The process
Behind the scenes of the global COVID-19 Design Challenge
01
Launch
In a collaborative effort to face the COVID-19 world health crisis, the World Design Organization (WDO), IBM Design, and Design for America (DFA) launched the COVID-19 Design Challenge on March 25, 2020.
02
Objectives
Our objectives are to mobilize designers globally to contribute their skills to the challenges of the coronavirus spread, turn anxieties into action, and use design thinking skills to help us all get through the pandemic.
03
Approach
Each organization collectively gathered more than 180 challenges based on the question, “What do you think are the most important and urgent challenges that designers could help to address regarding the coronavirus crisis?”
04
How Might We Statements
We determined the first set of challenges with the greatest urgency and potential impact through clustering, voting, and a prioritization grid. This resulted in seven initial How Might We statements that captured the central theme of each cluster.
05
Collaboration
One team per region (the Americas, Europe/Africa, and Asia Pacific) worked on each of the seven topics for a total of 21 remote collaborative teams.
06
Playbacks
The teams participated in two final playbacks. In the first, they presented user research findings and refined user groups. In the second, teams shared out prototypes and solutions ready for partner implementation.
07
Next Steps
After the playbacks, this website was created to share project outcomes, connect teams to potential partners, and accelerate implementation to fight the COVID-19 crisis.