Applying engineering design thinking to redesign the UC mobile app with Dr. Nora Honken — from empathy surveys to a working prototype presented at the Undergraduate Scholarly Showcase.
As an engineering student, I've come to think the most important thing you can build is an engineering mindset: the habit of thinking critically, solving problems, and designing solutions instead of just stumbling onto them. The Foundation of Engineering Design Thinking experience let me put that to work in a research setting. Working with Dr. Nora Honken and a small team, our goal was to redesign the UC mobile app using the design thinking process, and we worked through its five steps: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test.
In the empathize phase, we surveyed UC students to find out what actually frustrated them about the app. Their feedback shaped how we defined the problem: a slow interface, missing features, and awkward button placement. From there we ideated and designed together, and ended up with a wireframe prototype of a reimagined UC mobile app that fixed those issues.
The project showed how engineering principles carry over into building real applications, and it stuck with me more than I expected. By the end, design thinking wasn't just a process I'd read about; it was something I actually knew how to use.
We presented at the Undergraduate Scholarly Showcase with a video walking through the engineering process behind the app and what we took away from the project.
Video demonstration of the prototype