Fall 2025 · Design Research Methods · Community SolutionsUC Black History Tour
This semester, we used human-centered design and community input to imagine an unapolagetic, accessible, and interactive on-campus version of the UC Black History digital tour.
The Digital Tour
We started by reviewing the tour’s 22 stops and quickly realized we’d only have time to properly design one of them by the end of the semester.
The stops ranged from stories of police brutality and harmful actions by UC students or administrators, to the achievements of notable Black students and staff.
We began by identifying white supremacy as our broad problem space, then progressively narrowed it into a problem frame, a focused statement, and ultimately a realistic, actionable project definition.
We also defined design criteria to help us measure success.
Sam DuBose + The Irate 8
We chose to focus on stop 20, which shone light on Samuel DuBose’s murder by UC policeman, as well as the student activist group that formed shortly afterwards; the Irate 8.
UC currently has a small concrete bench dedicated to Sam DuBose within the trees of Campus Green; however, it is difficult to find, easy to overlook, and provides no information about his life or unjust death.
My project partner and I both agreed that a memorial that lacks context, humanization, and information, was performative and unhelpful. We decided to design something more prominent and accessible.
We identified our broad problem space