transform used furniture.
Bryanna Benicia - ReMemo
Family stories shape identity, preserve culture, and foster strong familial bonds across generations. However, these stories are often lost over time due to their fleeting nature and the loss of the people who hold them. ReMemo is an engaging tool that preserves family stories and memories by encouraging quality time together and documenting natural storytelling moments. With ReMemo, families can create memories that can be shared and revisited at any time, ensuring they are accessible for future generations to cherish.
Megan Bruneau - Travel Smart
Going on vacation should be fun and relaxing, but preparing for air travel can be overwhelming, especially for those with travel anxiety. Travel Smart is a collection of packing products that integrate with an app to create a stress-free travel experience for users. The Travel Smart bags and packing cubes help travelers pack wisely and stay organized throughout their trip, while the companion app aids in the overall process of preparing, packing, traveling, and returning home.
Stacey Chen - Pretty Perfect
Finding the perfect-fitting makeup is challenging. There is no excellent shortcut to in-person product matching due to the failure of current virtual tools and research methods to match highly personal needs. Pretty Perfect aims to facilitate faster and more accurate makeup research by referencing the experience of similar makeup users. The makeup research app allows shoppers to validate new-to-them products virtually by referencing user content generated by experienced users of the products who match their personal conditions, values, and aspirations.
David Du - AI-DA
AI-DA is an AI-powered application seeking to change that dynamic and foster senses of familiarity and trust through an augmented, optimized UX process. It provides a comprehensive feature set, ranging from content summary to visual contextualization, that addresses the needs of the design team at every stage of the UX process to efficiently produce the most helpful result and complementary output. By leveraging natural language processing and existing AI generation capabilities, AI-DA helps UX researchers and designers save valuable time and effort on repetitive, labor-intensive, non-scalable manual tasks, and to focus instead on more novel, value-added, complex activities that demand human judgment and compassion, thus contributing toward more effective user-centered innovation.
Auston Ferrarer - Future Pathways
The US education system has done little to help students grapple with the decision of what to do after high school, leaving many students beholden to their parents’, educators’, and/or community's expectations of what they should do after graduating. Future Pathways is focused on helping students interested in STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math) deal with this anxiety by providing them with a database of potential pathways tailored to their specific interests as explored within a hands-on design thinking workshop.
David Jelke - Budder
Budder is an app that strives to replicate the most interesting, entertaining, and meaningful conversations you have with your friends by basing the conversation on great content: books and podcasts. Get to know the perspectives of the most valuable people in your life— your friends. Discover common books and podcasts between your friends, persuade them to listen to what you're listening to, and keep the conversations going by connecting with friends of your friends.
Albert Jin - Carnet
Imagine that you are driving down I-90 and notice a pickup truck with a loose item in the car driving in front of you. How can you tell this to the driver safely? Inter-driver communication is challenging and can be easily miscomprehended. Ineffective communication can lead to distraction, road rage, and even potential accidents. In my thesis, I am eager to design a better way for drivers to communicate with each other on the road for a safer and harmonious driving experience.
Youhua Lu - Nailed It
Finding the first professional job is challenging, and it can be even more difficult for introverts. Shy and reserved students often have big ideas but may struggle to express themselves verbally. With Nailed It, introverted students can develop a professional mindset through daily practice and learn to confidently share their opinions on a range of topics, from casual to serious.
Clark Mitchell - Sewcial Hour
LGBTQIA+ adults face a number of hardships surrounding their identity throughout their lifetime. This can be exacerbated in the workplace and seep into their relationships, work, and personal wellbeing. Sewcial Hour is a program that enables LGBTQIA+ adults to feel comfortable in their workplace through feeling comfortable in their clothes. Each session helps individuals exchange and alter work apparel to suit them both in style and fit.
Joaquin Moeller-Luzio - Task Hero
Task Hero helps streamline communication and increase efficiency in your household by providing a centralized platform for assigning, tracking, and completing tasks. In addition, Task Hero offers a convenient way to view other people's schedules. By using Task Hero, families and individuals who struggle with organization can avoid confusion, missed deadlines, and missed pickups, while improving accountability and reducing stress.
Liam Rolle - We Ready
People who live in areas prone to extreme weather events experience natural disasters over three cyclical phases: preparedness, response, and recovery. Despite the importance of preparedness, it is often a journey that individuals must undertake alone and with insufficient knowledge. We Ready is a multi-channel platform that provides and guides homeowners through modifications to their homes based on a combination of trusted indigenous and scientific knowledge. By helping homeowners prepare for inevitable storms, We Ready promotes resilience against the impacts of extreme weather.
Chloe H Saunders - Superpowers Kit
Many parents of young children are beginning to discover that emotional intelligence (EI) is one of the strongest predictors of lifetime well being. Despite this, the EI support resources currently available to these busy families are often overwhelming, disconnected, and difficult to navigate. Superpowers is a monthly educational subscription kit that enables parents and children to build emotional intelligence skills together one step at a time through streamlined, expert information and engaging, age-specific activities.
Annie Thomas - Paper Puppets
Are you looking for a fun and creative way to engage your kids while teaching them valuable skills? Look no further than Paper Puppets, the all-encompassing stop-motion animation kit designed to guide children through the process of bringing stories to life. With easy-to-follow instructions and all the materials they need, your kids will love creating their own stop-motion masterpieces using Paper Puppets. Let their imaginations run wild and see their ideas come to life on the screen while setting them on a path toward a lifetime of artistic expression.
Rita Wang - PetHood
With the COVID-19 pandemic, it became increasingly challenging for adoption organizations to find pets a home, despite the growing need for pet companionship. PetHood is a digital animal adoption platform that connects pet lovers around neighborhoods, making it easier for pets to find stability in home environments and human companionship. The platform provides updated pet profiles, their living situations, and a community of pet lovers who share experiences and advice. PetHood aims to make pet adoption more accessible and convenient by offering a one-stop-shop for everything related to pet ownership near your location, creating a world where all animals have a loving home, equally benefiting pet seekers, adoption organizations, and sheltered animals.
