International Students will Create Real World Solutions in a UAE Design Competition

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Project Design Space, said to be the UAE’s biggest student design competition organized by the Dubai Institute of Design and Innovation (DIDI), has now gone global, attracting interest from international schools for the first time after going virtual for its fifth edition.

Details about the Competition

DIDI’s Project Design Space offers students an opportunity to work on real design projects for actual clients, including government bodies, corporates, and non-profit organizations. The 2020-2021 programme has been “optimized” for a digital-only experience. Featuring competitive design briefs set by Dettol Arabia, Eltizam, EY MENA, Global Village Dubai and Landor & Fitch, high-school students from across the globe will need to solve real-world design challenges facing those leading companies. The key programme concepts of DIDI Project Design Space include Defining Design, Designer’s Journey and Design Modes and Methods. It will take students through the entire design journey — from concept, team creation, picking a design brief, and learning about the challenge, to discovery, with students required to conduct research and develop new perspectives about the challenge.

A Long List of Participants

The programme has secured a variegated list of participants from around the world. It has attracted participation from more than 100 schools from the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Egypt, Jordan, and the United States, with more than 2,100 students across grades 9 to 12 enrolled in the programme, where they will form teams and submit a design proposal by the 2^nd of May. The competition finale will be held in June, where the selected teams will pitch their ideas to their clients.

Mohammad Abdullah, president, DIDI, asserted, “Project Design Space has grown in participation year-on-year in line with student demand for design-related careers. Now in its fifth year, this learning platform helps the next generation of talent use design thinking to solve real business challenges. This year’s design briefs are exciting, creative and far from simplistic; solving them will require critical thinking, collaboration, and complex problem solving — skills young people must develop if they are to thrive in the Fourth Industrial Revolution.”