Students will investigate the real needs of future colony residents and environmental experts by conducting interviews, capturing direct quotes, and creating structured empathy maps that ground their future colony designs in authentic user evidence.

Students will analyze patterns across their expert interviews and empathy artifacts to define a focused, evidence-based design challenge for their self-sustaining interplanetary colony. They will synthesize user insights into a clear “How Might We” statement and design brief that guides ideation in the next phase.

Students will generate a wide range of user-centered solutions for their self-sustaining interplanetary colony, using structured brainstorming and evaluation strategies. They will move from divergent thinking to convergent decision-making, grounding all ideas in real user evidence from earlier interviews and empathy work. By the end of the phase, each team will produce annotated concept sketches of their top colony solutions that directly respond to identified user needs and ecosystem constraints.

Students will build and test low- and medium-fidelity prototypes of their self-sustaining colony solutions, gather structured feedback from peers acting as users, and revise their designs using documented evidence to strengthen their final model and interactive digital tour.

Students will conduct a final validation test of their self-sustaining colony models and interactive digital tours with new users, document feedback-driven revisions, and present their complete design story—from user research to final prototype—at the Colony Expo to university and garden center partners.