Open Data Competition 2024 Opening Ceremony — Design Thinking & Innovation Workshop
Coxana Innovation founder Alex delivered a Design Thinking & Innovation Workshop at the Open Data Competition 2024 opening ceremony on 5 October.
The workshop aimed to introduce prospective contestants to different categories of innovation and design thinking, pointing out that inventions do not need to be wildly imaginative or highly disruptive. Innovation categories include sustaining innovation, incremental innovation, disruptive innovation, and radical innovation — distinguished by their market impact and degree of technological novelty.
Prospective contestants can find inspiration for innovation in everyday life, and design thinking helps us discover meaningful and valuable innovations. Design thinking enables us to better understand problems and propose innovative solutions. As a past judge for this competition, Alex had reviewed over a hundred entries from secondary school and tertiary institution contestants. He noticed that despite contestants' dedicated designs, efforts were sometimes misdirected — failing to re-examine and organise the existing problem, resulting in final designs that did not solve the intended issue. Alex therefore hoped to convey the message that through design thinking, designers can create projects that are truly valuable to society and target users.
The overall design thinking process revolves around five steps: empathise, define needs, ideate, prototype, and test — incorporating people's needs, technological possibilities, and success factors. Alex particularly encouraged contestants to focus on empathy. He believes that in today's generation, many students have fewer opportunities to encounter and learn this concept during their studies. Yet as a designer, one must possess empathy — approaching problems from the target user's perspective and understanding their needs in order to create truly practical works.
Finally, we wish all prospective contestants in every category of the Open Data Competition 2024 the best of luck, and hope they make good use of Hong Kong's open data. Registration for the Open Data Competition 2024 is still open — visit events.hk-tag.org/smartliving2024/ for more information. Our company also provides consultation and practice sessions to help contestants present their competition works. If interested, please contact us early to discuss. We hope to see everyone contributing to Hong Kong's open data applications at the competition.