Theme: “After the Pandemic: Designing the Next Version of Our World”
Today, eight finalists were announced for this the 8th annual Design Challenge at the Stanford Center on Longevity. Stanford’s tech-based contest is but one contest of its kind that I have followed since it began in 2013. For the year 20/21, there were over 220 submissions by university design teams from 37 countries around the world.
In my Sept. 8, 2020 post, when Stanford called for submissions, I noted that we had moved on into deeper, complex conversations as to how we are going to adapt our lives with the COVID pandemic for some time to come, while at the same time visioning a better world beyond.
As I said then and repeat, those who say we are in a “post-COVID” world or as in the Stanford theme header “after the pandemic”, either have a false miscalculation of timelines or are on the side of futuristic optimism. What has changed since December 2020 of course is the arrival of vaccines for COVID. While this is good news, we know the roll out on a global scale will be complex, slow and to some extent inequitably distributed and/or not universally accepted.
Yet the realities of life in a COVID world will evolve in many unknown ways over the next few years and our adaptability will be the key. In that sense, the Stanford subtitle for this year’s challenge – “Designing the Next Version of Our World” is appropriate. Students were encouraged to use Stanford’s New Map of Life: After the Pandemic as a source of inspiration for their designs.
If anything, this past year has opened our eyes and demonstrated a demand for technology design creativity to serve not only pre-existing aging and longevity issues like mobility and social isolation, but also to help close some global inequality gaps such as poor access to safe health care. As the 2020/21 Stanford Challenge stated, “Solutions for remote or virtual access will be included in the scope of the challenge, but we encourage participants to think more broadly.”
Here are a few items the Stanford statement went on to give as examples of questions raised by the pandemic that design entries might considered:
- If remote work is to become more common, are there ways in which we can re-invigorate local community connections as people spend more time at home?
- What are the best ways for different generations to connect when they live apart?
- What have we learned from our change in activity about how we can reduce our impact on the environment, and how can we apply those lessons going forward?
With this in mind, let us see how closely the final submissions answered the call. What stands out when you scan through the short list of the Stanford Longevity Design Challenge finalists is that their designs address multi-generational needs from children to older adults – for example, here are three:
Acties (University of Maribor, Slovenia) – An app designed to motivate children to do daily exercise at home using an “advent calendar”- like reward system.
Me Time (NMIMS School of Design, India) – A multi-device home system aimed at helping mothers working from home have more control over their work and family time.
Near (Northwestern University, USA) – A service that helps families find personalized monitoring solutions for older adults aging at home when their loved ones live far away.
Announcements of the winners are in April 2021 and as usual, I will take time to research more on these finalists and choose my top three. Meanwhile on March 25th I am attending the virtual technology pitch presentation at the Centre for Aging & Brian Health Innovation’s CABHI Summit 2021,which will tone me up for spotting interesting innovations, some of which often surprisingly may not be so high-tech.