During the week of 21 October, Herts Propeller and the School of Creative Arts ran Design Sprint 2019 for 250 students in 34 teams with eight industry partners. Our industry partners were: Airbus Corporate Jets, Allsaints, Lobby Espresso, Modeclix, NRBY, You Town and Creative Ideas By…
Our partners set the briefs, identifying design issues that they were facing. Our students rose to the challenge producing innovative and interesting solutions to the briefs. The winning teams were; Team Royal with challenge Lobby Espresso, Sydney, Australia who built an App addressing service design issues providing better customer service; and Team 17 with challenge Modeclix, a new opportunity for 3D printed textiles, addressing anxiety issues through play and colour.
Jake Knapp the author of SPRINT, wrote this book when he was working for Google Ventures. He heard about what we were doing – this has only even been done in small groups – and was amazed at the ambition of the project. He was so impressed he made a short film for our students. He said: –
“I hope your experience this week has been good and I hope it has shown some promise of some of the things I have described…I am super excited about what you guys are up to and wish you the very best…I can’t wait to hear how it all went”.
One of the Mentors supporting the students commented: –
“The Design Sprint gave the students an opportunity to tackle a real-life business problem, in this case how to best manage the rush-hour peak in a coffee shop. The teams provided different solutions, including placing vending machines in the surrounding area, to in-shop events to even out the customer flow, and empowering staff members to generate a social media feed. The winners, Team Royals, went directly to the core problem and designed – and largely executed – a preordering app. They also did extensive research to establish the best option, pay-back time and return on investment. The judges were duly impressed by how much can be achieved within a week!”