April 18 - 20, 2025
UC Irvine DCE
projects
attendees
prizes
social media outreach
About
Prompt
Reimagining How We Interface with the World.
We're living in a time where new technologies—AI, AR/VR, spatial computing—are rapidly reshaping how we live, work, and connect. But many of these systems are still hard to use, confusing, or not designed for everyone.
This year's challenge is to design for the unknown: create a solution that helps people navigate uncertainty. That could mean supporting new users, edge cases, or entirely new systems.
Start by choosing a space where tech is evolving or difficult to use—emergency response, elderly care, extreme environments, or unfamiliar digital tools. Then, identify a real user problem—confusion, inaccessibility, complexity—and design an intuitive, bold solution using any medium: AI agents, voice, gesture, haptics, AR, or something new.
Your goal is to make the future less overwhelming and more human. Design for what doesn't exist yet.
Itinerary
All times are in PST.
Sunday - April 20th, 2025
In-person: Einstein Bagels will be served at the ISEB patio. Please have your badges ready to check off!
All teams must submit their project to Devpost by this time and follow the instructions. This includes submitting the Figma Prototype, indication of online/in-person, writeup, team member names, and optionally a video submission. We will not accept any submissions after this time.
In-person: Present your work science-fair style at assigned tables to our judges from IBM, Anduril, and Google.
Online: Judges will review your Devpost asynchronously and evaluate based on rubric criteria. Make sure you submit a high quality video beforehand!
Each top 10 team will give a 2-3 minute pitch of their product to a live panel of judges. Online teams will present to the judges on zoom at allotted times.
Join us for a Fireside Chat with Lawrence Ntim (ex. Founding Designer @ DropBox AI) as he shares insights from his journey in the design world, building products at the intersection of AI and user experience. Learn about his approach to innovation, storytelling through design, and navigating careers in tech.
Prizes will be announced for all participants.
Led by Directors Jasmine Wu and Laila WafaieFAQ
Prizes
1st Place
- POLAROID NOW CAMERA 3RD GENERATION
- 1:1 MENTORSHIP
- PRIVATE GOOGLE TOUR @ IRVINE
2nd
- ELGATO STREAM DECK MK2
- 1:1 MENTORSHIP
3rd
- 4 x $75 AMAZON GIFT CARDS
- UCI DESIGNATHON STICKERS
Honorable Mentions
- 4 x $50 AMAZON GIFT CARDS
- UCI DESIGNATHON STICKERS
Most Novel Interface
- RETRO HANDHELD GAME CONSOLES
- 1:1 MENTORSHIP
Keynote Speakers
Judges
Partners
Meet the Team
Introducing the 2025 Design-a-thon Team!
Rules
Here are the guidelines for the 2025 Design-a-thon!
All members of your team must be
- a current undergraduate or graduate student
- with an associated institutional (.edu) email
Teams must not exceed 4 people total.
Each team may only submit one (1) submission which will be submitted on behalf of all other contributors.
All work submitted to Beyond Our Horizons must be original work. Any submissions with plagiarized work will be disqualified.
You may not submit work previously designed before Beyond Our Horizons. All designs must be made between the dates of April 18 - April 20.
Late submissions will not be accepted.
If any adjustments are made after April 20 2025 at the submission deadline, your team's submission will not count towards judging.
Teams must be compromised of entirely online or entirely in-person participants.
