Home Products Development at FIT is designed for and by the growing home products industry, and its students are encouraged to think creatively and broadly about solutions to challenges that face the industry and consumers—from toilet paper dispensers to coffee makers to body pillows.
Marc Littlejohn, adjunct instructor in the program, had a framework for the capstone class that focused on a highly creative and collaborative approach for developing products that meet consumers’ ever-changing needs, while also satisfying the growing demand for job candidates with the specific skills that make the program’s graduates excellent hires in the industry.
In this year’s senior capstone class, Annie Hassan, Home Products Development ’24, put the framework to use when she developed her final project, Solariscape (see diagram above). Solariscape uses window curtains with thin-film photovoltaic (PV) cells to convert sunlight into electricity that can power a single-family home. The PV cells are glued onto the back of a curtain with an attached 650W microinverter. The solar cells weigh 100 times less than a traditional solar panel and can generate 18 times more power/kg. The idea, Hassan said, came from the fact that only 5% of single-family homes in the United States utilize solar power; and since her assignment was to develop a product that was not yet in the market, Hassan saw an opportunity.
“This is not necessarily new technology but rather a new product using existing technology, and I knew that I wanted to create something relating to textiles,” Hassan said. “Nothing like this is available in the retail landscape.”
The goal is to contribute a solution to the challenge of incorporating sustainable energy into a home’s power supply. With Solariscape, an appliance could theoretically be plugged into the microinverter—and two pairs of the curtains could potentially provide approximately 30–40% of an average household’s power.
Hassan got the idea when she was interning on the merchandising team at Lichtenberg, a window treatment company. She wanted to combine her love of curtains and textiles with something sustainable and also wanted to use a known technology in a way that it was not yet being used in the marketplace. “I thought about how you can make curtains more functional,” she said. “We had so many classes in Home Products Development—we just used what we learned. All the aspects were there.”
While capstone projects like Hassan’s are not designed to be brought to market, this kind of entrepreneurial creativity is emblematic of the kind of thinking that FIT’s Home Products Development program encourages among its students.
“I believe Annie’s idea and concept could be used across the country in refugee tents, in hospitals, and to help people on government assistance, among other uses,” Littlejohn said. “[Annie] took technology that already exists and pushed the envelope. The thing about her idea is it’s reappropriating existing technologies for the betterment of humanity. If it’s something that is emerging and has an environmental element to it and a global element to it, that’s amazing and can change lives. That’s why I felt this was a wonderful product.”