Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Design for Living and Dying
A semester-long custom studio in the Parsons Transdisciplinary Design MFA, ran annually over four years. On average, fifteen graduate students with select undergraduate seniors participated per studio. Pedagogy was developed by two full-time faculty and the partner.
This studio considered and explored design interventions for individuals and institutions to shift the perspectives and practices that reflect our relationships with illness and mortality.
Students learned to engage empathic design within complex systems not from the role of “problem solver”, but as “experience strategists.” By developing and then engaging a set of design principles and tactics drawn from a reframing of the opportunity space, students set a stage for re-envisioning the experience of disease and dying as we know it today.
Select Transdisciplinary Design MFA students were engaged through internships and upon graduation received full time jobs in the Design Innovation Group within Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
Hum is a service designed to create moments of meaning and connection for patients and their core circle of caregivers, through meaningful activities that create new rituals and bonds.
Tibby is a series of dolls in six custom cases that teach a child about life’s transitions. Through imaginative co-play between parents and children, Tibby is vehicle for fostering better communication about life’s most difficult and most important topics.
The Caregivers Journal is a tool that aims to assist caregivers in their journey of taking care of a child with cancer, especially in hospital-home transitions.
To learn more visit the course website: https://designforlivinganddying.com/