What happens when you bring together 40 ambitious students from four Southern California campuses for a 24-hour countdown? You get DesignVerse, a fast-paced design challenge hosted by Design@UCR, a School of Business student organization and the campus's first dedicated design club.
From May 16 to 17, Bourns Hall and Winston Chung Hall served as the creative hubs for students from UCR, UC Irvine, UC Santa Barbara, and Cal State Fullerton as they formed 11 teams to tackle this year’s theme: "The Innovation Oven: Engineering the Next Rise." The challenge required students to design a digital application or product that uses emerging technology to solve a systemic problem or support a community.
"DesignVerse has been a long time coming, and now that the event is in its third year, we wanted to keep growing and improving on the years before," said co-chair Arielle Haryanto, a third-year computer science major.
The Winning Projects
Representing a diverse mix of majors—including computer science, engineering, business, economics, statistics, and art—teams spent the 24 hours conducting user research, building prototypes in Figma and Framer, and preparing pitches.
On Sunday morning, teams presented their work to industry professionals. The competition recognized winners across five main DesignVerse categories:
- Slice of Insight (User Research): Won by Batch for their custom order management platform that helps specialty bakeries track orders, deposits, and design approvals.
- Cookie Cutter Challenge (Prototyping): Won by Ethocal for a mobile app that helps users find local yard sales, thrift stores, and ethical brands.
- Framaccino (Best Use of Framer): Won by Yap. for a platform that approaches career exploration as a social, activity-based experience.
- The Perfect Blend (User Interface Design): Won by MoodBrew for a café companion app that recommends beverages and bakery items based on a user’s mood and wellness goals.
- Pudding Success On (Innovative Product Ideas): Won by TerraPulse for an AI-guided travel discovery experience.
In addition to the main categories, Major League Hacking (MLH) judged several technology-focused tracks, presenting awards to teams VibeCheck, bro., Rumie, and New Bean.
The DesignVerse competition highlights how design skills connect different academic disciplines, giving students a unique opportunity to build portfolio projects and network with peers.
"Because UCR does not have a formal design major, the designathon gives students a space to explore their creative side and find opportunities to grow," reflected co-chair and fourth-year business administration student Kaitlin Ching. "I'm proud that we were able to plan a meaningful event where students could interact with industry professionals and meet like-minded peers.”
Partners who made the weekend possible include the UCR School of Business, Major League Hacking and our Industry Judges who gave their time and expertise: Chi Esmabe (Senior UI/UX Designer at Tinuiti), Sua Lee (Visual and Product Designer at TruAbutment), Vijaya sai Munduru (Lead Member of Technical Staff at Salesforce), Karthik Bodducherla (Director of Applications Development at IQVIA), Priyanka Malla (IT Project Manager at Foundation Building Materials), and the Major League Hacking team.
___________________
Header image: DesignVerse 2026 board members, participants, and industry judges gather after the closing awards ceremony.