In May, students gathered for the first School of Business design-a-thon—called DesignVerse —created and presented by Design@UCR undergraduate student organization.
A 24-hour competition open to all UCR students, participants were challenged to create a product based on a given prompt and pitched their product to a panel of industry professionals.
“DesignVerse is an incredible initiative that brings together individuals passionate about user interface/user experience—UI/UX—design, providing them with a platform to showcase their skills, learn from industry professionals, and foster a sense of community,” says computer science major Tiana Nguyen ’24, co-director of DesignVerse.
“We planned this event to offer UCR student designers an opportunity to develop a product from a new perspective, one that empathizes with their users. We want to inspire and foster confidence within our community of designers.”
The UCR School of Business’s new INSPIRE Lab houses the Design@UCR student organization, and Assistant Professor of Teaching in Marketing Jonathan Lim and Rich Yueh are the co-advisors for Design@UCR. Yueh and Sanjoy Moulik, both assistant professors of teaching in information systems, are the co-directors of the INSPIRE Lab.
“Students benefit from attending a design-a-thon, like DesignVerse by gaining practical experience, pushing the limits of their creativity, and networking across campus disciplines,” says Yueh. “DesignVerse was open to students from any major who always wanted to create something but may be timid about not having technical skills or a design background. It’s through a collaborative process that students will contribute to the field of design.”
Business administration major Ashley Tsai ’25 is president of Design@UCR. “In our year of planning DesignVerse, we launched our own LinkedIn profile, email, Instagram page, and website. Our UI/UX team worked incredibly hard to design each individual asset for our website to come to life,” says Tsai. “Our public relations team worked on outreach for our event, maintaining communication with other UCR hack-a-thons, engineering organizations, and design clubs from other academic institutions.”
DesignVerse judges were Evelyn Sakura Brokering, senior UX design at Gap Inc.; Antonio Flamenco, senior product designer at Salesforce; Amanda Lo, program director at Develop for Good; and Robin Staley, UX designer at LexisNexis.
Winning Projects at DesignVerse
“At DesignVerse, we had 53 participants, and our six mentors were Design@UCR alumni. We also hosted five industry professional judges, an American Marketing Association speaker series panel of three industry professionals, and two keynote speakers during our opening ceremony,” says computer science major Rania Saber ’24, co-director of DesignVerse.
The DesignVerse winners were:
Global Impact Design track:
FreshEats team: Soumya Agarwal, Vaneesha Singh, Harini Srinivasan, and Angelia Tran
With the event’s Cottage Core theme, Global Impact Design teams were encouraged to design a product promoting an eco-friendly lifestyle. FreshEats team’s winning product: FreshEats mobile app redirecting surplus food from schools and universities to individuals in the community at an affordable cost.
Deep Dive into Prototyping track:
GreenGrid team: Haocheng Mai, Amina Penafiel, Andrew Shim, and Gency Dela Torre
Submissions for the Deep Dive in Prototyping track included high fidelity wireframes and a design that is interactive, functional, and animated. GreenGrid team’s goal: Provide awareness and resources to people interested in composting.
Visionary’s Challenge track:
Scurry team: Kaitlin Ching, Nic Loyola, and Edward Yu
In the Visionary’s Challenge, designs were to accurately reflect visual design principles, such as visual weight emphasis, hierarchy, scale, typography, color palette, etc. Scurry team’s project: The Scurry app allows users to select how long they will be in a specific area and generate a curated schedule with several recommended activities a user can choose from based on their preferences—a way for non-local people to plan leisurely activities.
Beginner’s Design 101 track:
Hopper team: Sahana Anand, Osanna Deng, and Vidhi Tapde
Within the Beginner’s Design 101 track, participants practiced and perfected fundamental design principles.
The Hopper team’s winning mission: Increase the use of sustainable transportation by providing a convenient platform to utilize accessible, eco-friendly transportation alternatives to personal gas-powered vehicles.
Winners received $530 in prizes cumulatively, and the event’s sponsors were AVGPC gaming systems company, Notion AI-powered workspace, Chick-fil-A, Glico food company, Red Bull, Design@UCR, acm@ucr student computer science organization, Figma design company, and Adobe.
“Because participants had just 24 hours to produce a product, they needed to employ time management skills and learn new techniques,” adds Nguyen. “We also want them to understand that asking for help is OK, and that we have mentors, industry professionals, and leads available to advise them in any way they need.
“Most importantly, we wanted the experience to help boost participants’ confidence, creativity skills, and see a different perspective of designing.”
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Header image: participants in DesignVerse and the DesignVerse board.