CreateRU Design-a-Thon Recap

CreateRU, CreativeX’s annual design-a-thon, took place April 9th-16th, and it was amazing to see all of the projects the participants came up with! CreateRU had submissions from all experience levels, and each project involved a great deal of effort and dedication.

This year’s theme was about “fostering digital connections between people.”

Participants had to come up with an idea that embodied this theme. There were 3 workshops that were hosted in the span of the design-a-thon and 16 projects that were submitted! Below, I will be giving a summary of the winners’ projects of CreateRU, but feel free to check out other participants’ projects here!

2nd Place Winners

Team Name: BAM

Project: BAM: Virtual Assistant

This team created a virtual assistant that helps with unhealthy communication amongst teens and young adults.

They noted how “miscommunication stems from the inability to determine tone, to see body language or non-verbal cues, and to understand complex ideas.”

Issues regarding miscommunication and disconnection would be solved by having a virtual assistant that detects the tone of message you are sending or receiving. It also suggests emojis you can use for each message to indicate the tone you are trying to convey. Having a virtual assistant like BAM would be so useful for our generation! Their demo can be viewed here:

Team Name: Team Nandini

Project: MyCommunity

Users can choose if they want to have an anonymous profile or not based on their comfort level. There are various events and communities that people can join in order to connect digitally. After going through a pandemic, many people have gone through mental and emotional struggles. Talking to others about your struggles is definitely a helpful way to overcome distress. Their demo can be seen here.

1st Place

Team Name: Creative Thinkers

Project: Circle

Circle is an app to “create social engagement on college campuses,” relating to the theme of fostering digital connections. The inspiration behind their project was the fact that as commuters, they found it harder to make new friends at college. They went through extensive amounts of research to come up with an app that best caters to college students.

Circle would show all of the events that are taking place on campus and allow commuters to connect with those who are attending the same events. Check out their demo here!

Conclusion

Overall, it was interesting to see all of the participants’ research, prototype, and creative process. It is inspiring to see people thinking of solutions to an issue we face today — cultivating digital connections. I’m excited to see what students come up with for the next design-a-thon!