‘Great initiative – please do similar things in the future!’ ‘Enjoyed the sense of community and encouragement. Great to see what design can do!’ ‘We truly appreciate your efforts in providing such a design platform to exchange and develop ideas.’ These are a few of the remarks by respondents to a survey on the WDCD Refugee Challenge that was just completed.
Design research agency STBY, research partner of the WDCD Refugee Challenge, carried out an online survey to get feedback from the 631 challenge participants. Based on reactions from 73 respondents some conclusions can be drawn. The findings are especially useful to make next editions of the challenge even more impactful.
New and existing ideas
Participants in the Refugee Challenge can be divided in two main groups: those who were activated by the challenge to come up with a solution for the refugee issue and those who already had an idea (51 per cent), which they entered to the contest. Given that the challenge briefs and support focused mostly on the first group, the researchers conclude that there is an opportunity to better help participants from the second group to bring their existing ideas to a higher level during the contest.
Very promising is the fact that 73 per cent of the respondents reported that they are still working on the development and implementation of their ideas. They are either further detailing their idea into a plan (22 per cent), prototyping and testing (3 per cent), working to implement their idea (37 per cent) and other (12 per cent). Only 27 per cent said not to be working on the idea any longer.
Useful platform
In general respondents were positive about the briefs, the starters kit and the UNHCR Innovation platform and the possibilities for getting feedback. 31 per cent said that the ‘many ideas made us realise we are part of a community that we can learn from’ and 26 per cent said they used the feedback to make their idea stronger.
Some critical notes were heard too: seven respondents perceived the contest procedure and the voting system as unclear. Some also found the challenge too Europe-centric. But positive reactions where in the majority: ‘Go further… This was one of my best experiences.’