Every year, the freshman cohort at the Iovine and Young Academy collaborates to design and build a mural. For Cohort 11, our theme was The Future of Mobility, sponsored by Honda. We explored how mobility shapes our daily lives and imagined how it might evolve: faster, smarter, and more personal.

The mural features illustrated landmarks from our hometowns and represents how innovation connects us across distance and culture.

Titled The Future of Mobility, our mural spans 9 by 14 feet and was created using Procreate and Expo markers. Beyond its visual storytelling, the piece incorporates an interactive technology component.

We engineered a physical screen mounted on a motorized track that travels along the mural's illustrated roads. As it moves, the screen pauses at each student's avatar, prompting personalized content to appear on an adjacent display screen. This added a dynamic, exploratory layer to the mural, allowing viewers to engage with individual narratives in a meaningful way.

The project required a combination of illustration, storytelling, mechanical design, and programming to transform a static piece into an interactive experience that reflects our shared vision of connectivity and progress.

Now installed in the Iovine and Young Academy, the mural invites students, faculty, and visitors to engage with both the artwork and the stories behind it.

The moving screen reflects the very concept of mobility, making the piece not just something to observe, but something to experience.

Through this project, we learned how to merge design and technology to tell stories that move, literally and emotionally, and how to turn a creative vision into a collaborative, functional installation.