Power Up Cohort Experience (Summer 2021): Part 2
What is Power Up?
Power Up is a 10-week summer design program that prepares UCSD students for real-world innovation by pairing student teams with BIPOC-owned and minority-owned businesses seeking to refine their branding, redesign their website, or boost their exposure. Our program is driven by our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiative, which is intended to support BIPOC communities in the San Diego area and give underrepresented design students more opportunities to develop their skills. In order to better aid these BIPOC and minority communities, we brought together design and marketing students alike to provide comprehensive deliverables for these small businesses.
We expanded on our previous summer program, Level Up, to include more:
- Students (from 20 to 25)
- Mentors (from 10 design mentors to 14 design and marketing mentors)
- Roles
- and 5 real clients
Each team — made up of UX Designers, Marketing Strategists, Content Strategists, Visual Designers, UX Researchers, and Web Builders — received guidance from industry mentors as they crafted sustainable designs and deliverables that’ll live beyond the scope of the project.
Meet the Power Uppers from Furlicious and Kini Koffee
Autumn Bui — Furlicious
Autumn was a Marketing & Content Strategist for Furlicious. She is a 3rd year UCSD student studying Business Administration. Furlicious is a Black-owned pet care & dog training business. The Furlicious team rebranded the business by creating a style guide and designing a new logo, revamped their social media to increase audience and brand engagement by developing a social media strategy guide, and engaged in OOH marketing.
Q: What was your biggest takeaway from your experience this summer? How have you grown and learned from the program?
Through Power Up, I learned more about the intersection between business and design and how it can be applied in a professional setting. I was able to hone my interests and discover that I wanted to pursue a career in branding. I learned how to communicate confidently and clearly with our stakeholders, improve my graphic design skills, and learn more about out of home marketing. I also learned about rebranding, specifically with brand voice and brand personality.
I [also] really enjoyed working alongside my mentors, Alex and Sabrina! Throughout the program, they not only gave us feedback and direction regarding our Power Up Projects but also went out of their way to create their own homework assignments to teach us branding and design principles. They were such a great support system for us and helped us reach our potential.
Q: What was the biggest challenge your team faced while working with your small business, and how did you tackle it?
The biggest challenge we faced was creating a rebrand underneath the constraints of our stakeholders. We spent a lot of time redesigning prototypes since we had conflicting views on certain design aspects. We were able to tackle this by meeting in the middle and being open minded. For certain things, we showcased her evidence to back up our design decisions while other things, we modified to satisfy her needs. In the future, we would hope to get to know our stakeholders more and their exceptions in the beginning.We should have asked more specific questions to save more time during the editing process.
Learn more about her team’s project in Furlicious’ Case Study
Deepika Vuppala — Kini Koffee
Deepika is a UX Designer & Web Builder for Kini Koffee. She is a 4th year UCSD student majoring in Cognitive Science with a specialization in Design & Interaction. Kini Koffee is a women-led and run coffee shop in Del Mar. The Kini Koffee team created a website, Square online ordering site, and Google business marketing plan to amplify the women-led coffee shop’s strengths and products.
Q: What did you enjoy most about Power Up?
Working with my teammates and meeting new people. It was incredibly rewarding to work with my team on things they were passionate about because I picked up valuable skills related to communication, the web design process, and how to work with different types of clients. As a team we supported each other in our work and had a lot of fun on those few trips to Kini Koffee’s locations.
Q: What was your biggest takeaway from your experience this summer? How have you grown and learned from the program?
It’s very important not to operate on assumptions when designing a user experience. At first, we had a lot of gaps in our research phase, but thanks to some guidance from our mentors, we soon came together as a team to increase our understanding of user needs and our client’s constraints. Through Power Up, I’ve been able to improve my communication skills because of how much we had to present to different people each week. One of my goals going into this program was to grow as a storyteller and I think I’m starting to get to where I want to be.
Chynna Tumalad — Kini Koffee
Chynna was a Content Strategist and Marketing Strategist for Kini Koffee. She is a recent UCSD graduate (2021) with a degree in Marketing Management Independent Study.
Q: What did you enjoy most about Power Up?
The workshops and donut time!*
*Note: Donut time is a Slack app that matches individuals with other participants and mentors every 2 weeks to set up a 30 minute donut/coffee/lunch chat with each other.
Q: What was your biggest takeaway from your experience this summer? How have you grown and learned from the program?
I learned to interact with my team members and work as a unit instead of strictly separating our tasks.
Learn more about Deepika and Chynna’s project in Kini Koffee’s Case Study
Any final words about your experience?
Deepika Vuppala
It was filled with Koffee. Thank you for creating such a cool experience for us to grow.
Chynna Tumalad
10 weeks isn’t enough, I loved bonding with my teammates and everyone else, and I wish it could last longer!
Hear from 4 Power Uppers from Blendees, Cafe X, and Cut & Dry Barbershop in this article.
Read about 4 of the mentors’ experience in this article.
