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Civic Innovation
San Diego’s unique global position and regional resources make it a prime location for transformative innovation. As an anchor institution in the region, UC San Diego has the power to convene civic, industry, and community leaders. The Design Lab advances UC San Diego’s mission to transform our local, regional, and global communities by educating, co-designing, and sharing knowledge and creative work.
The Design Lab’s civic innovation projects have recently included the following:
Mindshifts on Megafires
The Design Lab at UC San Diego, in collaboration with WIFIRE Lab and the San Diego Supercomputer Center, hosted the "Design-a-thon: Mindshifts on Megafires," in 2023 and 2025. These innovative events brought together multidisciplinary teams to tackle the pressing issue of megafires through human-centered design approaches. Student participants, guided by faculty, design professionals, and industry experts, engaged in intensive design thinking sessions to develop creative solutions aimed at preventing and mitigating the devastating impacts of megafires. The events fostered collaboration and innovation, encouraging participants to reimagine strategies for wildfire management and resilience. The Design-a-thons not only highlighted the potential of design thinking to address complex environmental challenges but also emphasized the importance of cross-disciplinary partnerships in generating impactful solutions.
Stories Unsheltered
This interactive installation, part of Bay to Park Paseo, aims to create awareness and host a conversation about the housing crisis in the city of San Diego and the broader region. Stories Unsheltered consists of a mural and statues with voice recordings telling the stories of San Diegans who have experienced housing insecurity. While the physical presence of the installation provides a means to interface with the community on the street, the digital storytelling platform will allow for a more interactive experience. It can be viewed at the front of the Park & Market building in downtown San Diego. Leadership and key team members: Steven Dow, Nivardo Valenzuela, Kristen Ching. Read about this project on UC San Diego Today. For more information, visit stories.ucsd.edu.Democratizing Design
Democratizing Design is a World Design Capital 2024 impact project that envisions a global model to make design accessible and highlight its value in improving life in the transborder region. Led by UC San Diego Design Lab in partnership with The Design Academy and CETYS University, the project focuses on enabling sustainable, accessible, and affordable creative problem-solving to improve life quality and address regional challenges through humanity-centered design. Democratizing Design’s goal is to collaborate and co-design inclusively and develop a "Design Playbook" prototype for a wide range of people, regardless of background or skill level, and measure its impact. Leadership and key team members: Michele Morris, Diana Robinson Trapaga, Joan Gregor, Michelle Woodhouse. For more information, visit ddsdtj.com.Value of Design
Design has proven its economic value, competitive advantage, and contribution to innovation for many cities and countries globally. The focus of the Value of Design project is the demystification of design and illustration of its significant worth in successful innovation and economic growth in our region. Leadership and key team members: Michele Morris, Diana Robinson Trapaga, Joan Gregor, Michelle Woodhouse. Objectives include:- developing key measurements to illustrate design’s economic value for Tijuana/San Diego
- uncovering best practices for design impact internationally
- understanding how the value of design is currently measured in San Diego and Tijuana
- complementing and building upon related work and projects (e.g., WDC Impact Study, Democratizing Design)
- developing appropriate measurement recommendations
- identifying roles that design plays in innovation that drives economic value
Design Forward Alliance
The Design Forward Alliance (DFA) was initiated by the UC San Diego Design Lab in 2016 in partnership with regional design leaders. It was formed out of a Design Lab-led movement in San Diego called Design Forward: Innovation Designed Here. The movement included the inaugural Design Forward Summit, a landmark city-wide event that was instrumental in galvanizing the San Diego design community and bridging a design legacy in architecture, interiors, culture, and graphics with design-driven innovation in technology, civics, and industry. The DFA leverages partnership opportunities and makes connections between world-class design and designers and San Diego talent. The DFA promotes design-driven innovation in business, education, and government.
City Robotics Design Hack-a-Thon for People-Centric Mobility
Recent advancements in autonomous and intelligent machines introduce an unprecedented opportunity to reimagine how people live, work, and play. Mobility—personal or shared, passenger-use or goods-moving—can be designed to prioritize the human experience, enhancing people’s abilities to lead creative, productive, gratifying and sustainable lives. Don Norman and Colleen Emmenegger teamed up with Kent Larson of the MIT Media Lab to bring together leading scientists, engineers, designers, and policymakers to address emerging challenges in urban mobility and to explore new directions for potential futures.Pepper Canyon Mobility Hub Design-a-Thon
On April 6 and 7, 2019, over 250 students, faculty, staff, government and industry leaders, and transit riders assembled under a giant tent in the heart of UC San Diego’s campus for the Pepper Canyon Mobility Hub Designathon. Their mission was to design futures to transform the incoming Pepper Canyon station into a dynamic, multimodal mobility hub, advancing connectivity between the station and the rest of campus. From 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday, 32 interdisciplinary teams of students and community members occupied Warren Mall with plans, prototypes, maps, scooters, and more.
Although the teams competed for $5,000 in cash prizes, there was a sense of collaborative investment in improving everyday life at UC San Diego for generations to come. Fifty mentors connected in academia, industry, and government, with expertise in design, technology, and planning fields, were there to support their work. The Pepper Canyon Designathon was a practicing partnership between SANDAG, UC San Diego Campus Planning, UC San Diego Campus Transportation, UC San Diego Urban Studies and Planning, Young Planners Society, and the UC San Diego Design Lab. The event received sponsorship support from SANDAG. Leadership and key team members: Michèle Morris, Stephanie Sherman, Emily Knapp, Erik Mumm, and the Junior Designer team.
Center for People-Centered Automation
The Center for People-Centered Automation focused on communication and trust with regard to people interacting with autonomous systems. How should an autonomous system communicate with people in such a way that its behaviors and interactions lead human users to the appropriate, “calibrated” level of trust? We must trust our machines the right amount – not too little, and not too much. Leadership: Colleen Emmenegger.
San Diego Regional Proving Ground
This 2018 consortium, in partnership with SANDAG, Caltrans, and the City of Chula Vista, convened to hear updates from Dr. Bernard Soriano, Deputy Director of the California Department of Motor Vehicles, about new state regulations for AV testing and deployment. The public was invited to help shape California’s strategy for public outreach and education on Autonomous Vehicles (AV). The group also heard from state and local law enforcement agencies regarding a Law Enforcement Interaction Plan required for driverless testing and deployment in California and a report on recent market research regarding the public’s knowledge and perceptions of AVs. With this context in mind, the group provided input on California’s strategy for AV outreach and education.