Education and Creativity
A place to play in design education.
With ID Study association as part of TU Delft
Team Project
5 committee members | 5 months | 2020
Client
ID Study association
Process
Lean experimentation | Acquisition | Prototyping
Outcome
Digital design marathon | Official elective course proposal
Challenge
Boost creativity and play among design students during the lockdown in 2020.
To help design students at the IDE faculty in Delft nourish their creativity, and find inspiration from fellow students while working from home, I started an initiative together with a committee (‘Cases on Tour’) from the ID study association. In my role as chairwoman of this committee, I was responsible for the project management, acquisition, and overall results of the initiative.
Get the students’ creative juices flowing again.
From talking to numerous design students, we found out that stress, boredom, anxiety, loneliness, and a lack of motivation and inspiration were increasing problems during the lockdown.
In response to this, we had the intention of starting an initiative that brought the creativity, connectivity, playfulness and excitement of the design faculty back into the students’ homes. We took an experimental approach and set three key principles to guide us through the process of creating this initiative.
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Invite students to get off their screens
Allow students to reconnect to each other
Bridge the gap between academics and real businesses
The Flowers on Mars initiative
Flowers on Mars became the name of our initiative because it triggers ambiguity, refers to outer space (as a place to be further explored), and is a prompt to rethink the impossible.
This is very in line with this project because it is all about helping design students transition from working at the faculty to working from home, adjusting to a new environment, and helping them explore new ways to be creative and collaborative.
Outcome
A digital design marathon to stimulate creativity and collaboration among students through playful weekly challenges.
The final creation that came out of the Flowers on Mars initiative was a digital design marathon, hosted on Instagram. This marathon was a 3-week event, and by participating students could receive 2 ECTS credits.
Every week a new challenge was shared on the Instagram page and all groups needed to hand in their creations by the end of the week. In the following week, the results were shared on Instagram, and a new challenge was given.
Every week, feedback, inspiration and tips were given by design experts from different businesses. This allowed students to expand their professional network and allowed companies to connect with upcoming talent.
“Using Instagram as a platform to interact, share, and inspire”
— Sharing content through stories, posts, and live streams.
— Our instagram page. These posts are the participants’ deliverables of Challenge 1.
Weekly challenges.
Including feedback, inspiration and tips from design experts.
Using ‘Instagram Stories’ as a conversational tool to connect people, share ideas, and provide practical information.
Something I learned …
Reacting on the moment to fulfil a need
This experience taught me that reacting to the moment to fulfil a need can really bring a project off the ground. From the start we approached this project as an experiment, figuring out on the go what we could do to help students in lockdown in the best way possible. The students desire to find inspiration, do something fun, and feel connected to other students again was so strong that we quickly gained the students’ support.
Together we then iterated the initiative in such a way that it became a beloved event by all our participants. As the head (charwoman) of this project, I couldn’t be prouder.
And besides, it also made my time at home in lockdown times a whole lot brighter and more enjoyable, as you can see from the smile on my face.