Solving SDGs Challenges by Design Thinking – Student Sharing of Future17 SDG Challenge Programme
Sharing by Kelly Ho, Electronic Engineering (Year 3)
Kelly is an Electronic Engineering student in her Year 3 when she joined Future17 at the start of the academic year 2023-24. With great passion and interest in sustainable development, she had a rewarding experience in participating in the programme.
Why did I volunteer for Future17?
Kelly joined Future17 for a wider exposure beyond her everyday professional training. As an engineering student, Kelly did not overlook the importance of understanding sustainability issues in the 20th century world, ‘Being an engineer does not only require hard knowledge, but also soft skills and the ability to look at the big picture,’ she explained, ‘I believe cooperation, especially among inter-national companies, is required to tackle global issues by implementing local solutions. With more understanding of the SDGs, I could show to my employers that I am capable of thinking in a macro perspective about challenges faced by our society.’
Meanwhile, Kelly also thinks that it is a valuable opportunity to collaborate with students in other countries. With her active and out-going personality, Kelly was confident that she would make a good teammate in facilitating conversations and brainstorming ideas in the team. Her expectations eventually came true, and she cooperated smoothly with her team, ‘My team was very active, everyone in the team is very helpful. The mentor taught us essential UI/UX design principles, the partner company patiently explained the project, and the teammates met every week to ensure that we are making progress.’
My Future17 Project
Kelly was allocated the project ‘Designing an Intuitive Website and UI/UX for a Computer Vision and Ml Analytics Platform’ for the partner Ekak Innovation, a product development firm based in India, dedicated to creating innovative solutions for various industries.
The project was a new experience to Kelly, who was not familiar with software development before. ‘My project was to help redesigning partner company’s website to become more user-friendly. The project was very meaningful as it helps speeding up accident-processing by using computer vision and machine learning, which can potentially save more lives on the road.’
Having worked hard to develop a brand-new interface for the partner, the team had an especially rewarding experience in their final presentation by showcasing their project outcome. Kelly recalled the team celebrating the success, ‘We kept sending each other thank-you messages, one of the teammates even sent me a 30-second-long voice message!’ It has been an unforgettable experience for all students in the team.
Kelly utilized both the soft skills and hard skills in the programme. As an active member in the group, she demonstrated her communication skills and inter-cultural competence. She also harnessed high-quality research skills and teamwork skills in completing project. ‘Our hard works pays off!’ concluded Kelly.
What I have learnt from the Future17 journey?
In the below, Kelly shares the details of the project and her learning outcomes with us:
‘What I learn the most from participating Future 17 Programme is the importance of Active Learning and Working as a Team. At first, we have no clue how to start doing the project. After the first meeting, we start researching topics on UX/UI designing and get to know more on essential designing tools and user research methodology. Fortunately, we also have a mentor who is an expert in UX/UI designing.’
‘I have volunteered to be a group coordinator and a leading role to arrange meetings with mentors/partner regularly so we can do regular check-ups and avoid any silo. Being a group lead, I have learnt finding way to guide groupmates in the right track and arrange meeting efficiently: I have even develop a booking system in Google AppScript!’
‘We have all grow from knowing nothing about UX/UI to an amateur designer and we received positive feedback from the partner. After the mid-project review and meeting with partner, a bigger challenge came to us: How can we code an interactive prototype?’
‘Luckily, I am an engineering student, so I helped everyone turned their ideas into reality. That is teamwork to me, they make suggestions and I take notes. We all have our own talents and together we have the perfect synergy to make the best prototype.’
‘The best thing I have gained from this programme, apart from the highly demanded skills (UX/UI designing and prototyping), is the bonding with my teammates. Some teammates even private messaging me to thank me. I am very touched because it supposed to be a “school work”, but turn out it is very fun and engaging.’
