Clean Energy Challenge: Tackling a Global Challenge Locally

In partnership with What Design Can Do and STBY.

In September 2018, the Dutch initiative What Design Can Do launched the Clean Energy Challenge: An open call to students, designers, and innovators all over the world to come up with local solutions for local problems. This challenge was focused on five cities, each with a unique problem: Cityscapes in Amsterdam, Eating in Nairobi, Building in Delhi, Moving in São Paolo, and Waste in Mexico City.

 Validating a Design Brief.

This ambitious challenge needed an international group of research partners to come up with coherent briefs that could make a positive impact on a complex problem. In collaboration with the European design research firm STBY, delaO design studio facilitated several co-creation workshops with designers, academics, experts, and other stakeholders to explore different possibilities (and discard others) in order to define a design brief that would be specific to Mexico City. After an exhaustive analysis of the results from the co-creation workshops, a brief was defined. This same process occurred simultaneously with local research partners in all the countries where the challenge was held.

Motivating Designers.

This brief was validated through several design jams with design students and other stakeholders to motivate them to be part of the initiative. Our studio held these design jams in Mexico City, where some of the participants submitted their ideas.

Happy Results

Among the winners from around the world was the Mexico City initiative Ecolana, an online platform that serves as an interactive guide for recycling in Mexico City.