Design Session

Designing Apps for Smart Sustainability

How could an app help reduce energy use in a residence hall, monitor the temperature of a greenhouse or composter, track rainwater collection, or provide useful information about a campus landscape? In this design session, you will explore how sensor data and thoughtful interface design can support smarter, more sustainable decisions. Your team will identify a sustainability challenge, determine what information users need, and design an app concept for a home, dorm, office, greenhouse, garden, or other managed space. You will develop your idea through user-centered design, paper prototyping, and/or interactive digital prototyping. Students interested in extending their designs may take their digital prototype further toward a working phone app. No previous programming or app-development experience is required. Along the way, you will discover how computer science, data, sustainability, and engineering design come together to transform an idea into a technology people can understand and use.