What went down during our first design challenge: Circuit Disrupt

The COVID-19 pandemic forced us to relook at how we lived, played and worked. While the world scrambled to keep the virus at bay, we got to thinking how the new normal would look like if and when we overcame this.

With a little less than 3 weeks, we put together the inaugural igloohome design challenge. Titled Circuit Disrupt, we wanted to encourage creativity and innovation amidst the circuit breaker stay-home measures.

The SGUnited initiative came about to support local businesses, frontline workers and to keep morale high in the community. Cooped up in our homes, our team came to an understanding that we had to be part of the initiative to find ways to lead better and more meaningful lives through thoughtful design and technological innovations.

Pooling together our resources, we sought out sponsorships and partners to join us on this journey. The support was overwhelming, ranging from international organisations like Stanford ChangeLabs to local associations such as Action Community for Entreprenuership (ACE) coming onboard.

Shoutout to all our co-sponsors and partners for making this a successful event!

As the challenge went live, we started receiving entries that grew to a whopping 137 submissions over four weeks. It was extremely exciting for us as we sifted through the ideas and solutions - and so many were brilliant ideas.

The virtual judging session was a blast!

The judges got together for an hour of fulfilling discussions before finally deciding on the winners. Each were leaders in their respective fields, and they opened our eyes to many insights on what makes a product or solution a good one.

Now, here's the exciting part. We're going to show you some of the winning entries!

Open category

As of 29 July 2020, there has been a change of winners due to disqualification of an entry. The information has been updated on https://www.igloohome.co/en-SG/events/circuitdisrupt as of 3 August 2020.

Student category: First Prize

Credits: Jessie Li, Nang Cho Mar Myint, Khin Thapyay

The judges were impressed by the team of LASALLE students who came up with UPlive, a series of smart furniture and fixings to address the smaller details of day-to-day living. With the pandemic, the design also included sanitisers in shoe cabinets, delivery lockers and the like. Pretty nifty!

Early bird submission winner

Credits: Benjamin Soh

Other cool entries we liked were Ontogenesis by Benjamin Soh who won our early bird prize. A product design undergraduate at Nanyang Technological University, Benjamin wowed us with his spatial design of how he envisioned public housing to look like in the future.

We spoke with some of the participants and Jon Wee, first runner up of the open category perfectly summarised what we'd set out to achieve with this challenge.

For many, the COVID-19 pandemic is something we've never experienced and it's changing how we live, work and play. Circuit disrupt was helpful in reminding me that design has an important role to play in re-imagining a future that's safe and sustainable for future generations. It challenged me to think more deeply about why we do what we do.

We thank all the participants for showing us your creativity, sharing your invaluable ideas with us and mostly, for coming together to create a better tomorrow for our world. We hope to be able to do this again, so keep your eyes peeled!

For a full list of winners, please visit igloohome.co/en-SG/events/circuitdisrupt.

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