What is COVID-19 Design Challenge?

COVID-19 Design Challenge is a global initiative that started in March 2020, by World Design Organization (WDO), IBM Design, and Design for America (DFA).
21 teams from 33 countries and 255 designers from 17 different time zones have joined the project. Each of them shared their design skills and made suggestions through the Design Thinking Workshop.

My role

As a Visual Designer, I designed a poster, and built the COVID-19 Design Challenge website with the website core team.

Design Thinking Workshop

COVID-19 Design Challenge has 3 regions, the Americas, Europe, and Africa, and the Asia Pacific, and each region covers 7 different topics of “How might we?” The topics are those with the greatest urgency and potential impact. I worked with the Americas Team 6 and Americas Team 1.

Americas Team 6
“How might we help educators (K-12 & University) pivot and re-invent learning from in-class to remote while maintaining and even exceeding outcomes and engagement?”

Americas Team 1
“How might we design communication that clearly and simply informs and personally motivates targeted personas to socially distance and practice effective hygiene while preventing them from seeing confusing, incorrect and potentially dangerous information about COVID-19?”

We used Mural to have a remote workshop in the form of an online meeting. We made persona, did research, made suggestions with ideas, and finished prototypes.

Americas Team 6 Persona

Poster design
for UN Global Call Out to Creatives

The teams made suggestions for solutions by creating persona, research, and ideas through Design Thinking Workshop, and among the suggestions, I chose to take the Americas Team 1’s solution to create a poster design, which I submitted to “UN Global Call Out to Creatives.”

Hundreds of posters created by many designers, including the ones from the COVID-19 Design Challenge has been globally distributed.

Posters design with Felix Portnoy and Irina Lebenskaya

The purpose of these posters is not just limited to submission but allow people to share by themselves. I used a Dorothy character from The Wizard of Oz, a familiar character to the Americans. I wanted the posters to encourage the ‘social distancing’ campaign, and at the same time, I wanted people to share the posters with family and friends and through social media.

COVID-19 Design Challenge
Website

After the initial stages of the COVID-19 Design Challenge are finished, the Leadership team began to think of a way to share the result of the project. They recruited designers for digital showcase through website designs. I finished serving my role after the prototypes, but I wanted to get to the end together. And I got an opportunity to work directly with the Leadership Team: the Director of IBM, Karel Vredenburg, the President of World Design Organization, Srini R. Srinivasan, and the Executive from Design for America, Rebecca Breuer.

Website team: Karel Vrendenburg, Lara Hanlon, Rob Rausch, Glory Dang, Robins Varghese, Cyndi Chen

COVID-19 Design Challenge site was posted on IBM.com homepage.

Interview at K-Design Awards

My recent interview about the COVID-19 Design Challenge and my advice for designers in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, was published in the K-Design Awards 2020 book in South Korea.

COVID-19 Design Challenge is ongoing. Prototypes are created with incredible ideas with the effort of a lot of people. It is currently recruiting team members who can make the prototypes into products. You can check out the COVID-19 Design Challenge website for all the details.

COVID-19 Design Challenge Website

COVID-19 Design Challenge

Design Thinking Workshop

Poster design for UN Global Call Out to Creatives

COVID-19 Design ChallengeWebsite

Interview at K-Design Awards

COVID-19
Design Challenge

Poster design
for UN Global Call Out to Creatives

COVID-19 Design Challenge
Website