University of the Future Design Sprint

The University of the Future Design Sprint was a collaboration between the ADA Innovation Hub x UNSW Founders Program

Over the course of a day, students were invited to respond to a question posed by the Dean of Arts, Design & Architecture, Claire Annesley:

How might we reimagine, reinvent, or reconfigure the University of the Future?

Working in teams, the students attended design visioning and pitching workshops with the UNSW Founders Program, followed by ideation sessions and finally an evening Pitch Night open to the public as part of ADANow 2021.

Indi Sofyar, an ADA Student from the Bachelor of Design program, and one of the prize winners for the event reflected on the experience below. 

Student reflection

I would highly recommend the experience for anyone  interested in entrepreneurship, innovation or solving a creative problems effectively.

The University of the Future Design Sprint was a highly engaging competition running over the space of a day. Within this space of time, I had the opportunity to respond, within a team, to a brief about what the future of universities could look like. The goal was to be highly innovative and capture the hearts and minds of the judges to imagine how universities could strive for a higher purpose. I went into the competition alone, and after a networking event which was categorised by different areas of interest, I was able to meet a teammate who was interested in solving the problem in a similar way. My teammates name was Victoria Keen, a fellow ADA student studying Fine Arts. Having someone on my team with a different perspective aided greatly during the competition. Over the course of the day, we were involved in different ideation workshops as well as free time to start unpacking and writing about our solution. We discussed our qualms with the University system and imagined ways that we could transform this system to be increasingly equitable and engaging. Finally, in the evening, the hour of the pitch came, and we were given 3 short minutes to pitch our idea - a University constructed of different social and learning hubs which operated around the clock - where students from different majors could extend the scope of their study and collaborate with students unlike themselves - flexibly in their own time. Our team was able to achieve joint first place as a result of this. I would highly recommend the experience for anyone interested in entrepreneurship, innovation or solving a creative problem effectively.