​​Imagining the Future of the Barbie Dreamhouse Studio challenged a team of interdisciplinary ArtCenter students to envision innovative forward-thinking ways of reimagining the iconic Barbie Dreamhouse for 2022 by responding to the cultural and societal needs of children around the world while creatively predicting how people will live, work and play in the future.

Students explored the dynamics of play as essential in childhood development through research, noted speakers, and observing focus groups interacting with the current iteration of the Barbie Dreamhouse. Drawing upon their own childhood experiences with toys and games, students imagined how the Dreamhouse could evolve to expand the concept of what home will mean in the future.

Through field exploration, ideation, and prototyping, students thoughtfully considered how Mattel could update the Dreamhouse to create a toy that’s fun to play with and will act as the trend maker of tomorrow, incorporating the possibilities of home in the future as well as encouraging the hopes and dreams of all children.

“So many people wondered about the social impact of this TDS. Barbie and Designmatters? Yes! I see this TDS as a brave and bold endeavor. I am so excited and energized by every brand going through DM now. This reminds me of the book “Responsible Company” by Yvon Chouinard who writes about the experience with Patagonia. While the impact can be what we do, you and I in our daily lives, but the more real impact happens in our role as workers and producers. The Mattels of the world — that’s where we will make a difference. Chouinard says that most of that difference, about 70 percent, happens at the design level. So it’s here, in places like Los Angeles, where we can steer that ship to have a positive social impact in the future. I am so excited.”

– Sherry Hoffman, Faculty Director, Designmatters

All images used with permission from Anna Wahlgren.

The Girl Effect Studio

In the fall of 2014, Designmatters and ArtCenter’s Product Design department collaborated with the Nike Foundation, Yale School of Management and fuseproject to address the challenge of empowering adolescent girls living in poverty around the world.

Student teams on both coasts built on existing everyday practices and developed social impact design ideas for income-generating and time-saving tools and techniques that would be widely accessible, radically affordable and could be used intuitively by girls in diverse cultures all over the world.

In this innovative studio, ArtCenter’s commitment to global social and economic justice reflected the Nike Foundation’s belief that adolescent girls can play a crucial role in solving the toughest problems facing the world. When a girl living in poverty has the chance to reach her full potential, she isn’t the only one who escapes the circumstances she was born into. She brings her family, community and country with her. This is called the Girl Effect.

The “Girl Effect” Studio challenged student teams to develop an ecosystem of access to tools, products, and services, with integrated scalable and sustainable business models and strategies. The focus of the studio was to create innovative, affordable and accessible physical assets that are currently not available to girls living in poverty.

ArtCenter students were teamed with MBA students from Yale School of Management’s Design and Innovation Club who offered concurrent strategic integration to the proposed design concepts during the ideation, development and making phases of the studio. This unique and collaborative pairing informed the design students’ understanding of the rationale behind developing viable business models. Meanwhile it also allowed their business counterparts to gain a deeper understanding of the iterative ideation and prototyping design processes necessary to bringing new products and services to life.

Among this studio’s many impressive outcomes was Flo, an inexpensive cleaning, crying and carrying kit for reusable sanitary pads. Flo, which was spearheaded by Product Design student, Mariko Iwai, went on to garner great media acclaim and a prestigious gold IDEA award.

“We approached the brief and the challenge in the same way we always do: by looking beyond the obvious and creating something unexpected with a rich context, story, and purpose”

– Sherry Hoffman, Faculty Director, Designmatters

Communicating the Wellbeing of a City with Santa Monica challenged ArtCenter students to work alongside Santa Monica civic leaders and other community stakeholders to translate the City of Santa Monica’s pioneering Wellbeing Index into innovative transmedia design campaigns that would communicate a shared understanding of the community’s strengths and needs, encourage collaboration among city leaders and local organizations, and improve a collective sense of wellbeing for all citizens of Santa Monica.

Employing wellbeing data results and field research, student teams designed, constructed and tested conceptual campaigns in real-time with real residents. Teams had immediate feedback to retool and iterate on their concepts. Students drew upon the knowledge of Santa Monica experts to help guide them to create captivating, connective and resonant campaigns for residents of Santa Monica.

Since the conclusion of the Communicating the Wellbeing of a City with Santa Monica studio in April of 2017, the two final projects, SAMOpoly and Santa Monica Community Portrait have been implemented at several community events in and around Santa Monica.

“What really impressed me about this studio was that it was very engaging, multi-dimensional, and structured, but it also gave us the chance to share our knowledge and to learn from the fresh eyes of the students. Co-creating was really exciting for us. The process energized us; it was fun! We never could have imagined an Awkward Family Photo or a Board Game. This creative engagement had such unexpected, delightful and smart outcomes.”

– Julie Rusk, Chief of Civic Wellbeing/City Manager’s Office

There is no physical place further from the margins of human experience than Mars, and yet, in a matter of decades humans will travel to, and colonize the Red Planet. In this studio conducted at Woodbury School of Architecture, students explored the future of the colonization of Mars through the lenses of three private space exploration brands: Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin and SpaceX . While government agencies are likely to make science and research their primary objective for visiting Mars, these corporations are likely to be more interested in aspects of space tourism and exploration to entice future travelers.

Borrowing the tools that marketing professionals use to establish a brand’s essence and attributes, students explored how travelers will withstand not only its harsh environmental conditions, but how the human psyche will cope for extended periods in confined interior environments 140 million miles from home. They were asked to address and propose design solutions for the more intimate issues of life on Mars, those which are perhaps more critical to the success of the human race becoming an interplanetary species, and to tie these solutions back to the missions and values of their given space brands. Critical spatial design challenges included the necessity for privacy and social interaction; prevention of claustrophobia and isolation; maximizing opportunities for daylight, passing of time and seasons; mood maintenance; and connection to both Earth’s and Mars’s version of nature.

Students worked to build the familiarity of the home planet into an alien landscape using form, light, technology and materiality. Design for Mars ultimately served as a provocation: a challenge to current contemporary design issues, and its interaction with psychology, human need, society structures, climate, technology, and ethics here on Planet Earth.

Lara Hoad and Todd Erlandson, Senior Lecturers, Woodbury School of Architecture