ABOUT
UC San Diego’s ProtoLab conducts research at the intersection of social computing and design with the goal of developing tools, processes, and instructional techniques that change the way people solve complex problems creatively and collaboratively. We develop technology related to social media, crowdsourcing, mixed-initiative systems, and physical-digital interactions to enable large-scale online creativity and to study the cognitive, social, and cultural aspects of design. Learn more…
NEWS & EVENTS
Community-Driven Design
To support community-driven design, we created Design for San Diego (D4SD), an innovation challenge structured around the human-centered design process that seeks to help communities address complex civic problems.

Supporting Collective Ideation
Investigating how social computing systems can optimize Investigating how social computing systems can optimize real-time creative collaboration in small teams or with crowds by leveraging collective knowledge.

Tools for Info Synthesis
Exploring how the practice of integrating, organizing, filtering, and evaluating information as part of a design process can be distributed across many people.

Online Feedback for Design
Creating tools to help innovators obtain and make sense of diverse feedback from potential stakeholders or customers.

Community-Driven Design
Investigating how social computing systems can optimize real-time creative collaboration in small teams or with crowds by leveraging collective knowledge.

PEOPLE
ALUMNI
Postdoctoral researchers
PhD students and collaborators
Visiting researchers
Undergraduate students