About UMS:
UMS contributes to a vibrant cultural community in Southeast Michigan by presenting approximately 60-75 music, dance, and theater performances and over 100 free educational activities each season. UMS also commissions and produces new work, sponsors artist residencies, and organizes collaborative projects with local, national, and international partners. Housed on the campus of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, UMS is one of the oldest performing arts presenters in the country, committed to connecting audiences with performing artists from around the world in uncommon and engaging experiences. In 2014, UMS was selected as a recipient of the National Medal of Arts, the nation’s highest public artistic honor, awarded annually by the president of the United States at the White House.

About the +Impact Studio: 
The +Impact Studio at the Ross School of Business is a campus hub for impact creators and innovators. Launched within the Business+Impact Initiative in 2019, our mission is to bring impactful ideas to life using business knowledge, design tools, and research expertise. The +Impact Studio encompasses a collaboration space, an interdisciplinary graduate course, a design lab for impact-focused ventures and projects, and workshops and events. Our model activates the vast expertise and research insights from across campus to support the development and launch of powerful, impactful concepts. Our work is inspired and defined by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for a sustainable future free of poverty, hunger, and inequity.

About Play Orbit Studio:

Play Orbit is a multi-disciplinary design studio led by Von Robinson, with decades of experience designing poetic and insight-driven products and spaces, and providing creative direction and strategic design services for a global client base.

Our approach is inspired by Von’s mentor Eva Zeisel‘s motto: “a playful search for beauty”: and we think that beauty is fitness. Our approach to creating products and experiences that fit poetically in the lives of people and fit healthfully in the systems that sustain people starts with deep human empathy, adds in a design-researched understanding and then creatively explores possibilities through a playful iterative playacting/sketching/form-giving process.

We call this process Deep Design.