[Joint Post] DesignPlus by Ellie F. '28

A super cool and awesome first-year learning community ft. Gloria and Teresa (we're not biased)

May 26, 2025

You can now read this blog on the Morningside Academy of Design (MAD) website here: Designing a First Year at MIT

First year MIT students are given the choice of several types of faculty advising. There’s traditional advising, a non-credit option in which advisees simply meet with their advisor several times a semester; advising seminars (for credit), which combine weekly exploratory classes with normal advising; and learning communities, which are more specialized, community-based advising “teams.” There are currently four options for learning communities: Terrascope, Concourse, Experimental Study Group, and DesignPlus.

We’re here today to talk about DesignPlus, or D+ for short! As the name suggests, it’s oriented around design, and is overseen primarily by the Morningside Academy for Design (MAD). Through mentors/advisors, workshops, speaker talks, and community events, students learn about all types of design and related fields and bond with fellow classmates. There’s also an emphasis on making and designing actual things, and students gain various maker skills and guidance in personal projects. We (Ellie, Teresa, and Gloria) are or were all part of DesignPlus, and it’s had a big impact on our MIT experiences so far, in different ways!

ellie:

Making things, feeling objects assemble in my hands, seeing beautiful lines flow from my pencil, is so insanely addicting. I never built anything technical in high school, but in my senior year, I dove into an endless whirlwind of crafting, learning crochet and origami, and constantly sketching in all my classes. Still, when it came time to rank my choices for first-year advising, I kept hesitating. What if I wasn’t good enough for DesignPlus?

I ranked DesignPlus first anyway, and, despite lingering fears of not having enough skills or knowledge to fit in, I was completely thrilled to join the community. In the very first meeting, I was already sipping away at the free bobas and helping fold origami modules. I soon got a shop orientation, and Bill, one of the shop managers, trained me on various tools and machines, including both laser cutters, the 3D printers, a CAD software, and the sticker printer.

The DesignPlus schedule mostly consists of two things: community-wide lunches, and seminars. We had free, catered lunch every Thursday, with speakers from different fields and companies sharing their incredible stories while we ate. Afterwards, I’d spend a free hour relaxing in the lounge, working on psets and chatting about people’s various projects. Seminars, on the other hand, differ from person to person. Each seminar had about 10 to 20 people, and they each worked on different projects. I was in the fine metalworking seminar with Rhea, where we’d spend an hour and a half every Tuesday learning to saw, anneal, solder, and polish sheets of metal to turn them into beautiful rings.

My final project :) Sterling silver cat ear ring

The pearly white color is a heat patina from soldering the ring!

Later on in the semester, I started working on more projects in the DesignPlus space. Bill trained me on the CNC embroidery machine, and I used it to embroider a design onto a shirt I had thrifted. Afterwards, I started working on a gift, which was a project we were encouraged to design and create over the course of the semester. I drew out patterns for a big chicken plushie, derived from a few I found online. I’d spend whatever chunks of free time I had in the DesignPlus lounge, cutting out paper mockups and iterating over my designs. When I was done designing, I migrated to the fabric arts room, where I used the free fabric and pins and needles and thread to finish my project.

chiken

DesignPlus encapsulates one of my favorite things about MIT: its spirit of creativity and creation. I am surrounded by people who love making and trying new things. Instead of being scared to ask for help, I feel encouraged to do so. I am provided the skills and resources I need to turn my designs into reality. Through DesignPlus, I have become so much more confident in my identity as a designer, builder, and maker.

gloria:

I was in DesignPlus in my first year! It was the fall of 2022, the second iteration of the program. Admittedly, I didn’t go to a lot of the events that year because I had a class conflict with the weekly seminar time; outside of designated event times, though, I spent a lot of my own time just hanging out or working in the D+ lounge space. I absolutely love that lounge space—besides having one of the most comfy couches on campus (many a nap has been taken there), it’s also just a great community space, filled with other members’ projects, materials, and scraps. It’s a sort of organized chaos, really encouraging experimentation and play, and I love chatting with other people there about their ongoing projects, ideas, and general design-related thoughts. I also appreciate that it’s available as project storage space for D+ members; it’s so convenient not having to lug around bags of materials and partly assembled contraptions.

Here’s a wide shot of the lounge! The stuffed humanoid shape hanging from the light is a sculpture project some people and I worked on for a club :)

Picture of a some sofas in the design plus lounge

…and a close of the lovely couch.

Here’s the shop kitchen, where you can make espresso, cook, and take advantage of the well-stocked Design+ snack selection!

Being part of DesignPlus also gets you tap access to the MAD fabrication shop overall (on the 3rd floor of building N52), which includes a whole range of machines, from metal laser cutters to sewing machines to CNC routers. Bill and Chris, the shop managers, are so helpful and always willing to show you how to use a machine, and they also put in the underappreciated work of making sure everything is functional and safe for shop users. This semester, I started working as a shop monitor, and it’s been fun to guide people around the shop and answer their questions.

This is the main workshop area, with table space, 3D printers, hand tools, and an electronics bench.

This is the laser cutter room, with two huge general-purpose cutters as well as one that can cut metal! There’s also an SLS printer in here (basically a super fancy 3D printer that doesn’t need print supports).

This is the sewing and textiles area, featuring sewing machines, sergers, and plenty of table space. There’s also a loom and a heat press, just out of frame.

And here’s the photo room, where you can take nice photos of completed projects! There are a lot of other small rooms and areas in the MAD shop, but these are the ones I use the most often :).

I can’t overstate just how important this space has been to me in my three years on-campus so far. On one hand, it’s a really great place to work on personal projects, with all the machines/tools available and storage space. On the other hand, and more importantly, it’s kind of like a hub for a lot of architecture and design-affiliated people on-campus. I feel like every time I go to the MAD shop/ Design+ lounge, I run into someone that I know, see a cool project in-progress, or learn a new skill, and I’ve come to treat the shop as a third space or second home on-campus. In my opinion, the most valuable aspect of DesignPlus for me has been how it’s introduced me to the broader architecture/design community at MIT, in no small part due to the lounge and MAD shop access :).

teresa:

I was also in DesignPlus my first year! To be completely honest, when I was filling out my choices for advisors/seminars, I didn’t really know the distinction between a learning community and traditional advisors. I didn’t take as much time as I probably should have mulling over all of the descriptions for the various seminars, so I kind of ended up choosing DesignPlus on a whim. However, I can say that was one of the best decisions I made as an incoming first year student!

DesignPlus is where I first met Gloria, as well as many of my other maker friends. It’s also how I got to know my first year advisor, Paul, as well as many of the other staple inhabitants of the MAD space, like Bill, Chris, John, etc.

Being surrounded by so many incredible peers and mentors has been really important for my growth — not just as designer, but also as a student in the ecosystem of MIT, and eventually as a mentor myself. DesignPlus is its own little self-sustaining microcosm of MIT. In it, I’m constantly made aware of how design reaches across all corners of our studies, from computing, to engineering, to life sciences, to business, to humanities, and more.

The summer after my first year, I had the opportunity to work with DesignPlus to experimentally modify the curriculum, and this interdisciplinary nature was the basis of DesignPlus’ founding, and the basis of the new structure. It’s because DesignPlus was so new and dynamic that we were able to implement a new format where students are sorted into interest-based tracks. Each student was paired with an advisor — across varied disciplines — and were able to receive more guidance on how design can be applied more specifically to their field of interest.

DesignPlus is still a very malleable, active community, and it has been really cool to see how it has grown and changed shape over my three years with it.

Here are some random photos from my camera roll taken in or around the DesignPlus space—I’ve stayed in touch with the community even after my first year!