Blog 5 How fast can you sprint?

This week we headed across campus to the BlackBox innovation centre with a pen and paper and our heads in the air having no idea what we were doing. "The design challenge" that's all we knew before the class and to be honest, I had no idea what to expect. Walking in the door, I was quite amazed at the facilities I never even knew this place existed. Everything felt so right it was such a cool space where I kind of just wanted to let all my creativity pour out onto the table in a more business and realistic way. After a quick briefing, the 'sprint' started that is the 'design sprint' not the running sprint, 4 hours to plan and pitch a startup idea in line with the UN sustainable development guidelines. We got straight to work.

A startup idea in 4 hours is a pretty big task, so the pressure was on right from the get-go. There was no time for daydreaming; we were all super focused. It felt like a different kind of focused, one that I haven't felt in the studio across campus it felt more realistic and that people were counting on us. The design sprint challenged us to think in a more business sense, designing solutions that were systematic and pragmatic. The people in BlackBox wanted us to use our creative skill to solve major sustainable world problems. I really enjoyed the change to what felt like real-life creativity the short time frame made it intriguing to be moving through such a lengthy process in a few hours.

We assigned roles in the startup, just like a real company (CEO, CTO, etc.). I was fortunate to be with some really creative guys in my group who liked to move fast, which was really important for this task. We went through the different ideation stages, from ideas that were really out then bringing them back into a more realistic role. We eventually settled on a methane gas collection service. Methane gas can be captured from decaying organic materials, like plants, food waste and most importantly, animal waste. The idea was to start collecting off farmers and then try and push the unit into a household where they could collect this biogas and use it as an energy source. This workshop really opened up my eyes to the possibilities we can do with just a few hours of work. I wonder if we had a month for this project at the same pace how far down the line we would be with this startup. This was definitely my favourite CDC class so far an experience I will never forget.