By Thomas Jilk
The iSchool-based student organization spent the spring semester redesigning the market’s website, just in time for its long-awaited opening.
For years, the Madison Public Market has been more of an exciting prospect than an imminent reality. That is finally changing — after repeated delays, the market’s grand opening is officially set for July 23, 2026. The market will feature local vendors of food and beverages, handcrafted gifts, and art, and is designed as a lively and inclusive community space that boosts the local economy. But for the market to reach its full potential, the physical space needs a worthy digital counterpart. That’s where students from the User Experience (UX) Club at UW–Madison enter the picture.
Throughout the spring semester, more than 20 members of the club, which is based in the Information School, collaborated directly with the Madison Public Market to revamp a website that needed new information and increased accessibility. The club hoped “to get people to feel like they’re in the market while browsing the website,” explained Manny Gonzalez Jimenez ‘26, former co-president of the UX Club.
The work gave students a valuable opportunity to lead a UX project with real stakes, as they constructed a digital front door to one of Madison’s most anticipated community spaces.
Trusting the process
The partnership began with a step that takes courage, especially for undergraduates. “We decided to reach out and pitch the idea of a new website with good accessibility,” Gonzalez Jimenez said. It was a valuable chance to “speak one-on-one with stakeholders and pitch ideas,” he added.
The Madison Public Market team agreed, and the collaboration began to take shape. Over six workshops, students followed the same UX process they had learned in Classes like LIS 470: Interaction Design Studio and CS570: Human Computer Interaction. “We followed the standard user experience process of researching, defining, iterating, prototyping, and testing,” Gonzalez Jimenez said.
To manage the scope, the club divided into five teams—Home, About, Merchants, Events, and Community—each responsible for a major section of the site. Students conducted competitor research, including analyzing the Milwaukee Public Market and Pike Place Market websites, and toured the Madison Public Market’s not-yet-open space to understand how the digital experience should mirror the physical one. Designing for a still-unopened space required imagination and flexibility; students had to make decisions without a full set of requirements, adjusting as new information emerged.
Learning by doing (and teaching)
For many students in the club, the project was their first experience working with an outside client. It pushed them to develop both technical and interpersonal skills.
“Going through this project really helped me learn more about the technical skills with Figma, but also the communication skills as well,” said co-president Kira Lee x’28, an Information Science major with Data Science and Graphic Design certificates. Teaching also became part of the process. Gonzalez Jimenez created a Figma tutorial for club members who were new to the tool and led several of the workshops.
“Teaching the design process helped me further advance my knowledge, because teaching is the best way to learn.”
Manny Gonzalez Jimenez
The club’s interdisciplinary makeup—including students studying information science, computer science, art, business and more—strengthened the work by bringing a range of perspectives.
“One of the main benefits of having a UX Club is bringing design to students,” Lee noted. “We offer a new perspective to students that UW–Madison never had before,” Lee said.
One of the club‘s faculty advisors, UX Professor of Practice Leah Ujda, watched the project unfold and helped guide students through it as needed. However, “One of the most impressive parts of the project is how self-directed the UX Club has been,” Ujda said. “It’s very satisfying as an instructor to see people taking what we teach in class and finding their own motivation to apply it.”
She also noted the project’s value in today’s job market. “Entry-level roles are extremely competitive. If your portfolio links to a live site, that’s going to stand out.”
On the horizon
Once launched, the redesigned website will support the Madison Public Market as it prepares to welcome visitors this summer. For the students who built it, the launch is a chance to see their work impact how thousands of people experience a new community space.
For the UX Club, the success of this project showed how “students can learn a lot outside the classroom when they’re trusted to take the lead,” as Lee put it. With more students joining from across campus, the club is poised to take on new collaborations that connect classroom learning with real impact. Meanwhile, as the market opens its doors, the students’ work will help ensure that the digital experience is just as inviting as the physical one.
