Objective:
Through participation in the Game Changer Innovation Programme students will:
- Explore the UN Sustainable Development Goals and understand problems that are highlighted
- Understand how Design Thinking is used to generate innovative solutions
- Generate ideas that contribute to tackling the problem highlighted in the challenge (related to one or more of the SDGs)
- Create a plan to implement your ideas, using business modelling tools such as the Lean Business Canvas
- Develop team working, communication and pitching skills
Overview:
The Game Changer Innovation Programme uses design thinking to engage students with the UN Sustainable Development Goals. It is delivered as a design sprint competition, where students work in small teams over 2 days to understand the challenge set, spot opportunities and define problems, generate ideas for solutions and pitch their ideas back to the groups for a chance to win a prize.
Activity:
Game Changer is extremely flexible and can be adapted to be delivered in any setting (in-person and online), within any timeframe. It’s important to set it at a time that you know will achieve maximum engagement with students (evenings & weekends work for Durham University students!).
We have provided example slide decks with this toolkit, so you can see the basic structure of a programme and decide what will work best for your institution. You can mix and match from the slide decks depending on the structure you decide to use, or make your own based on what we have produced.
Team Selection:
- For live events, we allow the teams to self-select. All teams should be between 3 – 5 people, ideally from a mix of disciplines
- For online events, we have allowed self-selection but we have also assigned people into teams and pre-assigned breakout rooms
Pitching:
Where possible, we have invited external colleagues to judge the final pitches and give feedback to students.
2-day sprint structure:
Day 1:
- Team formation & ice breaker
- Setting the challenge (a How Might We… question that you set for the students)
- Setting out the sprint structure – empathy/ ideate/ present
- Research time
- Break (usually with food/refreshments)
- Ideation
- Narrowing down and choosing an idea
Day 2:
- Storyboarding ideas
- Lean Canvas introduction
- Lunch
- Pitch preparation & practice
- Break
- Pitching & judging – choose a winner (if you choose to make it a competition-style event)
- Feedback to all teams on their ideas and pitches
- Celebration
Pitching format:
- Pitching takes place on Day 2
- Morning session
- Storyboarding
- Pitch content & construction – Lean Canvas
- Afternoon session
- 2 hours of pitch preparation & practice
- Pitching in front of groups & judges
- Powerpoints allowed
- 5 minutes to pitch, 2 minutes Q&A
Online delivery follows a similar format, with the use of an online whiteboard tool for students to work in their teams.
Example slide deck and challenge examples can be provided for the 2-day sprint.
Skill Development:
- Research and critical thinking skills – developed as students seek to understand a problem and who/ what/where is affected
- Creativity and innovation – developed as students work through ideation prompts to generate innovative solutions
- Collaboration and team work – students are often working with new people from different disciplinary backgrounds and have to work quickly together to generate viable solutions
- Curiosity and motivation – students understand how their lived experiences and subject knowledge can have impact on problems in the wider world
- Reflection and presentation – students work through their ideas using lean business modelling tools to understand if their idea can work in the “real world” before presenting in a pitch-style to a group of judges and students
Resources:
- Post-its or similar sticky pads
- Flipchart paper
- Pens
If delivering online: Miro / Mural / Padlet are all useful online whiteboard spaces for students to collate findings and collaborate.
References:
UN Sustainable Development Goals: https://sdgs.un.org/goals
Design Kit by IDEO: https://www.designkit.org/
The Stanford d.school: https://dschool.stanford.edu/
Interaction Design Foundation: https://www.interaction-design.org/
Design Thinkers Academy London: https://www.designthinkersacademy.co.uk/
What Design Can Do: https://www.whatdesigncando.com/
Durham Global Challenges Centre for Doctoral Training: https://www.dur.ac.uk/globalchallenge-cdt/
The Design Thinking Playbook: https://www.design-thinking-playbook.com/playbook-en
Sprint: https://www.thesprintbook.com/
Factfulness: https://www.gapminder.org/factfulness-book/