Axure is helping fund five teams from the University of Michigan HCI program to compete in the international Student Design Competition at CHI in Boston on April 9. Each year CHI holds the competition providing an opportunity for students to demonstrate their problem solving and design skills. Students were required to submit a paper, poster and presentation illustrating their proposed solution to the design challenge. This year's challenge was to design an object, interface, system or service that supported the idea of consuming local resources instead of global ones.

Of the twelve teams accepted, five teams were chosen from the University of Michigan: Treasure Hunter (Sanghyuk Koh, Amy Kuo, Debra Lauterbach, Noah Liebman & Andrea Mc Vittie), Local Buy (team members include: Wentao Wang, Li Li, Nan Chen & Jenica Baty), MI Fresh (Maureen Hanratty, Geoff Ho, Yang Jiang & Xiao Wei), Want Knot (Jared Bauer, Liz Blankenship, Leanna Gingras & Mark Goetz) and eXtend (Annie Fang, Sergio Mendez-Baiges, Rahan Khozein & Eunice Shin).

Both Treasure Hunter and Local Buy used Axure RP to create their project prototype.

Treasure Hunter

The goal of this project was to design an online community that would help expand the consumption of used resources, specifically encouraging people to shop at thrift stores. 

The team began by conducting research to uncover the barriers to buying used items at thrift stores.Then, they created personas, brainstormed concepts and worked through various scenarios. Team Treasure Hunter used Axure RP to create a hi-fidelity prototype for user testing and used the results to tune the design.

The final application enlisted frequent thrift store shoppers to help individuals who lack the time or desire to search for the items themselves (prototype [click Go to begin]).

"Several judges commented on how impressive our prototype was. We consider Axure to be a big part of our success."
- Debra Lauterbach

Local Buy

This project aimed to promote the availability of local food. The team worked with a start up business interested in directly connecting consumers with local food resources.

They conducted interviews, created personas, sketched concepts and worked through different scenarios. After this process the team was ready to bring their ideas to life. They used Axure RP to create their hi fidelity prototype and conduct user testing.

The final application provided a platform for customers to locate and purchase from local sustainable food resources (prototype [click Go to begin]).

"Features like masters in Axure RP were a big time-saver when creating the various web pages in our design."
- Wentao Wang

Congratulations to all of the outstanding teams accepted to present at CHI!