Open Design Challenge

The initial survey results from Italy and Brazil are available on this page. Based on the needs, problems and emotions that have emerged, we are launching the first design phase.

Participation is open to all designers who want to contribute in an open and collaborative way to the generation of solutions that improve the lives of people who are confined to their homes.

All ideas that are submitted following the template and guidelines will be published on this platform through an open, Creative Commons license. They will be accessible to anyone who wants to develop, implement, and disseminate them. (More information in the section "Open design and CC license" on this page).

We want to experiment a different way of ideating and collaborating, in order to accelerate the development of solutions that can improve the conditions of the people affected by this emergency. We count on your help and your contribution!

This project is constantly evolving and, also on the basis of the results of these first challenges, further activities may be planned for the design and development of new ideas.

How to participate

We organized weekly design sprints between April 7th and 21th. Working with tight deadlines allowed us to speed up the ideation of solutions, as we are aware that a quick response is essential in this situation.

The design challenge is still open. We are collecting ideas and publishing them on the platform about once a week.

If you want to contribute to this initiative by participating in the challenge, we ask you to follow the instructions on this page and send us your ideas.  All ideas we receive will be posted on the platform. You can participate in this initiative alone or in a team.

Guidelines

The proposed solutions may focus on one or more of the following areas that emerged from the survey:

• Problems and needs. How to solve a problem highlighted by the survey? (E.g. helping people to create a new routine, to make sense of their days, etc.).

• Desires. How can we help people overcome the lack of habits, activities, and relationships that were part of their lives until a few weeks ago?

• Emotional wellbeing. How can we help people feel good, and how can we help them be hopeful? How to reduce fear and suffering?

Ideas

The ideas proposed in this phase will be initial concepts of solutions (e.g. services, apps, websites, initiatives, networks, games, etc.), focusing on one or more of the following goals:

• Connecting

• Supporting

• Entertaining

• Informing

• Organizing

• Preventing

These areas are indicative and not exhaustive. Other thematic areas may emerge from the exploration of the data collected through the questionnaire.

Template

In order to facilitate the publication of ideas on the platform, we ask you to describe your solution in one or two pages, using this template.pdf.

In addition to it, we ask you to create a preview image that will be displayed in the gallery, using this mini template.pdf.

The two files should be submitted in editable PDF format. Both files should be named with the title of your idea.

For any question regarding the templates, do not hesitate to contact us.

Contents

The first page of the template has a predefined structure, while the second one can be adjusted and changed to add images, texts, or additional material that helps you present your idea (it can also remain empty). On the second page, you can also add a link to access online materials such as videos or interactive files that help explain your idea. Please fill in the template in all its parts, including the one related to the CC license (below), where you will have to enter your name and the title of your idea.

Font

To ensure graphic consistency for all the submitted ideas, we ask you to use the Poppins font, available on Google Fonts.

Language

Please describe your idea in English.

Submission

Please save your two files (idea and preview) as editable PDFs, and give them a name corresponding to the title of your idea.

Ideas should be submitted via upload to this Dropbox folder, by April 21. In addition to uploading your ideas, please fill in the form below for each idea you submit.

Open design and CC license

All the ideas we receive will be published online through the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. We chose this license because, in this particular situation, we would like to encourage the rapid implementation of new solutions and services by any person or entity that has the means to do it (independent developers, public institutions, companies, etc.). Our goal is to create an open platform where anyone can contribute and build on each other’s ideas. We believe that the community of designers and developers can truly contribute to help people better manage the consequences of this crisis. By working collaboratively, and offering our time, ideas and skills, we can try to improve the lives of all the people that are facing this unprecedented situation.

What happens after the ideas are published?

Anyone interested in implementing an idea that has been published on the platform, or even their own idea, should contact us through this form. We will mark that idea ‘in development’ on the platform. Of course, an idea can be developed by more than one subject simultaneously, following a completely open approach.

How to use the survey results

We invite designers who participate in this initiative to explore the data collected through the survey we have carried out in the past few weeks. The project is in progress, the data and visualizations will be updated periodically. The information we collected may be used as a knowledge base for ideating new specific solutions for this emergency. In particular, we grouped the survey responses into the following thematic areas (links show the results from Italy only):

PROBLEMS AND NEEDS

What are the main problems and needs of people who are required to stay home?

• Problems

• What would people need to better deal with this situation?

• What kind of services could help make people feel better?

• What uncomfortable situations have people faced since the emergency started?

DESIRES

What do people desire in this moment, and what aspects of their lives are they missing the most?

• What do people miss the most of their lives before the coronavirus?

• What would they like to do right now?

Analysis and visualization of results

The analysis and visualization of results depends on the type of answers. For multiple choice questions, results were represented quantitatively by diagrams and charts.

For open-ended questions, we analyzed the answers using NLP (Natural Language Processing) tools, in order to extrapolate the most relevant key concepts. For each open-ended question, we selected the 100 most relevant key concepts using the Keyphrase Digger (KD) tool. The key concepts have been grouped into topics, and they have been visualized according to their frequency. The areas of the circles represent the frequency of the selected topics and key concepts. These data visualizations are interactive.

All results are accessible here.