“Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” — Steve Jobs

If you ask people to think of something that has great design, they’ll usually think of things that are pleasing to look at. After all, a lot of people think great design is about making things pretty.

So when I went around asking some friends if Ateneo is well-designed, all of them said yes. They mentioned things about how clean and polished our red-brick buildings are, how clean most of our classrooms look, and how nice it is to see green grass and tall trees around.

But when I asked them to identify things, processes, and services in Ateneo that could be designed better, I started to hear some things that didn’t just look bad. I started to hear things in Ateneo that they had bad experiences with.

They mentioned problems such as having trouble finding parking in Ateneo every morning, or the painstaking process of reserving venues, or how long some people have to wait during manual registration.

These are problems many of us experience, and yet we don’t really think of them as “design” problems. But they truly are.

As Steve Jobs mentioned, design is much more than just what something looks and feels like. It’s also about how things work, and whether we have great experiences with them or not.

With this definition, there are many things in Ateneo that do give students good experiences. We’re lucky to be able to enlist online in a matter of minutes and find books in the library easily.

But there are also a lot of things that could be designed better, such as the experience of finding parking or reserving venues. Of course, there are many reasons why these problems exist, and they probably can’t be solved easily.

The first step is to recognize that there are in fact problems with certain processes and services in Ateneo. The next step is to identify how they can be solved. For this step, concepts from the field of design can be incredibly effective.

These concepts from the field of design is what we, at User Experience Society, have been teaching for the past few weeks. We’ve recently launched a program called UX University, where we teach Ateneans who’ve joined the full process of designing something for users. This process we impart is the “Design Thinking” process, and we teach them how to execute each step of the process over the course of six weeks.

Besides just teaching them the steps, we also had them choose a problem in Ateneo that they wanted to solve through designing a digital solution, like a website or an app. We gave students some problems they could choose from, such as how to improve the AISIS enlistment experience, or how to improve the process of reserving venues.

However, we also allowed students to submit problems they wanted to solve themselves, and we loved how unique some of these problems were. We have a student who wants to improve the Rizal Library Web Catalog, while another wants to make the JTA application process be doable through a website.

It’s our hope that even after our program, our students would get in touch with the faculty and administrators in Ateneo that can help them implement their solutions. After all, we’d love to see some of these solutions being launched.

But even if you didn’t join our UX University program, I believe each of us still can play an important role in solving our school’s problems. We can’t just expect the admin or student government to figure out how to solve these problems. We need to take a more active role in helping solve them.

We have to investigate these problems ourselves. We have to work and converse with students and faculty from different disciplines. And we have to let the people in charge in Ateneo know our problems, issues, and suggested solutions. By taking initiative, empathizing with users, and collaborating with others, we can truly design better services for our community.

It might be difficult to see these processes and services in Ateneo being changed and improved anytime soon. After all, there might be a lot of paperwork, process changes, and development time needed to make these changes and launch these solutions. What’s important is that we try, because there may be administrators, teachers, and fellow students who are willing to help us launch these solutions.

So let’s help each other design a better Ateneo, no matter how crazy the problem or solution. Because, as Steve Jobs also said, “The people who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who often do.”