After the Challenge – Sarah Hoogenboom
Sarah participated in the Urban Greenhouse Challenge #3 with her Team LettUs Design. When the “Urban Greenhouse Challenge #3: Social Impact Edition” kicked off, we knew the era of user centred design was upon us. But we did not expect Team LettUs Design to take the competition to a whole new level… Their “Mosaic Garden” won the hearts of the jury with its modular concept, where users had full control over the space. Now, Sarah shares how the road after the Challenge paved itself for her and her teammates.
What was your experience of the challenge?
We went in with no expectations and in the end we were able to communicate our vision successfully. It was really rewarding to see that other people also believed in our vision!
We really had a good time collaborating as a group! Of course there were some challenges along the way, but I think we really set the tone from the beginning, of learning and maintaining open communication with each other through the course of the challenge. In a way, the modular design of our concept made it easier to communicate, learn and build our gamification approach. As an interdisciplinary group, many times we have to transfer knowledge within the team, and this approach was also integrated into the game we designed for community participation.
What are you up to after the challenge?
After the challenge we of course took a break! Then we asked ourselves “is there something more after this Challenge?” A group of us then began tinkering with the idea of potentially creating a startup. That is when we joined AMS Startup Booster, a start-up validation lab in Amsterdam, where they helped us validate our ideas and do market research to understand more about the participatory design market. So, what was a design idea slowly evolved into a product idea, while the vision remained the same to reach and give a voice to as many communities as possible.
We have already done one pilot workshop and now we have just completed a second round of workshops in Hamburg about food systems with a different set of stakeholders. It has already been rewarding to see the spark in the eyes of our stakeholders when they realize new ideas together, or learn something new. We are excited to share more about our learnings from this workshop series soon!
How can we follow your next steps?
You can follow us on LinkedIn, we post all our updates there. And you can also find us in our website www.lettusdesign.com
What is your ultimate tip to other students?
Absorb as much knowledge as you can from others and try to be open minded. I will say that actual open mindedness to new ideas is very difficult to achieve, but it starts with listening without judgment and to take in the thoughts of others as valuable information. I think that is why we had such a good collaboration as a group in the UGC#3 Challenge and in the start-up. We very much wanted to give space to hear all the voices in the room and collect information together to make informed decisions.