KHiO+AHO+BI Joint Project
As designers we need to work in teams. Sometimes it is with designers from another area within design, and most of the times, it is with business men, marketers, accountants, architects (or all the different types of clients we might have). At KHIO we had a joint project with BI, a Business School in Oslo, and AHO, the architecture college in Oslo as well. The purpose of this project was innovation. In multidisciplinary teams, we had to come up with a product or service that innovates and come up with the concept, business model, branding, the works.
I was glad I had a pretty good team. The energy was flowing and even if a couple of team mates were having a hard time agreeing with the main idea at first, we all agreed about the direction of our innovative service. I noticed that we spent a lot of time on the first stage, the conceptualizing of the concept, its purpose, making a difference. Some other teams were already on the business model, or even on the graphics of the branding, and we still were conceptualizing. But we had such great conversations, and for me it was a good way of getting to know new people with different perspectives on how to approach a problem. Great to getting to know folks from other parts of Norway too!
We circled around the theme of sustainability, and our assigned area, home, made us think about products that already exist like the Bell Lamp by K8, the Peepoo bag, or a very clever solution of water lamp, (mixing water and chlorine and exposing it to sunlight). All these awesome ideas are out there, but I never see them where they actually were supposed to be. I don’t see them in la Sierra in México, or in the bustees in India, or other places I’ve actually had the chance to live.
Our concept was a distribution network: helping out these specific ideas and the guys behind them, and implementing them in the developing world. To do so, we came up with the idea of being a modern Robin Hood, an every day hero by calling it One for Two: you’d buy one product, toilet paper for instance, and the equal amount of that product goes to support the Peepoo bags (bags that sanitize human waste and serve as portable toilets). By creating this direct association with a product for the same purpose of purchase, but in the developing world, a closer bond to the cause is created. Also, people know what specific thing they are supporting (a sustainable, clever idea) rather than just donating money in a tin box.
After presenting the idea, our team won the chance to present in Beyond Risør (a Norwegian forum for design and business) in the summer (I didn’t even know there was a competition). So hopefully, we’ll go to Risør and share the idea.
Part of the process
