UT 330 - FALL 2025
UT INTERACTION DESIGN & URBAN EXPERIENCES
URBAN TECHNOLOGY
UT 330 - FALL 2025PROFESSORS
Matthew Wizinsky, James HovellIn this studio, Urban Technology students synthesize their studies of cities and digital technologies to focus on interaction design related to urban services. The first half of the course introduces exercises to develop core competencies in visual communication and User-Experience and User-Interface (UX/UI) principles for the designing digital interfaces and dynamic information spaces. Students then apply these skills to an interaction design challenge.
The final project brief is to research, design, and prototype an interaction design intervention to increase accessibility &/or usability for a public service, space, or activity. Students begin with exploratory research to discover and define opportunities for improved access. Through generative methods and prototyping, they develop interaction design proposals which are evaluated through user testing methods.
STUDENTS
Jack Bernard, Pranav Boopalam, Elijah Stowell
PROFESSORS
Matthew Wizinsky
Based on Ann Arbor’s proposed Sustainable Energy Utility (SEU), our project uses interaction design as a research tool to imagine how excess household energy could be shared among neighbors in a microgrid. How will neighbors and local businesses collaborate to form new coalitions for energy production/sharing? During outages, how will participants choose whether to sell, share, or trade energy? Through our prototypes, we observe how different affordances affect social outcomes and individual choices. We document how the disclosure and portrayal of certain information can dictate which households stay powered through an outage, and which do not.
STUDENTS
El Auria Atienza, Alexandra Hafley
PROFESSORS
Matthew Wizinsky
FreshRent is a two-sided app designed to bridge communication between tenants, landlords, and the city to improve awareness and action around home safety issues. The platform allows tenants to easily report maintenance needs, track repair status, and understand required upkeep for their rental. Landlords receive clear, organized updates on property conditions without being intrusive, enabling timely responses and better oversight. By streamlining maintenance communication and scheduling, FreshRent helps ensure safer, well-maintained homes for all parties.
STUDENTS
Maggie Scott, Farris Khoja, Karla Gonzalez
PROFESSORS
James Hovell
FreshRent is a two-sided app designed to bridge communication between tenants, landlords, and the city to improve awareness and action around home safety issues. The platform allows tenants to easily report maintenance needs, track repair status, and understand required upkeep for their rental. Landlords receive clear, organized updates on property conditions without being intrusive, enabling timely responses and better oversight. By streamlining maintenance communication and scheduling, FreshRent helps ensure safer, well-maintained homes for all parties.
STUDENTS
Ty Anderson, Mark Kerekes, Ken Fukutomi, Tyler Spitzer-Wu
PROFESSORS
James Hovell
The product is a 5-week UX design and research class project focused on creating a student-centered housing platform that unifies sublease and year-long rental search experiences. Frustrated by the fragmented state of existing tools, the team conducted qualitative research (surveys and focus groups) to identify student and landlord pain points, then designed clear user flows, filtering, and dashboards tailored to each group. The result is an intuitive concept with improved search, transparent listings, and landlord analytics, showcasing structured UX research, information architecture, and collaborative prototyping skills.