Bay Area Kickoff 2019
A group of students brainstorm on colorful sticky notes while using a large window as a collaboration surface. Innovation at its best!
This past Saturday, Project Invent teams from San Diego, Sacramento, and everywhere in between met at Google.org in San Francisco for a day of connecting, learning from industry professionals, and ideating. We had a total of 70 students, 5 guest speakers, and 43 parents, mentors, and volunteers.
Keren Wong (IDEO) shares a compelling question that she ponders everyday in her work: How might we reimagine our systems, rituals, spaces, and communities through play?
Our star-studded panel of designers. From left to right: Anji Ren (Google), Mukul Bisht (Rubrik), David Gragnolati (Apple), Justine Sun De La Cruz (Ideo.org).
In the morning we heard five lightning talks and engaged in a panel with Anji Ren (Engineering Manager, Google), Mukul Bisht (Principal UX Designer, Rubrik), David Gragnolati (Manager iPhone TechOps, Apple), and Justine Sun De la Cruz (Senior Interaction Designer, IDEO.org), and Keren Wong (Business Development, IDEO - Design for Play).
Some great takeaways:
Test your products in the real world and get feedback.
Empathy is a responsibility.
It’s always about the users!
Ask how might we questions: How assumes there is a solution, Might assume there are multiple approaches, We assumes that it is a collaborative process.
Students from various schools across California brainstorm as group about how they will build inventions that will impact the world.
One student leans in to take a closer look at a teammate’s idea. Other students break off into smaller groups to discuss.
After lunch, our young designers embarked on their own design journeys and started crafting “How Might We” questions. Students designed for everything from grocery shopping with wheelchairs and simplifying foot brace removal. Teams who have already connected with a community partner focused on their specific challenge, while other teams were provided persona examples to brainstorm around.
We even had a parent team participate and create the “Grote”: an innovative grocery tote for wheelchair users!
A student stands up to share on the microphone the ideas that her group came up with during brainstorming.
A volunteer looks on as students from various schools share their inspiring ideas for impact.
After crafting “How Might We” questions, all teams brainstormed ideas. In just 5 minutes, we brainstormed 500+ ideas as a group. We went around the room and each team shared their favorite idea. We heard some incredible ideas ranging from wheelchair attachments to a smart pill box!
Thank you to everyone for coming out and participating in this event. It was a huge success and great way to launch a year of inspiring invention for all of our teams. At the end of the year, all 30 of our Project Invent schools will present their human-centered inventions to top investors and tech executives in the Bay Area and NYC.
East Coast teams, we will see you for our kickoff in NYC on October 26th! Email hello@projectinvent.org if you would like more information!
