Marking the last week of the Jump Start program, the Year 8 students pitched their ideas in the school lecture theatre to tackle a variety of waste problems in the community. A broad range of creative concepts were presented as a result of students being led through the design thinking process.
The double diamond design process which students followed during the year.
Students have spent the past few weeks prototyping and testing their ideas, which tackle a range of waste problems identified through research and observations at the beginning of the program.
Here's a brief summary of the different projects that were successfully pitched.
Food Waste:
- Wasteful Will and Smart Sally - A fun comic book series targeted at school students which teaches students good habits and interesting facts about food waste with the aim of changing wasteful behaviour. The comics would be designed to be accompanied with life size mascots and distributed during school visits which include presentations.
- FW is an app which reduces food waste by providing recipe ideas based on leftovers. Design research showed busy executives and families are often too busy to cook and the app targeted these users with an innovative solution.
E-waste:
- E-bin is a service and product solution which deals with the problem of e-waste by providing a special e-bin and pick up service that collects all your unused and old electronic goods and puts them to good use. The service works with an accompanying app.
- Flufftopia is a proposed short film/animation series targeted at primary school children. Through the series of animations which were planned to be uploaded onto a website and youtube, strong lessons can be learnt about the e-waste problem. Young children are taught positive behaviour from an early age with potential school programs being used to help spread the message.
Water Waste:
- FiltYo is a water bubbler designed for schools and other public environments to reduce the amount of water observed to be wasted in these types of areas. Excess and spilt water is captured at the base of the bubbler, before being filtered. The filtered water is then cycled back into the system seeing water wastage during these scenarios a thing of the past.
- Nxt shower system was designed to prevent water wastage during showering in family homes. Research showed this to be a large problem area. An innovative showerhead and touch screen were designed which gamifies the shower experience and encourages users to save water, shower more efficiently and run against other house members to save the most water. Students prototyped both the working interface and showerhead with some great results.
A special thanks goes to teacher Camilla White who provided excellent support during the program.