By Paul Hang
Staff Writer
Students hit the ground running on Friday during a seminar that kicked off San Jose State University’s Paseo Public Prototyping Challenge.
For the nine-month long challenge, SJSU selected students to create prototypes of ideas that could benefit the city of San Jose.
Civic leaders, representatives from non-profit organizations and SJSU faculty attended the seminar to guide students through their projects.
Since the challenge was introduced during the 2016-17 academic year, students completed prototypes that addressed issues that continue to be relevant to San Jose.
According to a survey conducted by the Paseo Public Prototyping Challenge in 2016, 76 percent of the respondents identified homelessness as one of the most important issues in San Jose. The other issues identified were housing, crime, safety and education.
One of the mentors at the seminar was digital media arts assistant professor Gary Craig Hobbs. He called it a responsibility for students to improve the environment of San Jose.
“We are really an interdisciplinary challenge requiring students from multiple colleges throughout SJSU to solve the big problems the world faces,” Hobbs said.
The students who participated have a mix of majors including industrial design, human factors and software engineering.
Students created prototypes like “Work Together,” an app that can guide homeless people off the streets.
“Work Together” also provides a platform for homeless individuals to gain work experience.
On the web-based app, small business owners can post job listings for various work like trash management or window cleaning.
Vicki Sun was one of the two guest speakers at the Paseo Challenge. Sun works as a Technology and Innovation Advisor in the Mayor’s Office of Technology and Innovation.
Her role includes working with the city on autonomous vehicles, drones, blockchain and citywide privacy policies. She also serves as a community engagement manager.
“What I would do is identify the internal and external stakeholders that we should bring to the table to make sure we’re hearing the diversities of voices,” Sun said.
Sun’s team leveraged technology throughout the city of San Jose. They tried to resolve issues like digital equity, transit, access to city service and resident engagements.
“Cities must balance a desire to be innovative and open with a commitment to govern equitable healthy and safe cities,” Sun said.
Noah Clemens from Intel’s developer products division, said the key to creating a successful prototype is to face problems with the customer’s point of view in mind.
“If you take a customer-centric approach towards what you create and the problems you’re trying to solve, you’ll find a much more effective solution to a problem,” Clemens said. “Even if you have an okay solution, but not the best thing out there.”
Clemens said keeping public relations in mind would give students a higher chance to win the contest. Students shouldn’t be afraid to enter the challenge even if their idea might not be the best to solve a solution, he said.
“The more time you spend shaping your approach, the better you start learning how to prototype a solution,” said Clemens.
Senior computer engineer Daniel Soto was excited about the event when he discovered it through his SJSU Gmail account.
“I haven’t participated before, but it sounds fun,” Soto said.
Soto mentioned he wanted to join the last event, but didn’t know anyone who also wanted to be involved. His friends are taking part in the Paseo Public Prototyping Challenge this semester and plans on participating with them.
Computer engineering graduate student Aman Chandan is a fan of prototyping. Chandan has localized and mapped prototypes based on Bluetooth and Wi-Fi technologies.
He also plans on entering the event and enjoyed the guest speakers’ advice.
“The way [Clemens] motivated us to look at customer facing ideas, I think that’s what we really should have to do,” Chandan said.
