Global Goals Jam Hong Kong 2020 Report

The pandemic has greatly affected our life this year. When we need to maintain social distancing and are forced to stay home, how can we use technology to help us to collaborate and share creative ideas with others? Online design thinking workshops might be one of the solutions.

Online design thinking workshops at FabCafe Hong Kong 

FabCafe Hong Kong has hosted different online ideation workshops this year, which brought the traditional offline workshops to the online environment, and we received a lot of positive feedback. We hosted ideation workshops such as “Rethinking tools for future learning”, “Waste Reduction During Pandemic” and “Redesign Open Spaces for the New Normal”.

In these workshops, participants experienced 2-hour design thinking practices and learnt how they can collaborate and communicate with online tools including ZOOM and Miro board. With the help of these tools, online design thinking workshops can be hosted just like an offline workshop, or even able to work more efficiently than offline workshops. 

Global Goals Jam Hong Kong 2020

Not only short ideation workshops, FabCafe Hong Kong hosted the online Global Goals Jam (GGJ) on 10 – 11 October 2020, which was the third year we hosted GGJ in Hong Kong. Participants were able to work in teams and went through design thinking practises to explore creative and innovative solutions to make a better world. Even under this difficult time, we are still looking for possible solutions to tackle Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) together! 

This year Global Goals Jam Hong Kong focused on 3 SDGs:

Goal #3: Good Health and Well Beings

Goal #11: Sustainable Cities and Communities

Goal #12: Responsible Consumption and Production

This year we were honoured to have Shared Value Project Hong Kong, TALK Research and Innovation Management and Green Is The New Black as our supporting organisations. There were 3 facilitators from SVPHK and TALK and 9 participants in total. We separated our participants into 3 teams to tackle different SDGs. 

We used Miro board for introduction and presentations at Global Goals Jam Hong Kong 2020.

Online tools for GGJ Hong Kong 2020

Hosting online workshops require the right online tools. For GGJ Hong Kong, we mainly used ZOOM as the communication tool between participants and facilitators. We utilised the “Breakout room” function on ZOOM to separate participants into groups. Then we brought them back to the big room for presentations and breaks.

Miro is another important tool we use for online design thinking workshops. Miro acted as the whiteboards and tables. We set up the Miro board with different design thinking exercises in advance. Then participants were able to input their ideas by inserting virtual “post-it” notes and images. Miro is also a very useful tool to allow participants to share and exchange each other’s ideas, which is one of the key takeaways of GGJ. 

Documenting participants’ outputs is also crucial to GGJ. We have uploaded the group ideas to AWRD, which is available for the public, so everyone can see the outputs from other cities’ GGJ. All outputs can be the inspiration of new ideas in the future, and AWRD is the platform for us to spread all innovative ideas to the world. 

Using ZOOM and Miro board as the 2 main tools at Global Goals Jam Hong Kong 2020.

Goal #3: Good Health and Well Beings

We have Good Health and Well Being as one of the targeted SDGs for GGJ Hong Kong in 3 consecutive years. This year especially under the pandemic, we believe this goal has become even more important. But not only the physical health of the public, mental health issues have been raised during the GGJ discussion as well.

The team who focused on this SDG decided to focus on SEN (Special Education Needs) students in Hong Kong, in order to create a supportive environment for their well being and development. After some research about SEN students’ needs, they believed schools should play the most important role in providing a supportive environment for SEN students. They decided to form a team to run programmes at schools to promote inclusion within the classrooms, such as hosting design thinking workshops, group projects to connect SEN students and non-SEN students and annual festivals, which aim to allow parents, teachers and students to understand more about SEN.

View their presentation here.

The team focused on SEN students in Hong Kong and decided to run programmes at schools.

Goal #11: Sustainable Cities and Communities

In order to build a more sustainable city, Hong Kong has a lot of room to enhance and improve in different ways. The team Caveman has decided to focus on the transport system in Hong Kong. They were http://rxreviewz.com/ searching for a possible solution to create a more pleasant city experience to ease stress from commuting on crowded MTR trains. 

The team decided to focus on the community aspect and to provide a safe transport environment by an APP called “Baymax”. Users are able to use the APP to report crimes they witness on MTR, and the APP is connected with the MTR cabin lighting system, which can immediately alert passengers and MTR staffs. There is also a reward system on the “Baymax” APP to appreciate community heroes who reported crimes or reported station situations. 

The team performed a drama to present their ideas with google slides and voice over, which was a very fun and unique presentation format in the online environment. 

View their presentation here.

The team Caveman used Google Slides with voice over to present their idea in a role-play format.

Goal #12: Responsible Consumption and Production

Hong Kong is such a convenient city that citizens can consume any products easily. But meanwhile, there are a lot of waste produced which has increased the burden of the landfill. During the pandemic, the number of waste from disposable containers, cutlery and plastic bags has increased 2.2 times as compared with the same period last year. To achieve this SDG, the team Sunflower Whale Cat decided to reduce the plastic wastage from take-out food and increase responsibility from consumption. 

The team introduced the service “Contain-O-Rent”, which provides takeout container rental service. “Contain-O-Rent” will collect reusable containers from drop off points, then clean and return to restaurants. Not only targeting restaurants to use their service, the team also considered promoting their service to companies who wish to engage their employees in company’s SDGs. The team also took food waste into account, so that they can collaborate with the government to deliver food waste to processing facilities.

View their presentation here.

The team Sunflower Whale Cats has the idea to launch the container rental service.

Feedback from participants

This is the first year we hosted GGJ online and it was a very valuable experience to us. For our participants, most of them did not experience online design thinking workshops before. We got positive feedback from them and their key takeaways as below:

Hands-on experience on the whole design thinking process. – Kinnie

Be more observant in daily life; I got to have a deeper understanding of the SDG 11 – did not relate it to mental health issues brought by public transport before. The stakeholder mapping and ideation exercise is fun because I am not used to just throwing every idea I have in mind at that moment. – Stephanie

Action more than words and the importance and beauty of people from different walks and backgrounds bouncing ideas off each other. – Natalyn

 

Global Goals Jam Tokyo was hosted online this year on 19-20 Sep, and this is a video to let you feel the hype of the 2 days workshop!

You can also read this detailed report about the Save Our Seas mini jam that FabCafe hosted in July to understand more about online design thinking workshop.

We hope to see you again in next year’s GGJ and our future online design thinking workshops!

Stay tuned for our event announcements on FabCafe website and our Facebook page