2022 Design Thinking

Congratulations to 9A which won the Overall award and best met the criteria with their suburb A Hip ‘o’ Campus which was designed for the elderly and those with dementia to live well and stay connected. 9B and  9E were voted by their peers as the joint People’s Choice Award winners.  The pizza prize lunch was a welcome reward for their accomplishments. 

Diana Gilbert

Director of Emerging Technologies 

Some views of the experience from the students

9B - Popular choice

The Design Thinking project was an incredible experience and a great introduction to the 2023 school year. We kicked off the project with a fun treasure hunt activity, a great ice breaker to settle us in to what would become a massive three days of work. One of the most rewarding parts of the design thinking project was working together in one big class, allowing us to build teamwork in our class and also to get to know our new peers a bit better. One thing that was really important for us throughout the entire process was ensuring that everyone got to share their ideas and contribute in their own way. We wanted to create a suburb that every single student in 9B would be happy to live in. 

With this in mind, we devised a suburb that truly caters to everyone which we called “Ecommunity”. This is a suburb where we combined the importance of sustainable living with a sense of community. We included a plethora of environmentally friendly features in our town including solar panels on all houses, rooftop gardens, multiple sustainable fuel options, our own wind farm and so on and so forth. We also strategically placed institutional and commercial buildings in accordance with residential housing to make this suburb as accessible as possible. Schools, daycares and playgrounds were situated together to cater as an ideal living spot for families. Emergency services were all meticulously placed along a main road to make them more accessible. Our hospital is conveniently located very close to our retirement village as we understand that older citizens are more likely to be frequent users of a hospital. We also included a range of shops, cafes and restaurants throughout the suburb including our very own “Earthside shopping centre.” 

Everyone contributed incredibly well throughout the designing, constructing and presenting of our suburb and as we faced setbacks and challenges, we worked together as a team to solve them. We were elated at the overall result of our suburb and even more so when our class tied for the winner of the peoples choice award! The design thinking project was definitely a challenge but one that was so rewarding that gave us skills in STEAM, problem solving, teamwork and was overall just a really fun experience! Thank you to Ms Gilbert and to all the other staff who helped facilitate the project, we really appreciated all your help and support. 

Maddy Lust, 9B

9E - Popular Choice

During Headstart all year 9 students participated in the design thinking project. The task was to create a city out of paper and cardboard as a class. Over the period of time we researched what people want in a city and ways to reach our target audience. As a class 9E decided to base our suburb ‘Green Valley Lane’ solely on making it as sustainable as possible, we achieved this by using solar panels on houses and shops, using double glazed windows in houses, electric car charging stations all around the city and making an increase in tree canopy at a ratio of three trees to one person, plus a train line to and the city to reduce the amount of cars going to and from the CBD. 

A part of this process was attending a variety of masterclasses including, VR, 3D printing, coding robots, laser cutting and learning about energy efficient housing. By doing these masterclasses we gained new skills and knowledge which helped with the overall result of our suburb. We also used our maths skills by first drawing a template of our suburb on graph paper and then having to scale it up to a larger scale that was realistic. 

Some highlights were getting to connect with our new class more, expressing our creativity and creating a final product. Overall it was a great experience that required us to use our teamwork skills and collaborate as a class. 

A big thank you to all the teachers that made this experience possible.

Maisy Woodhouse and Katerina Zouzouals - Project Managers of 9E

Project 9A  - A Hip ‘o’ Campus