On the 1st to 3rd of June, we welcomed a group of talented students and alumni from the Strascheg Centre in Munich as part of an international network event focused on Product Design. Here is what we got up to.
We started by welcoming the team at our Studio at Bainfield - showing them our new co-working space and making it available to them during their stay with us.
We then set them the challenge - to design a product or service that would enhance canal-side life. Given that our office space is situated on the Union Canal and we engage with canal-life almost daily, this seemed like an appropriate brief to challenge our guests.
After a short presentation about canals around the world, we took them out on a walking tour going from the centre of town out to the Water of Leith Centre. This gave the team a good chance to engage with a long stretch of the canal, and make observations about how people of Edinburgh interact with this space. After some lunch by the wonderful team at Food by Xanders - we then took our guests back out on the canal - this time on the Reunion Canal Boat! Not only did we get an alternative view of the water, but we were also treated to the very mixed music taste of German 20 year-olds...
The next day we kicked off the creativity with a Lego session delivered by our own Victoria Bradley. The objectives here were to get the team thinking about storytelling, and how to communicate their ideas. From building towers and dream vacation landscapes, to explaining what a dog thinks about through random models, the team really got to grips with how important communication is.
We then took the team up to the Merchiston Campus to let them explore through the End of Year Degree Show, with a particular focus on the work of our Product Design students. Our guests were really engaged with this, talking through the design process and research that had been done.
We rounded off the day by getting them back to Bainfield, and letting them get into their teams to start working on their projects.
The final day was mostly working on their projects - we had asked them to create a short film to showcase their idea which we would then all watch in the afternoon. There was some really interesting filmmaking going on, with teams requesting the use of green screens, while others were getting out along the canal to film.
We then got to watch the short films - and they were of course all brilliant! We've included them all here!
For only having a few days to pull these together, we were relly impressed by the teams and the effort they put into the project.
Of course, we finished with a celebration. We presented all the participants with a certificate to commemorate their time with us, and then invited them for food and drinks.
We want to say another massive thank you to the staff, students and alumni of the Strascheg Centre for bringing their all to this challenge. We had a great time, and we hope you did too! (and we hope the hangover's have subsided...)