2,893 Inspirational Passion Project Ideas
Turn inspirations into your passion project.
This collection of project ideas, shared by Polygence mentors, is meant to help inspire student thinking about their own project. Students are in the driver seat of their research and are free to use any or none of the ideas shared by their mentors.
- AI/ML
- Animation
- Arts
- Biology
- Biotech
- Business
- Cancer
- Chemistry
- Cognitive
- Computer Science
- Creative Writing
- Dance
- Dentistry
- Economics
- Engineering
- Entomology
- Environmental Science
- Ethics
- Fashion
- Finance
- Game Design
- Healthcare
- History
- Illustration
- Languages
- Linguistics
- Literature
- Math
- Medicine
- Music
- Neuroscience
- Nutrition
- Organizational Leadership
- Philanthropy
- Philosophy
- Photography
- Physics
- Psychiatry
- Psychology
- Public Health
- Quantitative
- Social
- Social Science
- Sports Analytics
- Statistics
- Surgery
Genre "Rehash"
Take an existing game/genre, analyze its mechanics/emotional experience, and try to recreate it. This could be a straight one-to-one recreation as practice for your own benefit, or it could be attempting to put a unique "spin" on the genre to make your own game! This is a great way to begin a game dev career as you have an existing "end goal" to work towards, and you will be able to learn how the game's developers decided to build the game by making it yourself.
Music, Game Design
Build an AI clone
Let's train an AI to mirror a specific style, such as the work of Mahatma Ghandi, or your chat history. We will gain experience collecting training data (which may be stored in hard-to-access forms such as chat logs or PDF's), training a machine model using this data, and potentially even deploying it somewhere. Along the way, we will learn how to use language models to interrogate the data that we trained it on. An example is this project I worked on, where we trained a language model to write like an Instagram influencer: https://www.instagram.com/myfriendsylvia/?hl=en
Arts, AI/ML, Game Design
Game Pre-Production
Working with a small team to begin a multi-month/multi-year game project? Not sure how to best structure the development cycle or how to organize a team? Not sure even how to even start? As I spent my graduate career and this past year post graduation building several small games in small teams, I can help to structure your team to work most efficiently, and keep every member feeling happy with the project. Of course, during this process we would also analyze your team's game from a design perspective throughout the project to try to make it as engaging and unique as possible!
Music, Game Design
Game-User Experience Research Study
Explore the field of human-computer interaction (HCI) and games user research (GUR) with a small research study that you design. We'll go through forming a research question and hypothesis, designing a qualitative and/or quantitative experiment, collecting and analyzing data, and writing up a report. This could even result in a scientific publication! Some example research questions could be: - How can game developers avoid unhealthy, "dark", and exploitative patterns of game design? - Are games becoming more open to LGBTQ+ topics? - What do players think about moral systems in games?
Cognitive, Game Design
An interactive timeline of modern art
How can we visualize data that is messy and intertwined? The modern art era--a period that spanned approximately one century-- is full of brilliant diverging and similar ideas. This project deals with how to create an interactive visualization that allows viewers to understand the general timeline as well as dig deeper to see trends in art styles and show how art periods and artists inspire one another.
Music, Computer Science, Game Design
Design a new building for your city!
What challenges does your city face? Housing, healthcare, gentrification, public policy, recreation, racism, education, technology, design, climate change? Many of these concerns are integrally related to architecture and can either be worsened or improved by the buildings and the infrastructure that surrounds you. In this project, you will use your own immediate surroundings as a way of investigating the unique challenges faced by your area both now and in the future. The process of identifying these problems will help improve your skills in research, critical design thinking, and futurist speculation. Perhaps most importantly, this project will force you to formulate a tight “how might we” research question that strictly defines the scope of your work and interests. This determining question will then be paired with a desired project outcome that directly addresses the question. In this second phase, your initial research will be deployed towards a specific format of outcome that will give you the opportunity to learn new hard skills such as 3d software design, Augmented reality filter creation, speculative mapping, or academic writing. For example: How might a new city bill address the effects of climate change in our downtown? Outcome: Research paper + public policy proposal How might a new STEM building in our high school improve students’ technical literacy? Outcome: Building design in 3d software How might we improve public awareness of the architectural legacies of racism in our city through social media? Outcome: Instagram AR filter How might we visualize the economic and population shifts happening in our county to better plan for new development? Outcome: Speculative Map
Fashion, Game Design
Create a prototype Game!
For this project, I will work with you to bring your idea for a game to fruition. I can teach you the fundamentals for game design, how to appropriately scope a game project and work with game engines to develop the application. I can also teach some fundamentals of game art and code, and help you to create something that is portfolio ready for your personal website.
History, Game Design
Creating Player Investment through Character Dialogue
(This is inspired by an independent study I did during my master's program.) The average gamer is only truly invested in a video game for the first 30 minutes of gameplay. Does character dialogue contribute or detract to that player experience? Does the player need to be an active participant or do they prefer to be a passive observer? Using narrative scenes featuring two or more characters, I will gauge multiple player factors for liking characters (such as what character archetypes players gravitate towards, and how to establish character arcs for players to take interest in).
History, Literature, Creative Writing, Social Science, Game Design
Integrate Computer Science and Art
Are you an artist with an interest in coding? Discover how to use the power of Processing to create dynamic computer-generated art and visualizations.
Computer Science, Game Design
Create a 3D Photogrammetry Model and Design a game around it!
In this project, you will have the chance to build your digital skill set and create a 3D model using photogrammetry and then design a game scenario using that model. All you need is a smartphone or digital camera and access to a computer, and we can determine the rest from there! Depending on the scope, we can focus the project on the model and document or expand it to include a prototype application. Your research outcomes will include the model, a design document, and gaining experience with photogrammetry and 3D modeling software, game engines, technical writing all of which can go into your portfolio! I am happy to work with you on any ideas you may have, and I can specialize in suggesting projects focused on digital humanities or cultural heritage.
History, Game Design
Design-Based Research: Creating a (Very Small!) Game
Developing games can be research too! Through design-based research (DBR), you can make a game that has educational value, or a game that helps players contribute to science (called citizen science games), or even just a game that does something unique that hasn't been done in a game before! Making a game is a usually a huge undertaking, so this project would have a very small scope and focus on time management, workflow, design, and iteration, with a proof-of-concept outcome. Some example game ideas could be: - a puzzle game about practicing algebra - a citizen science game about identifying birds - a game you play with your toes - a story-rich game about OCD - a party game you can play on Zoom
Cognitive, Game Design
Language for Logic-based AI Expression
The goal of this project is to develop a programming language explicitly for expressing artificial intelligence over logical search problems. The student would learn about core AI and language design before applying it to construct a language backed by a logic solver.
Computer Science, Math, Game Design
Develop your Portfolio
For most art / design schools, admissions are competitive and a strong portfolio can be a key requirement. I have maintained a design portfolio for more than 10 years, and have gone through many iterations and discovered the key components they need to have to be: 1. Relevant and specific to your career objectives 2. Simple and easy to navigate through 3. Thorough, showing your entire design / thought process I can help you not only design and curate your portfolio but suggest the kinds of personal projects that will round it out and give you a competitive edge.
Game Design
Design an Educational App
If you have an idea for an educational app I can guide you on the design process from discovering user needs through research, generating design requirements, creating low-fidelity mockups, usability testing with users, and creating high-fidelity mockups that can be handed off to engineers for development.
Game Design
Type System for Units of Measure
The goal of this project would be to explore a type system for units of measure (e.g. meters vs feet) in a beginner-friendly setting. The student would learn about formal type semantics before applying these ideas to expressing this problem in conjunction with prior research on the topic.
Computer Science, Math, Game Design
Create a graph database from unstructured data
Journalists and social scientists are turning to NLP to understand complex relationships among documents and the entities they reference. An example is a story I worked on for WIRED, for which we built a graph database out of Twitter posts, and used this to discover mistakes in Twitter's disinformation policy. https://www.wired.com/story/how-americans-wound-up-on-twitters-list-of-russian-bots/
Arts, AI/ML, Game Design
There is an app for that!
If you have an idea for an app, you can create that. Learn to design and create an app from the idea to share it with family and friends. App development will occur using MIT's App Inventor or Code.org's App Lab.
Computer Science, Game Design
Let's make a game!
We'll discuss a realistic scope, design practices, project management, finding free resources, and publishing your game.
AI/ML, Game Design
Write a Research Paper on Digital Methodologies
For this idea I can help you find a particular digital method in the humanities or game design and research how it is being used in academic fields, and how it could be theoretically used. How does Virtual Reality work in a psychology class? Are there ways that AI could be used more effectively? Whatever method you choose, I can help guide you to find resources and tools to create a written product that you can submit to journals for your field of interest.
History, Game Design
Design Web Sites for Impact
Learn to design a website from scratch with beautiful design and a social impact message. Learn how HTML, CSS, and Javascript work together to create websites.
Computer Science, Game Design