Product Design students are Adobe Creative Jam finalists

Product Design and Technology students Robin Pickering, Becky Hicks and Cameron Smith are Adobe Creative Jam Top 10 finalists. Representing Loughborough University, and out of 360 submissions from 3 countries, 570 registered teams and 230 different schools, they were the only remaining team in the finals from the UK.

Airbnb and me logo design

Working in partnership with Airbnb, the brief was to produce 'shared experiences' for the Airbnb brand, by creating an app that would allow friends and family to connect and share photos and trip information. Focusing on inclusivity, functionality and asthetics, the team were required to produce a mock-up app consisting of at least 20 artboards. Over the next 2 and a half days team 'Loogabaroogah' worked to produce a total of 99 prototypes for their final submission.

Airbnb screen designs

“AirBnB me enables users to digitally scrapbook stories in the age of smartphones and digital media. It has inclusive functionality; with family accounts, public content blocks, safety and approval features enabling editing of shared pages. Just want to see what family and friends are up to? The user can toggle from public to family view, which will remove posts from unconnected users. Looking for inspiration? Search through other user's holiday pages or create your own. Tags such as: Family, Couple, Nature, etc. can be used as filters for future reference. Your page will highlight a brief summary of locations you have visited and things you have done. Create or add to a ‘tree’ to connect with people you know. This includes shared holidays and having the ability to go through your own trees. Over time this app will have generations worth of holidays and will become a digital legacy for families and friends.”

Following their submission the team didn't have to wait long to be told they had made it in to the Top 10 finalists, and were required to give a 3-minute presentation showcasing their designs to a live stream audience of over 1700+ people. The team described it as:

"An adrenaline filled 2 hours, filled with presentations and discussions of everyone else's fantastic work. English teams (and even Adobe EMEA representatives) came out in full force in the sidebar chat to cheer us on."

Airbnb split screens showing two people, a countdown and a logo

The judging panel consisted of an Adobe Product Designer and Airbnb’s Creative Director and Video Editor, who gave their initial impressions saying the execution was great, they loved the warmth of the 'homemade' angle towards families, and the 'trees' feature had really made team 'Loogabaroogah' stand out from the crowd.

As well as an educational experience, the team came away with a $50 cash prize and a year's worth of student Adobe CC each. Speaking about the oppotunity, Robin explains that:

"This insight from industry professionals was great for us to receive and has prompted our journey into redesigning certain aspects to improve our apps user experience. In the end, the top five ranks were given to some astonishing examples of rapidly made app prototypes. As all-in-all, the experience was an absolutely fantastic, educational and rewarding opportunity, which we will no doubt endeavour to participate in again."

The next Adobe Creative Jam is scheduled for 29 May, full details can be found here.