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OCAD U students win top prize in international gaming interface design competition

Nexus
Screen shots of Kate Jung and Felicia Shane Evangeline’s game connection app, Nexus.

A team of OCAD University students took the top prize this week in an online, international team challenge to create an app that connects, welcomes and informs new gamers using the user experience design and prototyping tool Adobe XD. The competition was held in collaboration with game publishing giant, Activision.

The Adobe College Creative Jam with Activision brought together 706 students from 156 different institutions from the United States, United Kingdom and Canada, who formed into more than 300 teams for the intensive weekend-long event.

Competitors kicked off the event with a hands-on Adobe XD workshop on Friday, May 29, and competed in the fast-paced tournament to submit their projects on Sunday. In a live broadcast finale event on June 2, the ten finalist teams presented their projects to judges Raven Cruz-Fadden and Oscar De Leon-Sulecio from Activision, and Katarina Lackner from Adobe.

Among the finalists were teams from the University of California, Santa Cruz & University of California, Santa Barbara; University of Waterloo & Carleton University; University of California, Irvine; University of British Columbia & University of Virginia; York University; Academy of Art University; University of Waterloo; Sheridan College and Falmouth University.

Team ‘Daily Grind’ from OCAD U, comprised of fourth-year Graphic Design students Felicia Shane Evangeline and Kate Jung, was named as the winner for their submission, Nexus.

Nexus is a centralized platform designed to help adult, first-time gamers with busy schedules to start and enjoy game play, synchronously or asynchronously, with their friends. The platform asks questions about what types of games a user might enjoy in order to make game suggestions, offers game previews and tutorials, forums for help and guidance, friend challenges and badges and rewards for avatar customization.

Kate and Felicia each won $500 in Amazon gift cards, along with a one-year subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud (valued at $240 USD).

Congratulations Kate and Felicia!

Adobe Creative Jam
LIVE Adobe Creative Jam host Rachel Elnar (left) congratulates OCAD University's Kate Jung on her team’s first place win! See the interaction in this 15 second clip here.