Hackathons sound like a great way to boost creativity. You put people together with a laptop, some stationary and caffeine for a couple of days and ask them to come up a new idea.
But Ben Sheppard, who leads McKinsey’s global design Research had an unfortunate realisation: the hackathon ended. the Designers go home and nothing else gets done.
Top designers also felt the The same can be said for many designers. There are many designers “had been through activities where we had tried to design for good, where we had tried to hold activities to make the world a better place,” Sheppard is the leader of a chiefs’ roundtable. design McKinsey officers “Did it actually make the world a better place? In many cases, sadly, the answer was no,” He ends.
Sheppard is One of the The founders of “Design For Good,” a new alliance Made up of the world’s largest companies to use design Talent to solve social problems (Sheppard is The following are some of the most effective ways to improve your own effectiveness. the Consultative Council for The Sunday Review’s upcoming Brainstorm Design conference on Dec. 6)
Design for Good is now halfway through its two-year first program. dozens of projects Ready to go But to prove the alliance is Sheppard is wrong about more than he thinks “design theater,” It now has to accomplish something equally difficult: Put these projects into action. the real world.
Creating better sanitation and access to water
It is important to note that the word “you” means “you”. allianceLaunched in April 2022, the project counts some of the world’s largest companies— PepsiCo, General Mills, Microsoft, Lixil, Nestle—among its nine corporate members. The U.K.’s Royal College of Art provides education and training for participants.
Design for Good’s first round of projects focused on the Mission to improve sanitation and access clean water Design for Good began by putting its hundreds of designers from all its member organizations into cross-company team and offering them a design Short from the alliance’s first round of partner development organizations: WaterAid, WaterStarters, the World Toilet Organization and others.
The Partner Development Organizations helped the designers understand the problem that needed solving, talked through ideas and, importantly, told them what hadn’t worked in the past. Designers then worked the projects part-time For six months You can also use the Hackathons are usually two to three days long.
“We knew that we had to start with partnerships with development organizations, we knew we had to be able to give the intellectual property away, we needed substantive time of the order of two years, not two days,” Sheppard says
By June 2023, the alliance’s designers had created 26 projects to improve water quality and sanitation, ranging from a social media awareness campaign to encourage U.K. residents to save For remote rural communities, water can be used to create a zip bag containing reusable and affordable products for menstruation.
A ‘Burning Man’ You can also find out more about the following: design
Design For Good has now entered its final phase. the Second year of the program, it must help its partners get these projects started. the ground.
And that’s where the alliance’s corporate members come in, Sheppard says. The development organizations might need to be helped by “non-designers,” You might be a web developer or a supply chain expert. A Big companies like Lixil and Microsoft can provide this expertise.
Sheppard knows it is Still an experiment It’s important that Design For Good “retains a healthy humility,” He confesses.
Design for Good must be sustainable. Sheppard notes that participating designers—all of whom work demanding design jobs for major companies—stuck with their projects for months thanks to the “personal sense of satisfaction” Working to solve social ills is a great way to achieve this.
He hopes this commitment will foster a community spirit in the future, when Design For Good takes on its next project. Mission likely to be improving the access to quality education starting in September.
Sheppard hopes designers will continue to come back with a feeling of “passionate, almost cultish following, each year, just preparing for the next opportunity, just preparing to meet with their fellow designers.”
“Almost like Burning Man,” He makes a suggestion.
The Sunday Review’s Brainstorm Design conference is The return date is Dec. 6, at the MGM Cotai in Macau, China. Discussions will be held between panelists and participants. “Empathy in the Age of AI” How to: new The technology revolution is here the creative industry.
