skip to Main Content
sd design trek ucsd

Design Trek Brings San Diego Design Community Together

Design Trek Brings San Diego Design Community Together

Design Trek Brings San Diego Design Community Together

This past March, SD Design Trek took students and early-UX career professionals on a three-day showcase of design companies in San Diego to gain a firsthand look at what the local design community has to offer. The March 4 kickoff and showcase took place just down the hall from the Design Lab, in Atkinson Hall’s Auditorium. 

The event commenced with the words of keynote speaker, Amish Desai, who graduated from UCSD in 2003 with a Cognitive Science HCI degree and currently serves as the VP of Experiences at Moonshot. “[The talk] was about being design minded, in terms of design being much more than a craft and is actually a driver for business growth,” he says. “The idea is to instill some lessons I learned in the last 17 years as to why the importance of design is not just beautiful things but is also about doing experiments and making, driving cultural changes, creating experiences, analytics, and having business rigor.”

At the conclusion of Desai’s talk, the design showcase began. Participants were invited to mingle and network with design representatives from 16 different companies from a variety of fields, such as social enterprise, brand building, and education. 

ResMed, a medical equipment company, represented the rise of design thinking tools in healthcare. “In healthcare, traditionally, design hasn’t been used and it’s been more functional,” says ResMed UX Design Manager Dawn Ta. “But with the increase in popularity of user experience and user-centered design, there’s a lot more empathy being introduced into the healthcare system, which is really important for creating solutions that will actually solve for patient needs.”

While UX(user experience) is traditionally thought of as being applied to products, it is also equally important when designing services. “Service design is all about finding the root cause of what is the pain point for a user, and solving it,” expresses Grace Rieger, SD Service Jam Co-Chair and Design Lab member. “It’s not about a physical product.” The company visited the design showcase to teach participants about the process of the service design industry and how they could be involved in it. 

The design industry has evolved rapidly in recent years. One sector of the design community, user experience, or UX, has been at the forefront of this growth.  A few UX designers at the event easily noted the different ways they have seen this field change. 

 “I think the San Diego design community is a sleeping giant,” says Lisa Klein-Simon, Product Design Manager at Seismic. “It’s sort of been quiet, I think, in the past, but it’s on the verge of waking up and there seems to be a lot of interesting people coming to this area to do design.” 

Chris Gielow, leader of the local organization UX Speakeasy, also commented on the emerging nature of local design opportunities. “I’ve been in San Diego [for] about 12,15 years. When I first joined UX Speakeasy, I think there were about 12 people at a local event; now we have over 2800 members,” says Gielow. “I think the Bay Area, for a long time, has been where everybody’s migrated north, and I think now, San Diego has a strong case to make for bringing these tech companies locally to San Diego to take advantage of the incredible talent pool, the incredible schools that exist here in San Diego, and we’re starting to see that.” 

Ta was quick to also point out the tight-knit aspect of the community. “I would describe the San Diego design community as family. Everybody’s welcoming, they’re all warm, it’s like seeing a distant cousin I haven’t seen in a while whenever I come to one of these events,” she says. “I think everyone’s really passionate about user experience, design, and that’s really great and comforting because some people are Designer 1 at their company or they work with a lot of engineers or marketing so when they come together with other designers, it just feels like home.” 

Events like SD Design Trek help to bridge the gap between design professionals and design novices. Students can start making connections, find potential internships and jobs, and begin to see that there is a future for them in San Diego design. There is no doubt that the design community will continue to expand, and these students will be the next drivers of this growth. 

 “For me, I’ve got a great career in Design. I always have people asking me how I got into it,” says Teena Singh, Co-Driver of Design Trek and Customer Liaison at ServiceNow. “[Design Trek] is a great way to introduce design to students, and show them that there are opportunities. It’s a great way to give back to the community.”

Sypraseuth Vandy, Creator and Co-driver of the SD Design Trek, commented on the overall experience of the event. “Design Trek 2020 was a massive growth year for us, being in its third iteration. The number of attendees grew by 79% and sponsors by 21% over last year. It is humbling to see the community come together year after year to support early-career and transitioning designers. Trekkies have viewed the event as a unique opportunity to network and see the actual practices of UX design from the perspective of industry professionals. This was never something I had exposure to when I entered the industry and has been truly rewarding to see attendees crave this kind of experience. Throughout the trek, several attendees expressed strong interest in volunteering next year to contribute their design craft early and help shape the event. Although SD Design Trek is primarily driven by our industry design leaders and organizations, we are especially grateful to involve past Trekkies who have volunteered their time to elevate this year’s event.”

Through the active participation of local design platforms and organizations like the Design Lab, SD Design Trek is helping shape the city’s growing design industry.  It exposes emerging designers to the scope of their field and its opportunities in the region.  It also helps document the sector’s evolution into a critical part of the San Diego region’s DNA.

Videos

This past March, SD Design Trek took students and early-UX career professionals on a three-day showcase of design companies in San Diego to gain a firsthand look at what the local design community has to offer. The March 4 kickoff and showcase took place just down the hall from the Design Lab, in Atkinson Hall’s Auditorium. 

The event commenced with the words of keynote speaker, Amish Desai, who graduated from UCSD in 2003 with a Cognitive Science HCI degree and currently serves as the VP of Experiences at Moonshot. “[The talk] was about being design minded, in terms of design being much more than a craft and is actually a driver for business growth,” he says. “The idea is to instill some lessons I learned in the last 17 years as to why the importance of design is not just beautiful things but is also about doing experiments and making, driving cultural changes, creating experiences, analytics, and having business rigor.”

At the conclusion of Desai’s talk, the design showcase began. Participants were invited to mingle and network with design representatives from 16 different companies from a variety of fields, such as social enterprise, brand building, and education. 

ResMed, a medical equipment company, represented the rise of design thinking tools in healthcare. “In healthcare, traditionally, design hasn’t been used and it’s been more functional,” says ResMed UX Design Manager Dawn Ta. “But with the increase in popularity of user experience and user-centered design, there’s a lot more empathy being introduced into the healthcare system, which is really important for creating solutions that will actually solve for patient needs.”

While UX(user experience) is traditionally thought of as being applied to products, it is also equally important when designing services. “Service design is all about finding the root cause of what is the pain point for a user, and solving it,” expresses Grace Rieger, SD Service Jam Co-Chair and Design Lab member. “It’s not about a physical product.” The company visited the design showcase to teach participants about the process of the service design industry and how they could be involved in it. 

The design industry has evolved rapidly in recent years. One sector of the design community, user experience, or UX, has been at the forefront of this growth.  A few UX designers at the event easily noted the different ways they have seen this field change. 

 “I think the San Diego design community is a sleeping giant,” says Lisa Klein-Simon, Product Design Manager at Seismic. “It’s sort of been quiet, I think, in the past, but it’s on the verge of waking up and there seems to be a lot of interesting people coming to this area to do design.” 

Chris Gielow, leader of the local organization UX Speakeasy, also commented on the emerging nature of local design opportunities. “I’ve been in San Diego [for] about 12,15 years. When I first joined UX Speakeasy, I think there were about 12 people at a local event; now we have over 2800 members,” says Gielow. “I think the Bay Area, for a long time, has been where everybody’s migrated north, and I think now, San Diego has a strong case to make for bringing these tech companies locally to San Diego to take advantage of the incredible talent pool, the incredible schools that exist here in San Diego, and we’re starting to see that.” 

Ta was quick to also point out the tight-knit aspect of the community. “I would describe the San Diego design community as family. Everybody’s welcoming, they’re all warm, it’s like seeing a distant cousin I haven’t seen in a while whenever I come to one of these events,” she says. “I think everyone’s really passionate about user experience, design, and that’s really great and comforting because some people are Designer 1 at their company or they work with a lot of engineers or marketing so when they come together with other designers, it just feels like home.” 

Events like SD Design Trek help to bridge the gap between design professionals and design novices. Students can start making connections, find potential internships and jobs, and begin to see that there is a future for them in San Diego design. There is no doubt that the design community will continue to expand, and these students will be the next drivers of this growth. 

 “For me, I’ve got a great career in Design. I always have people asking me how I got into it,” says Teena Singh, Co-Driver of Design Trek and Customer Liaison at ServiceNow. “[Design Trek] is a great way to introduce design to students, and show them that there are opportunities. It’s a great way to give back to the community.”

Sypraseuth Vandy, Creator and Co-driver of the SD Design Trek, commented on the overall experience of the event. “Design Trek 2020 was a massive growth year for us, being in its third iteration. The number of attendees grew by 79% and sponsors by 21% over last year. It is humbling to see the community come together year after year to support early-career and transitioning designers. Trekkies have viewed the event as a unique opportunity to network and see the actual practices of UX design from the perspective of industry professionals. This was never something I had exposure to when I entered the industry and has been truly rewarding to see attendees crave this kind of experience. Throughout the trek, several attendees expressed strong interest in volunteering next year to contribute their design craft early and help shape the event. Although SD Design Trek is primarily driven by our industry design leaders and organizations, we are especially grateful to involve past Trekkies who have volunteered their time to elevate this year’s event.”

Through the active participation of local design platforms and organizations like the Design Lab, SD Design Trek is helping shape the city’s growing design industry.  It exposes emerging designers to the scope of their field and its opportunities in the region.  It also helps document the sector’s evolution into a critical part of the San Diego region’s DNA.

Videos

This past March, SD Design Trek took students and early-UX career professionals on a three-day showcase of design companies in San Diego to gain a firsthand look at what the local design community has to offer. The March 4 kickoff and showcase took place just down the hall from the Design Lab, in Atkinson Hall’s Auditorium. 

The event commenced with the words of keynote speaker, Amish Desai, who graduated from UCSD in 2003 with a Cognitive Science HCI degree and currently serves as the VP of Experiences at Moonshot. “[The talk] was about being design minded, in terms of design being much more than a craft and is actually a driver for business growth,” he says. “The idea is to instill some lessons I learned in the last 17 years as to why the importance of design is not just beautiful things but is also about doing experiments and making, driving cultural changes, creating experiences, analytics, and having business rigor.”

At the conclusion of Desai’s talk, the design showcase began. Participants were invited to mingle and network with design representatives from 16 different companies from a variety of fields, such as social enterprise, brand building, and education. 

ResMed, a medical equipment company, represented the rise of design thinking tools in healthcare. “In healthcare, traditionally, design hasn’t been used and it’s been more functional,” says ResMed UX Design Manager Dawn Ta. “But with the increase in popularity of user experience and user-centered design, there’s a lot more empathy being introduced into the healthcare system, which is really important for creating solutions that will actually solve for patient needs.”

While UX(user experience) is traditionally thought of as being applied to products, it is also equally important when designing services. “Service design is all about finding the root cause of what is the pain point for a user, and solving it,” expresses Grace Rieger, SD Service Jam Co-Chair and Design Lab member. “It’s not about a physical product.” The company visited the design showcase to teach participants about the process of the service design industry and how they could be involved in it. 

The design industry has evolved rapidly in recent years. One sector of the design community, user experience, or UX, has been at the forefront of this growth.  A few UX designers at the event easily noted the different ways they have seen this field change. 

 “I think the San Diego design community is a sleeping giant,” says Lisa Klein-Simon, Product Design Manager at Seismic. “It’s sort of been quiet, I think, in the past, but it’s on the verge of waking up and there seems to be a lot of interesting people coming to this area to do design.” 

Chris Gielow, leader of the local organization UX Speakeasy, also commented on the emerging nature of local design opportunities. “I’ve been in San Diego [for] about 12,15 years. When I first joined UX Speakeasy, I think there were about 12 people at a local event; now we have over 2800 members,” says Gielow. “I think the Bay Area, for a long time, has been where everybody’s migrated north, and I think now, San Diego has a strong case to make for bringing these tech companies locally to San Diego to take advantage of the incredible talent pool, the incredible schools that exist here in San Diego, and we’re starting to see that.” 

Ta was quick to also point out the tight-knit aspect of the community. “I would describe the San Diego design community as family. Everybody’s welcoming, they’re all warm, it’s like seeing a distant cousin I haven’t seen in a while whenever I come to one of these events,” she says. “I think everyone’s really passionate about user experience, design, and that’s really great and comforting because some people are Designer 1 at their company or they work with a lot of engineers or marketing so when they come together with other designers, it just feels like home.” 

Events like SD Design Trek help to bridge the gap between design professionals and design novices. Students can start making connections, find potential internships and jobs, and begin to see that there is a future for them in San Diego design. There is no doubt that the design community will continue to expand, and these students will be the next drivers of this growth. 

 “For me, I’ve got a great career in Design. I always have people asking me how I got into it,” says Teena Singh, Co-Driver of Design Trek and Customer Liaison at ServiceNow. “[Design Trek] is a great way to introduce design to students, and show them that there are opportunities. It’s a great way to give back to the community.”

Sypraseuth Vandy, Creator and Co-driver of the SD Design Trek, commented on the overall experience of the event. “Design Trek 2020 was a massive growth year for us, being in its third iteration. The number of attendees grew by 79% and sponsors by 21% over last year. It is humbling to see the community come together year after year to support early-career and transitioning designers. Trekkies have viewed the event as a unique opportunity to network and see the actual practices of UX design from the perspective of industry professionals. This was never something I had exposure to when I entered the industry and has been truly rewarding to see attendees crave this kind of experience. Throughout the trek, several attendees expressed strong interest in volunteering next year to contribute their design craft early and help shape the event. Although SD Design Trek is primarily driven by our industry design leaders and organizations, we are especially grateful to involve past Trekkies who have volunteered their time to elevate this year’s event.”

Through the active participation of local design platforms and organizations like the Design Lab, SD Design Trek is helping shape the city’s growing design industry.  It exposes emerging designers to the scope of their field and its opportunities in the region.  It also helps document the sector’s evolution into a critical part of the San Diego region’s DNA.

Videos

Read Next

Design Lab Ucsd Lara Mangravite

Future of Public Health Research: Joint-Collaboration Event Sparks Agile Healthcare Discussion

This past May, the Design Lab hosted The Future of Public Health Research event in…

UCSD Giving Day

Giving Day Begins Now. Support the Design Lab Today

Through the integration of education, research and community development, The Design Lab is committed to advancing the best practices needed to solve the world's complex problems through the lens of human-centered design.  One way we do this is through our thriving Design@Large speaker series.  Via conversations with distinguished academic, industry, and community design leaders, Design@Large showcases the ever-evolving, interdisciplinary nature of design as applied in real world contexts.  Today we are asking for your specific help to continue to build and grow this popular series which is open to all.
The Idea Lab: A Collaboration Preparing Students For The Future

The Idea Lab: A Collaboration Preparing Students for the Future

As humans, we tend to compartmentalize ourselves as being either logical or creative thinkers. Rarely do we realize that everything we contemplate and create is better when we are both. This unification of both solutions-oriented entrepreneurship and nonlinear design thinking is the foundation of a new UC San Diego student program called the Idea Lab.

The program is a part of UC San Diego’s commitment to being an innovation catalyst and to cultivating future leaders, according to Michèle Morris, Associate Director of The Design Lab. “The Idea Lab program focuses on preparing our students to step into the 21st-century job market with the mindset and skills needed to address today’s challenges with solutions that are not necessarily directed and linear,” she explains. “Being able to navigate ambiguity, engage strategically and collaboratively with diverse stakeholders, and tactically operate in an inclusive, wholistic manner is no longer simply important, it is essential.”

The Idea Lab pilot program was launched in Fall 2020 and is itself a collaboration between two unique centers within UC San Diego’s innovation ecosystem: Office of Innovation and Commercialization (OIC)/The Basement—a student startup incubator that provides entrepreneurial and leadership programs; and The Design Lab—an interdisciplinary research and education community that prioritizes how humans are impacted by complex systems and technologies.

The Design Lab’s Srishti Palani Wins Google’s PhD Fellowship

In continuing excellence among UC San Diego Design Lab researchers, Srishti Palani, a PhD student and Department of Cognitive Science at the Design Lab, was named a 2021 Google PhD Fellow for her work in Human Computer Interaction focused on improving web search and intelligent guidance during creative work. The fellowship is open to researchers in computer science and related fields. Palani was one of 60 students throughout the world to be selected for a Google Fellowship–an award that supports outstanding and promising PhD candidates of all backgrounds who seek to influence the future of technology by providing funding, mentorship, collaboration and internship opportunities.

Palani’s research takes an interdisciplinary approach involving cognitive, computer, and learning sciences to better web search and intelligent scaffolding of complex creative information work. “We use web search almost every day to search things, and it affects how we learn and work and create and collaborate. I’m really passionate about researching this area and building novel computational techniques that integrate web search into people's larger work context. Google, of course, has the most state-of-the-art web search technology that has existed in my lifetime, so I’ve always wanted to collaborate with the researchers, software engineers, and data scientists there to understand how we can get a better web search when people want to search for more complex information needs.”
Ucsd Designathon

Designathon Ideas Imagine New Trolley Stop as a Vibrant Destination

Autonomous scooters, interactive art, food shuttles, and cable cars are just a few of the creative ideas that emerged from a two-day public designathon event that will join the efforts to transform UC San Diego from a closed campus primarily designed for work and school to destination, inviting people to come, stay and explore what the  campus has to offer. “Anybody who comes to San Diego should have this campus as a destination in addition to Balboa Park or the Gaslamp district,” said UCSD Chancellor Pradeep Khosla in a San Diego Union Tribune article.
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