DDC Participates in Mouse Design League Program

On June 27th, 2022, students from JHS 217 the Robert A. Van Wyck School in Queens celebrated their closing showcase. During the Spring term, DDC Infrastructure Division Senior Traffic Engineer, Asheque Rahman, participated as an Industry Mentor for the Mouse Design League Program. Rahman helped guide them in creating unique apps that would support their community. Mouse is a national youth development program that believes in technology as a force for good. The mission of Mouse is to empower youth and educators to engage with computer science and creative technology to solve real problems and make meaningful change in our world. Mouse is committed to fostering greater diversity in the STEM professions and empowering youth and educators to access and amplify technology as a force for good.

“I was truly amazed to see all the brilliant ideas the students came up with in creating apps that would support our community. It was even more impressive to see that once the students started working on designing their apps, the creativity flourished into another level. I am thankful that I had this opportunity to work with these eager students through this journey to create, develop, empathize, interact, collaborate, gain and present their wonderful apps,” said DDC Infrastructure Division Senior Traffic Engineer, Asheque Rahman.

The Mouse Design League is an in-depth digital design program in which students work in teams to invent an original app that addresses a social need using the human-centered design process. Students create a meaningful original app design, from the ground up, designed to help others in your community. They develop skills in human-centered design, UX/UI design, graphic design, entrepreneurship, and more. They also empathize with community members and mutual aid initiatives to focus designs on real-life challenges. They get to interact with professional design and project management tools from Adobe, Figma, Google, and more. They collaborate with peers and industry professionals as they learn how to work as part of a design team. They gain valuable portfolio building experience, workplace skills and greater knowledge of career pathways in the technology and design fields and lastly, they get to present their product with the broader community at project fairs and competitions.

To learn more about Mouse, visit mouse.org.

About the NYC Department of Design and Construction
The Department of Design and Construction is the City’s primary capital construction project manager. In supporting Mayor Adams’ long-term vision of growth, sustainability, resiliency, equity and healthy living, DDC provides communities with new or renovated public buildings such as firehouses, libraries, police precincts, and new or upgraded roads, sewers and water mains in all five boroughs. To manage this $15.5 billion portfolio, DDC partners with other City agencies, architects and consultants, whose experience bring efficient, innovative and environmentally conscious design and construction strategies to City projects. For more information, please visit nyc.gov/ddc.