David Roedl

I recently returned home from the Imagine Cup World Finals in Paris. I’m proud to say that along with my teammate Will Odom, our team IU EcoVis won first place in the Interface Design category. It was an intense and rewarding experience on several levels: a challenging exercise in design practice, a rapid tour of one of the most beautiful cities in the world, and a great chance to represent Indiana University on a global stage. Below is a brief summary of what happened.

After being stranded in the Detroit Airport, we finally arrived in Paris a day late and arrived at the venue already fifteen minutes into our 24 hour competition. While we were selected to the finals based on our long-term design project, the IU Energy Challenge, the final round was a bit different. Each of the six teams were given a design challenge and had only 24 hours to work through the problem and prepare a presentation. The problem was complex; we were given a description of an information system for monitoring air quality that involved multiple stakeholders and multiple technology components. Our task was to ensure the projects success by redesigning the end-to-end user experience.

We got off to a slow start, having already been up for two days straight. But after a short power-nap we started to gain some momentum and proceeded to break down the problem by articulating goals of the interconnecting stakeholders. Our work space provided some surreal inspiration: it was right on the boardwalk of the Seine with a superb view of the Eiffel tower at night. We also had some tough competition as all of the finalists teams were extremely focused. All of the teams worked through the night, right up until the 2pm deadline. Here’s a photo of Will and I having just finished the marathon design session:

A few days later, we presented our design to a distinguished panel of judges including Surya Vanka of Microsoft, Tom Chi of Yahoo and Ok/Cancel fame, and Neil Churcher of Orange. Interacting with these experienced design professionals was probably the most valuable part of the event. They provided excellent comments and criticism on our design rationale and even took the time to give us personal feedback after. Overall the final round was an amazing learning experience. I think our first place success is really a testament to the quality of design education that we have received at Indiana.

Below is a pic snapped from the stage of the super-over-the-top award ceremony at the Louvre.

And here we are really enjoying our over-sized cardboard check:)