Designpreneurs Hackathon

Thrilled to announce our first?event: XR Design & Entrepreneurship: Design Showcase & Panel Talk at Designpreneurs Hackathon! ?? We're humbled by the overwhelming response to our upcoming event(how'd ya'll hear about us?!). As we prepare to host a full house today, we're reminded of why we started this journey. Designpreneurs Hackathon was born from a simple yet powerful idea: "To be a Design-driven & Business-Minded" community to nurture founders & designers, validate product-market fit as innovators, and shape the future of tech & design together. These XR panels represent a milestone in that mission. We're bringing together the brains behind the product from Meta , IDEO, Spatial, Transfr & Plai to inspire our audience ranging from XR start-up founders to investors to XR design leaders. Featuring our panelists: ? Michelle Cortese, XR design director from Meta ?Jinha Lee, Co-founder of Spatial ?Dominic Barrett XR Start-up Designer from Transfr ?Ziyuan(Zoey) Zhu Sr.Creative Technologist from IDEO ?Timothy Wang, Co-founder of Plai & WLab(acquired). To those joining us today: Prepare to be challenged, inspired, and empowered. This isn't just about current trends; it's about fostering the mindset that will define the next era of XR. To our wider community: Your enthusiasm fuels our mission. We're committed to sharing insights and continuing this crucial dialogue, stay tuned for our next public events! ?? #XRInnovation #DesignThinking #Entpreneurship #XR #Designpreneurs #DesignprenuersHackathon #BusinessDesign #Innovation

Congratulations team SHEL!

Recap of our 3D & XR Hackathon ?

We did it! We just wrapped up the 25-hour hackathon ????. Wow, we couldn’t believe the QUALITY of innovative ideas & designs came out in such a short time. Can you believe the hackathon kicked off on Friday at 2pm, and wrapped up the next day, Saturday at 1 pm?! It was filled with creativity & collaboration. 14 talented teams pushed the boundaries of 3D and XR design, creating incredible projects that showcased their skills and passion. After an intense 25-hour innovation sprint, 14 teams pitched their impressive ideas to our esteemed panel of judges: Anthony Koithra, Snow Yunxue Fu, Danilo Makio Saito. Choosing the top 3 was a challenging task, as every team demonstrated exceptional creativity and skill. In fact, our 15-minute deliberation turned into a nearly 40-minute discussion due to the high quality of all the submissions. While we can only select three winners, we want to acknowledge the outstanding work of every single team that participated. Your dedication, innovation, and hard work are truly inspiring. We're grateful to our amazing mentors,?Meijie Hu, Sophie Lee,?Grace R.,?and Jexi Lo, for their invaluable guidance and support throughout the weekend, day and night. From Zoom calls to Slack messages to in-person meetings, their expertise, and enthusiasm were instrumental in inspiring our hackers to reach new heights. Stay tuned for more highlights and updates from the hackathon, including a deeper dive into the winning projects! ???? ?#DesignprenuersHackathon #SVA #3D #XRHackathon #Innovation #designhackathon? #designpreneurs?

?? Announcing our four incredibly talented #XR #3D #mentors with diverse backgrounds to support hacker teams of Designpreneurs Hackathon this weekend at The School of Visual Arts SVA BFA Design - BFA Advertising! Meijie Hu is an interaction designer, creative prototyper, and design strategist. She has designed for XR, Generative Al, Al wearables, entertainment, health & wellness, creator tools, and productivity tools. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Carnegie Mellon University and a master’s degree from New York University ITP (Interactive Telecommunications Program). Grace R. is a product designer and 3D artist. In both practices she focuses on exploring the complexity of humanity, be it through generating fluid simulations in Maya or auto-layouting Figma frames. Her art has been shown at the Denver Digerati Experimental Media Festival, Tsinghua University, 10 Cartwheels, and Millenium International Documentary Film Festival.? She has also designed for NBC, NASCAR, AWS, and Palantir Technologies. Sophie Lee is a UX/product designer and interaction designer. She has designed psychoacoustic conditioning, advanced neural interface technologies, and immersive meditation experiences. With expertise in XR, she also brings educational experience, having taught Design Thinking and UX case studies. Sophie has worked across diverse industries, blending creativity and technology, and holds a master’s degree in HCI from New York University ITP (Interactive Telecommunications Program). Jexi Lo is a creative technologist with expertise in 3D modeling and interaction design. She has worked on projects across various industries, including virtual production, education, and digital fabrication. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Interactive Media Arts from New York University Tisch School of the Arts. Join our community of talented designers and collaborate on groundbreaking projects. ?? + Register to be our next hackers & mentors for future design Hackathons!!

?? Introducing the #judges for our 3D & XR Hackathon at School of Visual Arts SVA BFA Design - BFA Advertising this weekend! ?? Danilo Makio Saito is a Design Director at Manyone NYC, where he blends strategy, design, and emerging tech. With over 12 years of experience, he has worked on a mix of global innovation projects—from digital & physical products to future experiences—for clients like Magic Leap, Walmart, LG Electronics, and several startups. ?? Snow Yunxue Fu is an international New Media artist, Curator, & Assistant Arts Professor at New York University Tisch School of the Arts, Institute of Emerging Media, Department of Photo and Imaging, NYU Tisch Martin Scorsese Virtual Production Center. She has presented her work at ACM SIGGRAPH, International Symposium on Electronic Art, Epic Games, Time Square, SVA, Parsons, etc. ?? Anthony Koithra is an indie animated filmmaker – equal parts writer, director, animator, and technical artist. He works primarily in Unreal Engine, using the real-time animation environment to tell sci-fi and fantasy stories from an immigrant perspective. He is particularly interested in stylized characters and NPR shaders and is an Epic Games Unreal Fellow. Anthony also advises startups in the media and tech spaces and teaches storytelling at corporates as well as educational institutions like New York University and Columbia University. He is a mentor at NEW INC New Museum of Contemporary Art, and Unreasonable. Anthony was a Managing Director & Partner at Boston Consulting Group (BCG), and part of the founding team of BCG Digital Ventures, building a global team of >900 designers, engineers, & strategists working with large companies to launch new businesses. ?? Get ready to be inspired, our incredible judges can’t wait to mentor, inspire & challenge hackers on October 5th, 3-4 PM at the final pitches. ??Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, recently said he hasn’t seen anything as #exciting as the technological #progress of the last few years. Technology has never held more potential to #advance all realms of society, and we hope this year’s hackathon plays some good part in giving tomorrow’s #innovators a head start! #DesignpreneursHackathon #XRHackathon #3Dhackathon #startupdesignhackathon #innovation #designhackathon #futureofdesign #mentorship

?? Our #hackathon is back this weekend, and it’s set to be more exciting than ever! We’re proud to announce that we’ll be collaborating with one of the top design schools in the US, the School of Visual Arts’ Interaction Design program(SVA BFA Design - BFA Advertising )for our first XR & 3D Design Hackathon. ??Counting down... 5 days left?until the?SVA x Designpreneurs Hackathon: 3D & XR! For intensive 2 days over the weekend, our handpicked design #hackers will... ???Create cutting-edge 3D & XR experiences.? ???Showcase innovative design & strategic thinking skills(not creating "pretty" designs, but putting the core users first, which leads to ?? business).? ???Learn to collaborate with fellow innovative designers to solve real-world design problems. Our new members of #designpreneurshackers have been busy honing their skills with industry-leading design tools like Spline, Unity, Adobe AERO, etc. We're excited to see how the students will bring their creative visions to life through prototyping and storytelling! + we’re thrilled to have the top 3D & XR design leaders as judges and mentors this year including Anthony Koithra, Danilo Makio Saito, Snow Yunxue Fu, Meijie Hu, Jexi Lo, Sophie Lee, Grace R.. (judges & mentors introduction post to follow!) Follow our journey in the next week as the hackers explore the future of XR + 3D... get sneak peeks ????? #DesignpreneursHackathon #SVA #XR #3D #Designpreneurs?#innovation #futureofdesign

And that’s a wrap on the 2023 Designpreneurs Hackathon! We launched in 2020 as a virtual event with the goal of pairing startup founders and designers to validate ideas and build portfolios over a single weekend. This year’s hackathon was our first in-person event, and were honored to host more than 75 participants at the NYU Stern School of Business. Founders from the Berkley Center for Entrepreneurship joined designers from Parsons School of Design - The New School, NYU Tisch School of the Arts, School of Visual Arts, and Pratt Institute to work on an incredibly diverse array of concepts–from reimagining art, social media, and healthcare to education, AR/VR, and fashion. On Friday afternoon, 25 teams met for the first time; by Sunday, they had created prototypes, conducted UX testing, and assembled full-blown pitches for our talented judges Rona Li, Hong Ko, and Maryam Daryabegi with incredible mentorships from Shandy Tsai Chaemin Ahn Melissa Souto Keerthana Pareddy Anna Oh We couldn’t have left the event more energized by the participants’ passion, optimism, and creativity, all of which were on full display the entire weekend. The future is bright if it’s in the hands of innovators like these! Like most of our early-stage start-ups-- Designpreneurs Hackathon is just starting and we're grateful for an exciting beginning, and can't wait to kick off 2024's hackathon series with already 150+ design & start-up hackers on the list and building a community for the next wave of innovators. Follow us on Instagram (@DesignpreneursHackathon) and sign up on our website https://lnkd.in/eeytCTBz to learn about future events and how you can get involved! #designdrivenbusinessminded #starupdesign #designhackathon #startupjourney

Incredibly proud of the IxD students who brought their ingenuity and design skills to the Designpreneurs Hackathon at Berkley Center for Entrepreneurship over the weekend: first-year students Seungmi Lee, Jisang Kim, and Hannah(Nahye) Kim and second-year students Tzuyi Lee, Clear Shen, & Joel Giambra Jr.! ???? IxD students were part of award-winning teams in three categories: Overall Design Excellence, Audience Choice, & Design and Desirability. ?? Thank you to Designpreneurs Hackathon & Berkley Center for Entrepreneurship for hosting our students, and shoutout to the incredible designers from New York University, Parsons School of Design - The New School, and Pratt Institute. #svaixd #svanyc #interactiondesign #hackathon

A massive shoutout to Ian Abinoja and Sally Chung for orchestrating an incredible hackathon this weekend! Together, they've brought the Designpreneurs Hackathon to life, and it's been nothing short of inspiring. ? The achievements these students made in just a few days are astounding, and it's all thanks to the platform provided by the hackathon. Here are a few gems of wisdom we can all take to heart: 1?? Validation > Pixel-Perfect Mockups: In the early stages, aligning on product strategy trumps crafting detailed designs. It's a time for designers to dive deep into concept testing, gaining the confidence needed to ensure we're tackling the right problems, for the right users, with the right solutions. 2?? Concept Testing: It's all about confirming the problem and the features, not the aesthetics. Use this phase to collect hard metrics to show stakeholders the problem's validity and your solution's direction. And here's a bonus tip: Merge user insights with inputs from product management and business experts to identify high-impact features that resonate in the market and are feasible to implement. 3?? The Art of Storytelling: When you pitch, make the problem palpable, the story relatable, and the solution compelling. Your pitch should breathe life into the problem and resonate with your audience. Personalize it, humanize it, and let the voices of those you're designing for be heard. Let's take a moment to celebrate the fresh perspectives and innovative solutions cultivated at this event. The future of design is bright, and it's events like these that illuminate the path forward. ?? #Hackathon #Innovation #DesignThinking #ProductDesign #Storytelling #ConceptTesting #Designpreneurs