Being India’s largest network for creative professionals, we’re always on the lookout for events and initiatives that add value to the design ecosystem in the country. Through our own IPs like Hexcode, the IndieFolio MasterClass series, DesignDare, and Creator Conversations, and through collaborating with other stellar organisers, we’ve looked to take forward our vision of organising the design services market & industries in India. So when Lollypop Studio reached out to us to collaborate with them on their Designathon as ‘community partners’, we were super excited to come onboard.
Designathon, a flagship initiative helmed by Lollypop Studio was first started in 2018 and this April, it hosted its second edition. The mission of this event was to build a platform for young, budding designers to experience a real-life design problem and to learn the process of crafting a usable, viable, and empathetic design solution. For added impact, the Designathon took place during the internationally celebrated ‘World Design Day’ and similar to the hackathons is it inspired by, it was an intensive 21-hour event.
Taking forward the learnings from the pilot edition, Designathon 2019 grew by leaps and bounds. Out of more than 250+ applications received, the studio accepted 32 applicants. The participants were asked to submit their portfolio and asked what was the intent to participate in the event. Preference was given to applicants who were in their graduating batch for whom this event can instantly benefit. Later they were allotted in eight groups with in-house designers from Lollypop Studio acting as mentors. The design challenge was to ‘Reimagine Sportstech’ and the tools used were Adobe XD, Illustrator & Photoshop.
Participants were asked to design a solution which enables both athletes and sponsors to use a sportstech platform with ease and is more intuitive and lucrative. The event was filled with agreements, disagreements, discussions, ideas, stress and definitely a lot of laughter, smiles, and networking.
At the end of the Designathon, the talented students gave some remarkable suggestions for the challenge. Not only were new ideas implemented but the participants also took home a great learning experience on soft skills like understanding team dynamics, coping with high-pressure situations, and executing with speed and clarity.
The winners were decided by an all-star jury panel consisting of Shandar Junaid (Design Specialist, Adobe XD), Veena Sonwalkar (Sr. Design Lead, frog), and Anil Reddy (Founder, Lollypop Studio). We’re glad to have been a part of this and are looking forward to collaborating with more creative-focused initiatives.
