In Spring 2011, the US was mired in recession, the Arab Spring was just beginning, and there was an ongoing nuclear crisis in Japan. This project asks students to use design to engage with the world by creating a design artifact that responds to one of those topics in a design medium that the student wants to explore further.

Nicole Ryder responded by designing a museum exhibition:
I created a museum exhibition piece that would hypothetically be displayed in a museum on American history 100 years from now. The piece gives information on four areas of the recession: gas prices, unemployment rate, the decline of the worth of the dollar, and the affect on the American people. The following is the description of the exhibition:

The year is 2111. Times have change; the world is a much different place than it was 100 years before. A museum opens a new exhibition on American history.

She used Sketchup and Illustrator to create the actual exhibition and animated it using a combination of Sketchup and After Effects.