Together with four universities from the US, Australia and Brazil we kicked off our Fall ’09 University Design Challenge in the first week of September. The students are working on concepts around the question “Browsing History – How can we make sense of this rich source of data and how do we best present this data to the user?” [full brief]

Each university takes a different approach to tackle this challenge – from a semester-long course specifically around this challenge at the University of Sydney to a series of short Design Jams at the University of Michigan and week-long programs (PUC Minas and Parsons).

SOCHI, the student organization for computer-human interaction at the University of Michigan kicked off their Design Jams this week – you can read about their approach on their inaugural blog post.

The University of Sydney set up a Ning group to facilitate discussion, capture artefacts of their research & work and openly share their findings.

In the next few weeks the groups will work together with Grady Kelly, an experienced interaction designer from the wider community, who will provide help, feedback & guidance on prototyping.

We’ll present more information & updates on the process, results and findings as we go here. Stay tuned.