Written by: Siti fatimah
Singapore Polytechnic’s annual Escapade event was held on 19 November this year. As compared to its previous years, this year’s event wasn’t held from dusk till dawn – it was changed to a full day event.
During the opening segment of Escapade, the participants were given a mission – to save our Earth from being destroyed. The way they had to go about doing this was through the process of Design Thinking.
Design Thinking refers to the methods and processes for analyzing problems and coming up with solutions in the design and planning fields. To put it simply, Design Thinking encourages creativity when it comes to approaching and solving problems.
Participants went through a 4-hour session of delving into the concept of Design Thinking. 12 DMC Yr 3s (yay us!) were student facilitators during the session, and our job was to help encourage the participants to utilize their creativity to help save the Earth and mankind.
Despite having to be up early in the morning after a month long of exams, the students I interacted with were nothing short of enthusiastic. Maybe it was the concept of design thinking itself (being as creative as you can to solve a problem) that made them enjoy the session – my group came up with incredibly creative ideas on how they wanted to save the environment and our planet!
After a half hour of scribbling and slapping their “wacky” ideas onto post-its, my group decided that their best idea was the conversion of body fats into an alternative fuel source. How insanely awesome is that?! If this were a real thing, I’d be one of the first few people to convert my excess (because we still need fats in our bodies guys, let’s not get carried away here) fats into an alternative fuel source.
Participants bringing their ideas to live!
I was really glad to see the participants actively taking part in the activities – from brainstorming ideas that were “out-of-this-world” to enthusiastically putting up enjoyable presentations of their ideas, I think they learned a lot during the session.
My favourite part of the event would definitely be seeing their ideas come to live during the gallery walk. My group acted out a rather convincing ad for their alternative fuel source product called “Lipofuel” and had everyone in the room cheering for them (YAY). Now who says we Singaporeans aren’t a creative bunch!
Some participants with their student facilitators!
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