Design Thinking Challenges at Humber's Longo Centre for Entrepreneurship
The CfE will be hosting its next Design Thinking Challenge in 2022 during the winter semester. Any interested students are encouraged to apply here on or before January 4, 2022.
Throughout the fall semester, our student members at Humber’s Longo Centre for Entrepreneurship (CfE) have been keeping busy. Thirty students (Humber College and Seneca College students combined) were tasked with solving challenges that involved human-centric problems. Students were able to put their entrepreneurial-thinking skills to work, and learn the design thinking process (empathy, define, ideate, prototype, and test). They were all able to apply this learning each week while working alongside six local businesses from the CfE, in hopes to solve the business proposed challenge.
The six businesses from the CfE, including their proposed challenges, are as followed:
Business: PACKT
Challenge: Reusable coffee packaging. How can we get people to return their coffee packages in a circular system?
Business: Optinum Accounting
Challenge: What are social enterprise clients looking for in unique product/service offerings?
Business: Chartwells
Challenge: How can we get more students frequenting ‘The Spot’ food location at Humber College?
Business: The Fitness Timeline
Challenge: What would an online fitness platform option look like?
Business: Redeem Clothing
Challenge: How can we encourage more people to donate their unwanted clothing?
Business: Patches 360
Challenge: How can we improve relationships between the school board and Black families?
From start-to-finish students interviewed, surveyed, observed, and researched potential customers to further understand the specific challenge each business had provided.
Students exercised their creative brainstorming skills and eventually pitched a prototype or solution to all of the businesses at the end of the program.
This opportunity was made possible to Humber students through a grant issued on behalf of the Government of Canada, and Experience Ventures – a program powered by the Hunter Hub for Entrepreneurial Thinking at the University of Calgary.
