Edward M. Kennedy Institute

More than ever, young people are raising their voices on issues they care about. From Extinction Rebellion to FridaysForFuture, there’s a worldwide movement of children getting involved in activism. This new generation have opened our eyes to the power of children’s voices – showing us that they should be our role models. They’ve made it clear that for human life on Earth to continue, we all need to make big changes.

Art museums have long served as epicenters of cultural heritage, human experience, and social gathering. In recent decades, however, new competition for our time and attention has arisen in the form of arcades, malls, and home theaters, not to mention a never-ending stream of digital diversions. Celebrating its 100th year, The Minneapolis Institute of Art rebranded itself as Mia seeking to reengage the public with its world-class permanent collection and world-traveling special exhibits.

LoopLoop is an interactive music toy for Sifteo cubes. LoopLoop uses hyper- minimal visuals and rich, smile-making sounds to let anyone make music without knowing a thing about music. Because of the Sifteo cubes' 1.5" screen, it might just be the world's smallest music sequencer. Stimulant was the only third-party design and development agency engaged by Sifteo to create a launch game for the Sifteo Intelligent Play platform.

FiDO is a circular physical interface connected with a mobile app, which is a plug-in to different semi-autonomous vehicles. FiDO collects driver data and traffic information to give personal recommendations. Consequently, drivers can provide active feedback by rotating FiDO during their drive. This entire process is represented in purple and blue gradients to communicate what the vehicle is processing.

Sharks are majestic creatures that have, unfortunately, received a bad reputation. The Shark Sense VR exhibit was designed to challenge visitors to aquariums to see the world from a shark’s perspective and discover just how incredible these animals are. Based on the principles of experiential learning – the understanding that we are all able to better grasp concepts, and learn and retain information when we experience things firsthand – the experience is designed as an immersive virtual reality game.

SWYP (See What You Print) radically simplifies printing by giving you the ability to see and manipulate, in a 1:1 scale, what the finished result will look like before you print. The underlying idea is that many common problems, including the wasting of time and paper, could be fixed by making all aspects of the printing interaction more natural, predictable and understandable.

Vochlea is a revolutionary project to enable easy capture and expression of musical ideas. Expressing an idea is all about converting a thought into something that can be communicated to and understood by someone else. When it comes to music we are all capable of composition in our head, but few of us are able to outwardly express this music.

Iuvo is a kit of stand-alone smart modules, sensors and actuators that perceive their layouts and physical configurations and compile parts of the code. It supports creatives in designing and prototyping interactive artifacts.Iuvo is a tool designed for creatives without a background in coding or electronics. It is a further step towards the abstraction of prototyping boards currently available in the market; circuits and textual code are replaced with snap-fits and visual programming.It is a physical product and also a service where the projects created are automatically updated on the web and available to other users. Thus the content is generated continuously and everyone can benefit from other people's achievements.People can start learning through a system based on hands-on activities, rewards and challenges.Using Iuvo, anyone with an idea of an interactive project has the opportunity to make it by combining existing projects in a smooth and straightforward way. This said, it is still possible to start from scratch, using the visual language provided that can be directly manipulated in the browser-like editor.It aims at facilitating makers in developing their ideas by providing a learning experience rather than a learning experience rather than a technological tool.

FRICKbits is a self-quantification application that reveals the art hidden within your daily patterns. The result of a collaboration with data artist, Laurie Frick, FRICKbits tracks your everyday movements, expressing them as unique and personal data portraits.

Expressive Wearable explores clothing as a communication tool. This project imagines a scenario in which clothing expresses the wearer’s attitude directly without the concern of adhering to social conventions.