Undergraduate Work - Felicia Ferrone

UIC Bachelor Design (BDes) in Industrial Design

The UIC BDes is an intensive four-year degree program that provides a professional education centered on a specific design practice. Balancing the practical and the visionary, the UIC BDes focuses on the expertise of design making as it seeks to advance the strategic role of skilled designers through design thinking. Deeply engaged in the human experience and grounded in studio culture, undergraduate students are taught to engage with Industrial Design as a creative discipline that makes ideas tangible and as a complex practice that involves conceptual and material articulation of objects and processes.

Felicia Ferrone currently serves as Director of the Bachelor of Design in Industrial Design.

Undergraduate Course Development

DES 230 Industrial Design II

This studio furthers the knowledge of the design process through focused exercises emphasizing formal aspects of design, product semantics, and understanding design through making and specific fabrication materials and methods. This studio focuses on the object itself: What does it do? What does it communicate? How do objects convey ideas? The shape, volume, surface, and color of an object constitute its overall visual aesthetic and can communicate its use, utility, significance, meaning, and value. Studio projects focus heavily on the analysis, study, exploration, and refinement of 3D form, and engage students in a variety of methods for producing iterative 2D and 3D study models and prototypes. In parallel to this practical work, students are introduced to relevant theoretical approaches through reading and group discussions.

Brennan Gudmunson, 2017 Design Intern at Lunar Design

DES 318 Typography III: Dimension

This course is the third in a required disciplinary sequence for graphic design students. It explores physical dimensions of typography as a medium and resource for graphic design applications. Three dimensional objects and environments are constructed, then translated into two dimensions.

Felicia Ferrone was invited by the Director to work in collaboration with Sharon Oiga, Professor of Graphic Design, to advance the unique material-based components of Type III. The resulting interdisciplinary approach integrates advanced 2D and 3D design methods. The students employ both analog and digital methods for design development in the classroom and in the Fabrication Laboratories, which include laser cutting and 3D printing technologies. The course culminates with a student-designed exhibition.

DES 420 IXD: Exploring Entrepreneurship at UIC

DES 421 IXD: Exploring Entrepreneurship at UIC

The spring semester course aims to create a master plan, roadmap, and institutional tools to foster and support entrepreneurship at UIC, consolidating previously explored entrepreneurship opportunities for students, faculty, departments, colleges, and the greater Chicago community.

Students develop their concepts in the spring semester to foster entrepreneurship connectivity and activities at UIC. Students further develop skills in design thinking, tools, and methods and the value of working in interdisciplinary teams. In addition, students develop skills in presenting work to the sponsor and stakeholders.

Felicia Ferrone co-developed and co-taught course curriculum with Computer Science faculty member Mark Hallenbeck.

DES 420 EXD: Entrepreneurship

EXD (interdisciplinary entrepreneurship) provides a year-long immersion in the practice of entrepreneurship. Throughout the two-semester, interdisciplinary course, student teams engage in research, problem finding, idea generation, design, marketing, operations, and finance. In the first semester of the course, students aim to develop a cache of opportunity areas, form teams around mutual interest areas, and develop business concepts through rapid iteration cycles. Before the end of the semester, teams will make idea selections and engage in product prototyping, target market definition, formation of value propositions, sourcing of manufacturing (or implementation) partners, and creating business model presentations that document the testing of assumptions and outline steps for further development. The pedagogy of the interdisciplinary student team in this course focuses on cross-training rather than discipline specialization; lectures on design, engineering, and business principles are delivered to students across all disciplines with the expectation that all students engage with concepts and to varying degrees of execution of activities across fields.

While the course involves traditional lectures, discussions, and in-class presentations, student teams are required to develop relationships with stakeholders outside of the school environment to conduct primary research, as dictated by project topics, and to collaborate with partners where outside resources are necessary to realize ideas and/or validate hypotheses.

DES 470 Industrial Design Thesis I

Research: Critical, Consumer, and Craft

Students are directed to use the three lenses (Critical, Consumer, and Craft) to develop and frame a research topic. Directional ideas are generated and refined as students work through rough prototypes and conduct tests within each of the three investigative lenses. This process is designed to provide an opportunity to develop and articulate a specific focus within the discipline of industrial design, and to use it as an entree to the profession. Upon completion of DES470, students will have established a thematic approach and developed a broad understanding of their topic as they head into their project work.

DES 471 Industrial Design Thesis II

Project: Flip, Family, or Further
Second-semester instruction guides students in two cycles through a realization of their thesis research. Cycle 1 begins by selecting one of the three lenses explored during the research phase and advances that work through a detailed exploration of form and function. Students additionally consider the broader contextual impact (i.e. cultural, societal, political, environmental). Cycle 2 is designed to then Flip (upend the approach), Family (extend the platform), or Further (advance the concept) as they work toward the final production of their thesis project.

Through this two-semester process, student designers learn to establish and articulate a position, exercise, and experiment with developing design skills, evaluate their work from various lenses, and aggressively and imaginatively advance their work into a final form of skills they will need in preparation for a professional career.

Work by Undergraduate Students

Audrey Opfer, Kache, 2023

Hoarders have difficulty parting with things they believe they might need at some future point in time. Clothing is particularly difficult to discard. As hoarded clothing accumulates, the amount of useable space becomes more limited. The functionality of seating is especially vulnerable to growing clothes piles. Having identified the intersection between hoarding habits and furniture design, Kache embraces tendencies unique to hoarders and explores how their strategies of organization (piles, generally) can be put to good use. By reframing what a pile may be, Kache transforms excess clothing into upholstery, which, in turn, gives way to a functional, aesthetically pleasing, and decidedly low maintenance chair.

Aidan Buckley, Footwear for Nurses, 2023

For nurses to perform their duties effectively, proper footwear is crucial. Their jobs are physically demanding and often lead to foot-related health issues. Unlike professional athletes who have access to a $130 billion dollar global athletic footwear market, nurses lack customized footwear that caters to their specific needs. Having conducted a range of interviews with nurses, footwear specialists, and designers in the healthcare industry, I identified four critical criteria for the development of footcare for nurses: breathability, cleanability, support, and wearability.

Hannah Day, Leona, 2021

Leona The Leona container is a user-centered design that focuses on the cleaning process and storage for a reusable menstruation cup when on-the-go. Leona addresses the amount of menstruation waste created by the overconsumption of disposable period products by making menstruation cups more convenient for a woman’s on-the-go lifestyle; and redresses current menstruation habits and reduces the amount of reliance the industry has on disposable period products. Leona rebels against disposable menstruation products and makes the menstruation cup much more appealing and convenient.

My product is named after Leona Chalmer, who designed the menstruation cup in 1937. The Leona container is designed to make cleaning and storing the menstruation cup easier and less messy. This elegant, simple, and efficient design makes rinsing the menstruation cup in a public bathroom much simpler. The average menstruator will have their period for around 38 years, spending an average of 65 days a year dealing with it. In that time, a single menstruator will throw away around 8,000 to 17,000 tampons. In the US alone, approximately 12 billion pads and 7 billion tampons are disposed of in a single year. Combining the reusable menstruation cup and the Leona container will dramatically reduce menstruation waste and normalize its use among active women.

Alexis Woo, Community Care, 2021

Community Care—a mobile app designed to alleviate the caregiver burden that many family caregivers experience while caring for an elderly family member

Many elderly people prefer to age in place, to grow old in their own homes. This has its benefits: familiar surroundings, community, independence, no moving costs, etc. However, there are also drawbacks: social isolation, degradation of physical and mental health, costly home modifications, etc. One of the biggest barriers to aging in place is the responsibility placed on family members for care and assistance, many of whom are untrained caregivers therefore at risk of suffering from caregiver burden, brought on by the stress of providing care. This often results in a decrease in the quality of care and a decrease in the quality of life for the caregiver. Community Care is a mobile app designed to alleviate the caregiver burden that many family caregivers experience when caring for an elderly family member.

Alvaro Ucha Rodriguez, Better Solutions, 2020

Better Solutions is a collection of accessories designed to create a more personal connection between a shelf and its owners. The idea started as a shelving system design that would incorporate accessories. However, the project would be more impactful if the focus was on the accessories and not the shelving itself. With accessories such as hooks, coin trays, key hooks, and panels, the collection adds functionality to the shelving and allows it to be personalized around daily needs and home layout.

This project’s objective is to extend the life of home furniture by allowing owners to adjust their shelf to the rapid changes in today’s lives. Not only will the shelf become your own workhorse, specifically attuned to your needs, but it will be your own creation. As you have spent time perfecting your system you will never want to leave it behind when you move. Why the Ivar shelf? In its 50+ years of existence not much has changed on Ikea's Ivar shelf. Sold throughout the world, this shelving system is easily Ikea’s most recognizable shelf and Ikea is the biggest manufacturer of furniture in the world, by far.

I am also a fan of Ikea and I remember seeing this shelf everywhere growing up. It was at my aunt’s house in Spain, in my friend’s bedroom in Argentina, my professor’s studio in Chicago, and it’s now also in my house. Ikea’s mission to provide the world with Democratic Design is one that I’ve always connected with but this mission comes with its flaws. A lot of times flat-packed furniture is seen as disposable, a flaw I am addressing with Better Solutions by allowing customers to form a deeper connection with the shelf.

Nina Robertson, Bread, 2020

bread – a family loan system that sets teenagers up for financial success Many of us know the fear of making financial decisions without fully understanding what we’re doing. Most of us would rather “accept terms and agreements” than subject ourselves to reading complex info. However, if we could come into the scene with a little more knowledge under our belts, we would be able to set ourselves up for a healthy financial profile in the future.

bread provides a safe space where teenagers can learn about loan structures before they are financially independent. On this app, teenagers can borrow real money from their family and undergo a simple loan process. The app will introduce concepts that can be muddy, or that sometimes get lost along the way such as loan terms, APR, and credit scores.

At the core of this design is the belief that the teens will be more prone to retain these financial concepts if there’s something in it for them, like the next Xbox. With bread they can enhance their financial literacy and eliminate the fear of complex financial concepts and figures. It aims to raise their curiosity about how money works and maybe even how to make money work for them.