We Labs

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INDUSTRY:

Service Design

CLIENT:

The New School

YEAR:

2023

EXPERIENCE:

UX/UI, Product Research, Systems Analysis

about.

See It Live

We Labs is a platform designed to reduce material waste in design schools like The New School. Born from analyzing student challenges at Parsons, the project focuses on socio economic issues, particularly the excess from model making, printing, and dressmaking. We Labs serves as a community driven intervention to make sharing materials and resources easy, accessible, and efficient, maximizing both individual and collective creative potential.

challenge.

Design students frequently overbuy materials due to lack of precise needs, leading to excessive waste and financial strain. Valuable resources often end up discarded, despite being reusable. This pattern not only harms the environment but also reflects a broader issue in design education. The key challenge lies in building a system that enables effective material sharing, reduces waste, and fosters sustainable, community-driven practices within academic design spaces.

ideation.

The ideation framework for We Labs integrates open and disruptive innovation to tackle material waste in design schools. Drawing from user journey mapping, it proposes a decentralized, app-based platform that fosters collaboration, material exchange, and knowledge sharing. By organizing features around design sprints, work display, and real-time inventory, the system enables skill development and community-driven problem-solving, embedding sustainability directly into the creative process.

result.

WE LABS. We Labs is an interactive platform designed for design students to collaborate, share resources, and grow skills. It features three core forums: GIG LAB for project and work-in-progress sharing, COLLAB LAB for design sprints and focus groups, and MAT LAB for exchanging excess materials. With intuitive navigation, a clean user interface, and dynamic features, the app fosters creativity, reduces material waste, and strengthens peer-to-peer learning and collaboration within the university’s creative community.