36-hour Design Hackathon launched at ZJU

The 36H Design Hackathon, co-hosted by the International Design Institute of Zhejiang University and the Alibaba Design Committee, was held on Zijingang Campus, Zhejiang University, from Nov. 6th to 8th.

This event, conducted remotely and live streamed on bilibili—a Chinese video sharing website, is themed on “The Doomsday”, covering five subjects: transportation, social networking, hobbies, traveling and shopping. It brought together over 90 students from five universities: Zhejiang University (China), Chiba University (Japan), Yonsei University (South Korea), Polytechnic University of Milan (Italy) and Singapore University of Technology and Design (Singapore).

In the very beginning of the hackathon, a coach from the Alibaba Design Committee explained the topic. Participants were supposed to work out innovative design schemes to eliminate pains caused by quarantine during the outbreak of COVID-19. After the question and answer session, students from five universities were divided into ten teams. After a whole night’s efforts, ten mind-blowing and creative proposals were presented. Here are some of the ingenious proposals.

E-TY—Virtual Funeral

E-TY is a virtual funeral designed to provide a full range of services, from mortal remains transport, 3D image reconstruction, to virtual funerals, as well as such supporting services as anniversaries. E-TY can reconstruct the appearance of the deceased through machine learning and artificial intelligence and create a virtual memorial island and a touring scene. Relatives and friends can use VR headsets and mobile apps to attend the funeral and bid farewell to the deceased on the Memorial Island. They can find solace in the virtual world.

The Intelligent Navigation System during the outbreak of COVID-19

Since humans still need to travel in an epidemic environment, one team designed an intelligent navigation system that can detect human traffic and air quality to ensure a safe travel environment. This system consists of two parts. One is a smart detection facility installed at the corner of each street, which can give pedestrians a safety warning by displaying different colors. The other part is an anti-epidemic add-on to the mobile navigation app, which enables subscribers to map out a safe destination and a safe route before traveling.

Modular Indoors Vegetable Cultivation Services

This service aims to help communities produce fresh vegetables autonomously in the post-epidemic era. It provides a modular growing unit that allows subscribers to go through the whole process ranging from cultivating to selling vegetables on an online platform and reap corresponding profits. If the global spread of the coronavirus pandemic cannot be contained, how will mankind combat the impact of the pandemic on the supply of fresh vegetables in the future? Using a fourth-tier city in western Zhejiang Province as a target scenario, this team pondered over how to address such problems as a limited selection of fresh vegetables and rising prices by means of local production and expected to mitigate the economic and psychological alienation of individuals caused by the pandemic by allocating a shared growing area as a bridge to connect community members.

Photo and video credit: International Design Institute of Zhejiang University