Type of Work: Environmental Design, Presentation Design
Fall 2016I teamed up with two other students at the University of Notre Dame to enter the 2017 Walt Disney Imagineering’s Imaginations Design Competition. The competition is a way for undergraduate students and recent graduates to showcase their talents and for Walt Disney Imagineering to identify new talent. After submission, our project became the sole property of Walt Disney Imagineering and all rights to use these ideas are exclusive to Walt Disney Imagineering.
For the 2017 competition, participants were given an exciting challenge: apply the same design principles used in creating Disney’s famous theme parks, resorts and immersive experiences to develop new outdoor spaces within their own college or university that could address the diverse needs of students, faculty and visitors while also providing a respite from the stresses of everyday life. Solutions must be presented in an eight-slide presentation.
I collaborated with Erin Foldesi, and industrial designer, and Jewel Malonza, an anthopology student with a minor in collaborative innovation design, to create the Looking Glass. We did extensive campus research through surveys and personal interviews to determine what type of respite would best fit into the busy lives of Notre Dame students and faculty. Our results showed students and faculty do not have time to go out of their way to rest and would benefit from spaces that provide brief mental respite while walking across campus. The Looking Glass responds to the needs of students and faculty by incorporating technology and “Disney magic” to create an immersive, adaptive, and reactive space for mental relaxation.
Our team was a semifinalist in the competition and our submitted presentation, which shows our research and solution, is shown here.