Our first NuVu Exhibit at the MIT Museum was a big success. The exhibit took place this past Sunday and showcased student work from the eight Fall studios (Nanotechnology, Fusion Energy, Space Mining, Film Fiction, Envisioning Now, Future of Global Warming, Energy Computing Design, and Alternate Worlds) that were themed around “Science Fiction.” The event was attended by over a hundred people and the place hummed of excitement over all the amazing creative explorations embarked in the Fall studios. Students were scattered around the exhibit floor, talking with parents, friends, faculty, kids, museum-goers and others, about their concepts and visions behind the projects. The Solar-power Car was on display, and their was plenty of music and sweet apple juice provided by the pedal-powered Intergalactic Alignment Juicer. The event also premiered a short documentary produced and filmed by a few NuVu students based on the students’ experience at NuVu.

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NuVu invites you to our Fall exhibit at the MIT Museum on Sunday, December 5th, 10:00-12:00. The event will be showcasing student projects from the Fall trimester that was themed around “Science Fiction.” Come explore students’ work on possible futures and alternate worlds. There will be products, films and an autonomous, solar-powered car on display as well as some fresh apple juice made by our pedal-powered Galactic Alignment Juicer!

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NuVu Coach S. Adrian Massey III summarizes the final project for the Envisioning Now studio:

Envisioning Now is a design studio about lifestyle visionaries who manifest their comprehensive re-imagining of society through mass production. The work of these visionaries meet unmet needs and fulfill unseen styles. Envisioning Now is a two week approximation of the processes used by product designers. These processes include brainstorming, sketching, specification, manufacturing, and marketing.

The final project was to design a fantasy context and novel product for a researched occupation that is able to be manufactured now. The deliverables for the project were a questionnaire and answers, occupation research, a vision board, design iteration, design specs, a model, a storyboard, and an infomercial. The students were first directed to research their self-selected occupation. From this research, they constructed interview questions with an emphasis on being concise and investigative. The occupations that were selected were a symphony hall director, detective, cardiologist, architect/urban designer, and a rocket scientist. After they conducted their interviews they began their iterative product development processes. Please note that the students very roughly learned these processes the first three days of the course.

Here are the infomercials each of the teams produced from the Envisioning Now design studio.

The Music Note by Annie Kellogg & Nora Demick:

Here are the infomercials each of the teams produced from the Envisioning Now design studio.

SurgAssist by Carli Jaff & Olivia Dynan:

Here are the infomercials each of the teams produced from the Envisioning Now design studio.

Hestia by Abe Gobel & Grace Brescia:

Here are the infomercials each of the teams produced from the Envisioning Now design studio.

Oculusspy by Tiah Camillo & Joseph Randles:

What do you want to do with your energy? And, how long do you want to do it? These were the first two questions the students were asked as they began the “Energy Computing Design: Music, Toys, Art, & Life Processes with Integrated Systems” studio on Monday. Studio coach Ryan Wartena explained the criticalness of asking these questions in order to bring intentional energy into everything we create and do. With this frame, each one of us is able to practice energy responsibility and be aware of how we use energy each day. As Ryan explained, the first question determines system Power and the second question determines the design parameter for the Energy. By being more aware of our energy requirements and using local renewable energy, we can then design energy systems that are self-sustaining, balanced and in harmony with the life processes of nature. Read the rest of this entry »

Normally, when we think about the history of a technology, it’s in a straight timeline, and the important points are the first inventions. But this studio is all about how technology doesn’t move in an inevitable straight line. “Progress” is misleading: different groups of people have different desires and interests and make choices about what they want, choices that affect how technologies evolve, just as organisms adapt to their environments.

The challenge of the day was to use visual representations to show the evolution of particular technologies or products under social influences. The music player team originally started with a straightforward timeline that had the original iPod culminating in the latest Nano. But over the course of the day they developed a chart showing how a product line diversified to meet the needs of different groups—kids, businesspeople, athletes, trendsetters—and how not even this was inevitable, as Apple added and removed features as it experimented with what worked and what didn’t. Sometimes what worked was very old: Apple took their inspiration from the Regency TR-1, a small transistor radio that was many decades old.

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