Lab Notes

Interested in software and hardware development? Apply to be of the first Student Developer program in the Shapiro Design Lab!

A reflection from Design Lab Resident RJ Miles that weaves his experiences in the Design Lab Residency with the music of the Jackson family.

Design Lab Resident Alexis Stanton reflects on her intellectual evolution over the course of Residency program.

Caroline Henderson reflects on her year in the Design Lab Residency and her project exploring the design of, and life in, prisons.

Carolyn Gearig reflects on her year in the Shapiro Design Lab Residency on her project that explores the reception and meaning of journalism to people throughout the state of Michigan.

Rebecca Chung reflects on her experience in the Design Lab Residency and her project, Lead-2-Pixels.

A final reflection from Shapiro Design Lab Resident Maggie Cease on her experience being part of the Residency, and her podcast project, Michigan Time.

Ever since reading Plato’s Symposium and studying the life and works of Gertrude Stein in undergraduate school, I have been obsessed with the idea of cultivating or participating in my own Greek symposium or French salon, a space for academics to express themselves and their research outside of the confines of traditional academia, a community of artists, scientists, intellectuals, where walls between disciplines and positionalities seem to crumble, a space to break bread together and unabashedly share ideas, and a space in which the resources to cultivate and manifest such ideas are made available.

When I think about my time in the design lab, I am struck by all that I have learned about the resources and fields of study at this University. I’m a School of Information undergraduate senior, and the network I am surrounded by at the Lab is the most academically diverse I have encountered in college. Every week, I meet and work with librarians, PhD students, master’s students and undergraduates in an environment where we are all equals who learn from one another.

Throughout my time in the Design Lab, I have embarked upon a journey—a continuation of my quest to better understand various online community spaces and the potential connection between social media and healing. Specifically, I have been interested in how social media impacts Black women’s mental health and well-being, and thus, are Black women potentially curating self-definitions, online, through cultivating healing, affirming, and authentic social media spaces?