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Design-a-thons

Divergent Perspectives. A Portfolio of Ideas.

A Design-a-thon is a high-energy 72-hour sprint in which cross-disciplinary student teams from across campus tackle your real-world challenge through the InnerLab's Discover → Define → Develop → Deliver double-diamond process, generating a portfolio of fresh humanity-centered concepts, based on primary and secondary research/se and delivering multiple prototypes.

Megafires Challenge Studio Session

What We Offer

  • Phase 0: Challenge framing, participant recruitment, and logistics
  • Phase 1: Subject Matter Expert talks, context-setting, and participant onboarding
  • Phase 2: User research, stakeholder and journey mapping, problem reframing
  • Phase 3: Rapid ideation, prototyping, mentor feedback loops
  • Phase 4: Pitch session, judging, and synthesis
  • 25–75 cross-disciplinary students organized into teams of 4–6
  • Subject matter experts and community stakeholders as mentors and judges
  • Design Lab program lead, facilitators, and operations team

What You’ll Leave With

  • Summary report: key themes, insights, and opportunity areas for users, stakeholders or communities
  • Concept portfolio: all team submissions with highlighted directions
  • Event documentation: photos, artifacts, and recorded presentations

 

City Robotics

The Design Lab teamed up with MIT Media Lab to bring together scientists, engineers, designers, and policymakers to reimagine urban mobility through a human-centered lens. Participants explored how autonomous and intelligent machines could be designed to prioritize the human experience, enabling more creative, productive, and sustainable ways to live, work, and move through cities.

Pepper Canyon 

In 2019, over 250 students, faculty, government leaders, and transit riders formed 32 interdisciplinary teams to reimagine the incoming Pepper Canyon station as a dynamic multimodal mobility hub. Supported by 50 mentors from academia, industry, and government, participants spent two days developing plans and prototypes to improve connectivity across UC San Diego's campus.

Want to know more? Email us at dlab-innerlab@ucsd.edu

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