Recently, Designlab students were invited to participate in the Adobe XD UX Bootcamp Creative Jam in partnership with the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory 🚀 Hundreds of UX design bootcamp students participated in this portfolio-worthy creative challenge—including 65 Designlab students!
In total there were 520 registrations from 20 different bootcamp programs across the US, Canada, and UK. 173 portfolio-worthy projects were submitted and only five were selected as winners—two of which were from Designlab students!
Winners were selected by a panel of 13 mentor/educator off-air judges, including three celebrity judges: Krys Blackwood UX at NASA; Jared Spool, UX Educator; and Shannon Slocum, Adobe Product Director.
Participants were tasked with pairing up into teams of two to design a digital experience to solve a NASA-inspired space challenge. Throughout the challenge participants learned new design and prototyping skills, networked with other UX designers, and received constructive feedback from experts.
We’re proud to share that there was great representation from the Designlab community, and ultimately our students dominated the competition! Students from our community took 2nd and 3rd place, as well as two more spots among the top 10.
Check out the winning Designlab teams and their projects...
2nd Place Winner 🥈
Team Eat Pray UX: Benedetto Di Luzio & Jessica Koh (Dwiggins cohort), with their project, “Trivia Raiders”
Congratulations on your 2nd place win, Team Eat Pray UX! We are SO proud of you 😍 Tell us about your award-winning design process of working together on this project.
Having a tight deadline to meet, we found it crucial to work both asynchronously and together. On the day we received the brief, we held a kickoff meeting to get us aligned on the project and define how we’d proceed. We implemented the design sprint method (using Figjam) to quickly iterate and narrow down on the problem, user tasks, personas, and solution features to focus on. We were lucky to find some kids (our target users) who helped us test our wireframes and gave us amazing feedback!
Communication was crucial throughout this process since we worked in two different time zones. While we weren't working together, we used Notion and Google Docs to keep each other informed of what we did. We each worked on different flows for the hi-fi designs. Adobe XD, however, allowed us to collaborate on the same file, so we could always see what the other person was doing. Our daily Zoom calls were indispensable to discuss our decisions and make changes together.
That is some expert cross-timezone collaboration—and it clearly paid off! Tell us about your project, “Trivia Raiders."
The idea behind “Trivia Raiders” is to create a live game and discussion platform in order to make space and STEM topics accessible and not intimidating. We wanted to create an app that fosters learning by doing and this is what makes our solution unique.
We present the learning content after the raid rather than before, to promote learning by sharing together and eliminate any barriers to entry that kids who are intimidated by these topics may feel, while also removing any association with studying and being quizzed that could easily be formed otherwise.
As we were solving the problem of getting kids engaged in space, we realized that the questions in the trivia game were the greatest opportunity to introduce different topics and tear down barriers that might be present in space exploration and in STEM as a whole.
Trivia Raiders sounds like a well-researched and thought-out approach to learning about STEM topics. Maybe one day it will become a reality! What are your biggest takeaways from participating in the Adobe XD NASA Jam?
We highly recommend UX design students take the time to participate in a challenge like this. It really opened our eyes to the fact that the design process is not always linear and you have to adapt to the situation. You also have the opportunity to work on briefs that come from real companies while practicing collaboration skills and time management.
Participating in a design challenge with another teammate was such a valuable experience. You are under so much pressure and it’s great to have the support of a friend as you go through it together. You also get to learn from the different design perspectives and skills of your teammate; it challenges you in ways that go beyond the design challenge itself. You will learn how to design quickly, but you might also learn something new about yourself!
3rd Place 🥉
Team Arte-Ms: Laura Graham & Grace Thompson (Glasser cohort), with their project, “Untitled Space Game”
Hey you two, a big congratulations on 3rd place! What was your design process like?
We started by outlining a plan, working backwards from the 1-week deadline. We spent the first ~24 hours empathizing and ideating before committing to a single approach. We delegated the work to each of us according to what we felt our strengths were. Laura took charge of the visual design and served as our subject matter expert, while Grace acted as the team lead and focused on our process and the user experience.
We checked in regularly to make sure we were on the same page for workload, content, and timeline. By staying within our scope for the project and communicating efficiently, we arrived at a presentable final product in a timely manner.
We know this was somewhat of a time commitment outside of your daily workload, but earning that 3rd place title probably made it all worth it! What’s the idea behind the “Untitled Space Game”?
“Passive learning methods lead to weak retention” is a problem that spoke to us during our initial conversations. Because the prompt was to design an app that teaches 11-13 year olds about NASA and JPL missions, we made interactive learning the ethos of our project. We believe our user and usability research helped in creating an intuitive user experience that aligned with the target audience. We also took usability a step further by prioritizing accessibility principles that made our final product more inclusive.
It seems like the teams that made accessibility a priority were the most successful—a great indication of where the industry is heading! Any personal takeaways from your participation in this creative jam?
We had a lot of success as a team because we communicated well and our strengths complemented each other really well. With this whole remote work environment, it can be tough to collaborate—especially in the ideation phase when you’re trying to build off each other’s ideas. But I think our communication and unique strengths complemented each other quite nicely. This experience was a great opportunity to explore a new subject matter and practice pushing through uncertainty to arrive at a solution in such a short time frame.
⭐️ 9th Place ⭐️
Team MLT: Lucille Tang (Lustig cohort) with their project, “Udder Space”
Hey Team MLT! We think your cow-themed space game might be the cutest of them all. Tell us about your design process.
Our design process working together on this project included competitor analysis, literature review, collaborative ideation, user flows, sketches, and high-fidelity prototype. We learned that being part of a team allowed us to rapidly explore all avenues and produce better results. For instance, we utilized the Crazy Eight method (rapid ideation of 8 ideas in 8 minutes) for our 3 main screens. By first ideating separately and then coming together collaboratively to discuss each of our ideas, we were able to sketch out a total of 48 ideas to further explore.
We’re glad out of the 48 ideas (!!!) you landed on “Udder Space”—it’s such a great name, what was the idea behind this project? 🐮
“Udder Space” is a tablet app that encourages students to learn more about NASA JPL space missions. We decided to enhance learning via gamification techniques, by utilizing a progression system inspired by mobile games like Candy Crush, micro-interaction challenges like Nintendo's Wario Ware, and interactive reading inspired by various educational apps. Unlike the typical reading and quiz apps on the market, “Udder Space” deploys space-themed animations and micro-interactions to further delight and captivate our target users.
⭐️ 10th Place ⭐️
Team x ae-12: Vanessa Cheung (short course student) with their project, “Galaxy Quest”
A big congratulations to all of the winners! And a big thank you to everyone who registered for and participated in the event. Adobe XD is planning another UX Bootcamp Creative Jam for the fall that will be just as exciting! Keep a lookout for an exclusive invite for Designlab learners for this next Jam closer to the event 💌
To learn UX design through an education provider that emphasizes the importance of community through fun events like these Creative Jams with Adobe XD, we encourage you to explore our UX Academy program.
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