Game Changers Ideathon (ARC 6014 & RC SEC)

By Esin Zengin

As the Social Entrepreneurship Club of Robert College, we think that understanding the concept of design thinking and relating it to real-life problems are essential not only to the people interested in social entrepreneurship but also to every person who may want to learn how to solve problems with a great mindset. Therefore, as ten club members from SEC and five people from RC Robotics Club, we all together designed a day of collaboration to teach design thinking to robotics groups from different cities.

While the workshop's aim seemed to be helping robotics teams who will be competing at the "Innovation Challenge," the main goal indeed was different. As SEC members, we believe in heart that everyone needs to learn design thinking. We did our best to teach many students how to think like a change-maker with the same belief when we conducted our other events and Community Involvement Projects.

The program started with the inspiring opening speech, followed by a conversation with Fikret Yüksel Foundation, which organized the robotics competition, and academician Oğuzhan Aygören. Everyone had a chance to listen to these speakers, thanks to ARC's organization team and our very own head of finance, Soykan Çağan Baş. Thanks to the speeches, all of the participants had an idea of the ideathon day, and what they will do at the robotics competition they will be attending. Also, they had a chance to learn some key concepts which they used while finding solutions.

After the speeches, Ayşe İdil Evci from RC SEC has conducted a workshop named Design Thinking 101. This workshop was essential for the case-study, the next step, to function. She taught the stages of design thinking, which were then implemented by the participant students in the case-study. After this brief but very informative presentation, everyone was ready to apply design thinking steps and develop a solution for the problem given in groups of six to eight, led by one or two SEC members.

As the SEC members who helped the groups finish their case-study, we first thanked them for being a part of this day. We started to define the problem given after watching the documentary about people who have qualities but are lacking a job. These jobless people needed a solution to stop being incapable of finding a job even though they had the features needed. With every group identifying problems and designing a solution together using Zoom break-out rooms and Google Document sharing, there were seven unique solutions at the end of the day.

Before coming together and sharing these excellent solutions, there was a prototyping stage in the study groups. Prototyping could be withdrawing, presentation, and so on to represent the solution produced. The contributors reflected their talents in graphic arts. Most of the groups came up with visual prototypes of their solutions for this problem. After the common Google Doc with every implemented stage, the notes were taken. The final visual prototypes were screenshots for our social media; the part of sharing these unique solutions with everyone has arrived.

There were many great drawings of apps and tables of data; creative names were given to the companies or apps produced and the little question & answer sessions. One person per group presented ideas and drawings; the other group participants may or may not contribute. The q & a sessions were quite productive. Everyone had a chance to ask any questions they had about the presented solution. The audience's questions were mostly related to the sustainability of the products and the company's economic situation, and the target customer. This showed, once again, how everyone in the organization was knowledgeable and curious about the topic.

At least as far as our perspective as the board, the contributors were excited but relaxed after all. The robotics teams are hopefully going to be able to implement design thinking in their projects. We were able to teach an excellent audience design thinking, as we would always want.