skip to Main Content

Design-A-Thon: Mindshifts on Megafires

Design-A-Thon: Mindshifts on Megafires

Design-A-Thon: Mindshifts on Megafires

Living in California, one quickly becomes familiar with the images of roaring walls of fire that seem to overtake the news cycle every summer. The dangers of such events are obvious and have come to seem inevitable. But what if there were other ways of taking care of both the environment and our communities? What if there were ways to prevent the disaster, rather than react to it? This Spring, The Design Lab is partnering with The San Diego Supercomputer Center and WIFIRE Lab to help transition our approach to wildfires from reaction to prevention.

The collaboration, a pitch-style challenge titled “Design-A-Thon: Mindshifts on Megafires,” will be spearheaded by Chief Data Science Officer of The Supercomputer Center and WIFIRE founder Ilkay Altintas and Design Lab Program Designer Kevin Popovic. Working together, both institutions have produced an interactive and engaging program that will help members of the general public understand the benefits and safety that come with prescribed burns, as well as the dangers of wildfire suppression and its creation of wildfire deficits. 

The “Mindshifts on Megafires” calls upon teams of innovative UCSD students eager to engage with real-world problems and solutions to come together and construct a convincing pitch, the best of which will be rewarded with a summer internship at The San Diego Supercomputer Center and the opportunity to bring their ideas to life. Students looking to participate can either sign up as a team or individually, those who register as individuals will subsequently be matched with a team. All teams will have access to subject matter experts and materials to aid them as they build their pitches. No prior experience is required, and students of all disciplines and majors are welcome to participate.

The official Design Challenge kickoff will take place this Thursday, April 7th, at 4:00 P.M in room 202 of the newly built Design and Innovation Building. To receive kickoff information, as well as specific details about the challenge, prospective participants are encouraged to register at the event page: https://designlab.ucsd.edu/designathon-mindshifts-on-megafires/

For a full list of Design-A-Thon related dates and events, see below.

Key Mindshift on Megafires dates and events:

  • April 7 @ 4 PM – Design Challenge unveiled at kickoff 
  • April 15 – Registration & design-thinking workshop, lightning talks, and mentor sessions 
  • April 16 @ 11:59 PM – Submissions due
  • April 20 @ 5 PM – Project showcase at Design@Large

Living in California, one quickly becomes familiar with the images of roaring walls of fire that seem to overtake the news cycle every summer. The dangers of such events are obvious and have come to seem inevitable. But what if there were other ways of taking care of both the environment and our communities? What if there were ways to prevent the disaster, rather than react to it? This Spring, The Design Lab is partnering with The San Diego Supercomputer Center and WIFIRE Lab to help transition our approach to wildfires from reaction to prevention.

The collaboration, a pitch-style challenge titled “Design-A-Thon: Mindshifts on Megafires,” will be spearheaded by Chief Data Science Officer of The Supercomputer Center and WIFIRE founder Ilkay Altintas and Design Lab Program Designer Kevin Popovic. Working together, both institutions have produced an interactive and engaging program that will help members of the general public understand the benefits and safety that come with prescribed burns, as well as the dangers of wildfire suppression and its creation of wildfire deficits. 

The “Mindshifts on Megafires” calls upon teams of innovative UCSD students eager to engage with real-world problems and solutions to come together and construct a convincing pitch, the best of which will be rewarded with a summer internship at The San Diego Supercomputer Center and the opportunity to bring their ideas to life. Students looking to participate can either sign up as a team or individually, those who register as individuals will subsequently be matched with a team. All teams will have access to subject matter experts and materials to aid them as they build their pitches. No prior experience is required, and students of all disciplines and majors are welcome to participate.

The official Design Challenge kickoff will take place this Thursday, April 7th, at 4:00 P.M in room 202 of the newly built Design and Innovation Building. To receive kickoff information, as well as specific details about the challenge, prospective participants are encouraged to register at the event page: https://designlab.ucsd.edu/designathon-mindshifts-on-megafires/

For a full list of Design-A-Thon related dates and events, see below.

Key Mindshift on Megafires dates and events:

  • April 7 @ 4 PM – Design Challenge unveiled at kickoff 
  • April 15 – Registration & design-thinking workshop, lightning talks, and mentor sessions 
  • April 16 @ 11:59 PM – Submissions due
  • April 20 @ 5 PM – Project showcase at Design@Large

Living in California, one quickly becomes familiar with the images of roaring walls of fire that seem to overtake the news cycle every summer. The dangers of such events are obvious and have come to seem inevitable. But what if there were other ways of taking care of both the environment and our communities? What if there were ways to prevent the disaster, rather than react to it? This Spring, The Design Lab is partnering with The San Diego Supercomputer Center and WIFIRE Lab to help transition our approach to wildfires from reaction to prevention.

The collaboration, a pitch-style challenge titled “Design-A-Thon: Mindshifts on Megafires,” will be spearheaded by Chief Data Science Officer of The Supercomputer Center and WIFIRE founder Ilkay Altintas and Design Lab Program Designer Kevin Popovic. Working together, both institutions have produced an interactive and engaging program that will help members of the general public understand the benefits and safety that come with prescribed burns, as well as the dangers of wildfire suppression and its creation of wildfire deficits. 

The “Mindshifts on Megafires” calls upon teams of innovative UCSD students eager to engage with real-world problems and solutions to come together and construct a convincing pitch, the best of which will be rewarded with a summer internship at The San Diego Supercomputer Center and the opportunity to bring their ideas to life. Students looking to participate can either sign up as a team or individually, those who register as individuals will subsequently be matched with a team. All teams will have access to subject matter experts and materials to aid them as they build their pitches. No prior experience is required, and students of all disciplines and majors are welcome to participate.

The official Design Challenge kickoff will take place this Thursday, April 7th, at 4:00 P.M in room 202 of the newly built Design and Innovation Building. To receive kickoff information, as well as specific details about the challenge, prospective participants are encouraged to register at the event page: https://designlab.ucsd.edu/designathon-mindshifts-on-megafires/

For a full list of Design-A-Thon related dates and events, see below.

Key Mindshift on Megafires dates and events:

  • April 7 @ 4 PM – Design Challenge unveiled at kickoff 
  • April 15 – Registration & design-thinking workshop, lightning talks, and mentor sessions 
  • April 16 @ 11:59 PM – Submissions due
  • April 20 @ 5 PM – Project showcase at Design@Large

Read Next

Don-Norman

What is the Future of Design in 50 Seconds?

From Jnd.org & Don Norman: I'm developing a new talk: "21st Century Design: Addressing Major Societal…

Design Lab Amy Fox Gordon Research Grant

Design Lab’s Amy Fox Awarded Gordon Research Conference Visionary Grant

Emerging developments in data visualization, the practice of visually communicating data to convey patterns and…

Ailie Fraser UCSD Design Lab

Ailie Fraser Aims to Support People Doing Creative Tasks with Software

“There’s so much helpful content available now, but how can it be understood and consumed by a novice?” asks Ailie Fraser, a PhD graduate, “That’s what I’m interested in answering.” She is a part of a generation of upcoming design innovators, working collaboratively with The Design Lab. Her recently published dissertation aims to support people doing creative tasks with software specifically by leveraging resources generated by experts and bringing them into the context of people's workflows; in order to make them simpler to navigate and understand.

Fraser received her PhD from UCSD in Computer Science this past spring, and is now working full-time as a Research Engineer at Adobe Research. During her PhD, she completed three internships with Adobe Research. During her first internship, she focused on the domain of photo editing in Photoshop and addressed the problems novices experience when they begin to use the application. Due to the plethora of features and tools offered by the service, it can often be overwhelming to those unfamiliar with Photoshop.

The Worst F&#%ing Words Ever

Triton Magazine

Benjamin Bergen is a professor of cognitive science at UC San Diego and director of the Language and Cognition Lab, where he studies how our minds compute meaning and how talking interferes with safe driving—among many other things that don’t need to be bleeped. His latest book is What the F: What Swearing Reveals About Our Language, Our Brains, and Ourselves. He calls it “a book-length love letter to profanity.” You’ve been warned.

SAP collaborates with Design Lab students

In December, UC San Diego Design Lab students wrapped up two major projects with SAP,…

Human-centered Design

Community-Based, Human-Centered Design

Don Norman, Design Lab Director & Eli Spencer, Design Lab Faculty

We propose a radical change in design from experts designing for people to people designing for themselves. In the traditional approach, experts study, design, and implement solutions for the people of the world. Instead, we propose that we leverage the creativity within the communities of the world to solve their own problems: This is community-driven design, taking full advantage of the fact that it is the people in communities who best understand their problems and the impediments and affordances that impede and support change. Experts become facilitators, by mentoring and providing tools, toolkits, workshops, and support.

The principles of human-centered design have proven to be effective and productive. However, its approach is generally used in situations where professionals determine the needs of the target populations and then develop products and procedures to address the needs. This is Top-Down design: starting with higher-level conceptualizations and then refining the ideas and concepts to specific instances of products or services. This works well for mass produced items which only allows limited specialization for individual needs and requirements.
Back To Top