It’s called a GUI – pronounced “gooey” – and it’s worth $15,000 to any creative University of Oregon students out there.
A GUI is a graphical user interface – it’s the icons, buttons and other visual indicators on a smartphone, for example, that are touched to operate the device. GUIs are found in hand-held devices such as MP3 players, portable media players, gaming devices, household appliances and office equipment.
The UO is launching the Colligan User Interface Design Challenge, in which students from any discipline can compete for $15,000 by designing the best GUI for a mobile platform.
Presented by the UO Office for Research, Innovation and Graduate Education, the challenge is the brainchild of mobile technology pioneer Ed Colligan ’83, former CEO of Palm and founder of Handspring.
“One area where the UO is very strong today is in the arts, architecture and graphic design,” Colligan said. “I thought, ‘Well, here we could take a real strength of the university and bring some of those capabilities to bear in the tech business.’ Hopefully the end result of this challenge will be to create a new area of expertise at the UO.”
Under the theme “Making Mobile Meaningful,” UO students from all programs and classes can compete to create an innovative GUI for use on a mobile platform.
Student teams of two to five people will design a GUI mobile application or system for the consumer market.
Teams will register and participate in informal faculty coaching sessions this fall during which they’ll learn the interface design process, from research and concept development to refinement and presentation. The first coaching session is Oct. 10 in Proctor Room 41 of the Knight Library.
During the first weeks of winter term next year, final concepts will be presented to a panel of reviewers that includes Colligan, prospective investors and industry leaders. Based on the panel’s selections, prize money totaling $15,000 will be handed out to the winner and runner-up teams.
It’s not imperative to design a full-fledged application for a mobile device, Colligan said. Rather, the goal is to present the best idea with promise – it could be displayed in a PowerPoint presentation or a storyboard design that lays out the designers’ intentions.
“I’m really trying to open it up to everybody in the university,” Colligan said. “No one group has a monopoly on good ideas or design. To me, the best thing that could happen is more collaboration between the technologists, graphic designers, business people, psychology majors and others. All those disciplines come into play when you think about great user interface design and a great experience.”
Cooperation between the geography department’s InfoGraphics Lab and the university Product Design program illustrate the interdisciplinary nature of the challenge.
“Blending the curriculum and faculty excellence of our Product Design department with some of the award-wining mobile innovations from the InfoGraphics Lab is a unique approach and something we hope to see more of on campus,” said Ken Kato, of the InfoGraphics Lab. “A key goal for the challenge is to foster a culture of interdisciplinary collaboration around innovation and bring together students from any discipline in a team setting.”
- by Matt Cooper, UO Office of Strategic Communications