Congratulations to “Biza Chair” from the Centro Universitário Newton Paiva in Belo Horizonte, Brazil for winning the Chair Design Challenge!…Read more

“We’ve seen tremendous interest from innovative student designers across disciplines, whose ideas include software, services, and consumer products that help people of all ages remain healthy and vigorous in their own homes.” said Ken Smith, Director of the Challenge…Read more

 

The Stanford Center on Longevity (SCL) has reached an agreement to expand the global reach of the Center’s Design Challenge through Aging 2.0’s chapter network. The Challenge invites students at any accredited university in the world to learn about longevity issues and submit designs in competition for a $10,000 first prize and paid travel to Stanford for the Challenge Finals in April. In this, the fourth year of the Challenge, students will focus on “Innovating Aging in Place”.

Aging 2.0 is a global innovation platform on a mission to accelerate innovation to improve the lives of older adults around the world. Over the past 4 years, the organization has hosted more than 300 events around the world, cultivating a robust ecosystem of entrepreneurs, technologists, designers, investors, senior care providers and seniors themselves. In addition to its core team in San Francisco, Aging 2.0 has over 30 volunteer-run chapters across the U.S., Australia and Brazil, as well as through Europe and Asia.

During the months of August, September, and October, Aging 2.0 chapters will be encouraged to host a local event focused on getting students in their local geography engaged in the challenge. The Center on Longevity will provide the presentation materials and a small stipend to support meeting costs.

In its first three years, the Challenge has received entries from 23 countries, but the opportunity is still large. “Once students hear about the challenge, they usually want to get involved. Making them aware of the opportunity, however, can be a difficult problem”, said Ken Smith, who directs the challenge for SCL. “Working through Aging 2.0’s distributed chapter network should help bridge that gap.”

“We’re thrilled to be expanding our collaboration with the Stanford Center on Longevity, and their world-class Design Challenge”, noted Stephen Johnston, co-founder of Aging2.0.  “The Challenge gains local advocates in over 40 cities around the world, and our Chapters get an exciting and tangible way to engage with their local academic communities.”

The challenge submission platform is scheduled to open in early September and participants will have until December 7^th to submit their designs.

Yedi70 and Potalk win 2nd & 3rd prize in Mind category; Bath Chair and Echo win 2nd & 3rd prize in Mobility category

We’re proud to announce the $10,000 grand prize winners of our 2015-2016 Design Challenge: City Cart, in the Mobility category, and Memoir Monopoly, in the Mind category. Winners were selected on April 5, 2016 by a panel of experts after an all-day pitch session in front of a capacity crowd of industry leaders, educators, and community advocates at the Stanford Center on Longevity.

Second and third place winners were Bath Chair and Echo for Mobility, as well as Yedi70 and POTALK for Mind.

Following the judging, all finalists were invited to participate in a day-long workshop at the Stanford Graduate School of Business to learn more about how to turn their projects from prototypes into marketable products.

Here’s a closer look at this year’s finalists and winners:

Grand Prize Winners, Stanford Center on Longevity’s 2015-2016 Design Challenge

City Cart (Mobility) from Brandon Lopez and Eric Renard of San Francisco State University, is a walker/cart hybrid designed to help users with mobility issues safely and easily make shopping trips. Read more about City Cart >

 

Memoir Monopoly (Mind) from Cho Szu-Yang and Cheng Ya-Fang of National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, is a tablet-based rehabilitation game platform for dementia patients, integrating photos from the players’ lives into interactive challenges that exercise their memory and recognition abilities. Read more about Memoir Monopoly >

 

Runners-up & Finalists, Stanford Center on Longevity’s 2015-2016 Design Challenge
Second and third place winners in the Mobility and Mind design categories will also receive mentorship and awards of $5,000 and $2,000 (respectively) to further develop their designs:

● Bath Chair – 2nd place, Mobility: Designed by students from National Yunlin University of Science and Technology, Bath Chair is a portable bath designed to help the mobility-impaired safely wash themselves while remaining in a seated position. Read more about Bath Chair >

● Yedi70 – 2nd place, Mind: Designed by students from Koc University at Istanbul, Yedi70 is a social network and informational resource for seniors connected to an online marketplace. Read more about Yedi70 >

● Echo – 3rd place, Mobility: Designed by students from National University of Singapore, Echo is a wireless, audio wayfinding kit that helps people who’ve recently become visually impaired to develop awareness of their surroundings. Read more about Echo >

● POTALK – 3rd place, Mobility: Designed by students from National Chiao-Tung University, POTALK is a potted plant with watering system triggered by a microphone, encouraging isolated people to talk with others. Read more about POTALK >

See all twelve 2015-2016 finalist designs here. We were thrilled to meet the finalists who traveled from around the world to tour the Stanford campus and Stanford’s dSchool, join us for industry tours of IDEO and Google, and pitch their entries at the Center on Longevity. Many of these designs are already on their way to becoming real products and services to enhance long live for everyone. We hope to see great things from all our participants.

Follow us @StanfordLngLife on Twitter and via our Facebook page for more updates — including announcements on “Innovating Aging in Place” (tentative title), the theme for our 2016-2017 Design Challenge!

Acknowledgements and Thanks to Our Sponsors & Judges

We’re grateful to the guidance and sponsorship of these industry leaders which made this year’s Challenge possible: Halbert Hargrove Investments, Target, Fidelity, Lixil, CareInnovations, Home Care Assistance, Airbnb, Eskaton, and the Davis Phinney Foundation.

Special thanks as well to all the experts who volunteered their time to judge the finalists’ pitches, and nominate the initial entries:

Mind Judges

● Jonathan Stevens, SVP, Thought Leadership, AARP
● Doug Fisher, SVP of Thought Leadership and Policy Development, Fidelity Investments
● Anita Roth, Head of Policy Research, Airbnb
● Karissa Price, Chief Marketing Officer, CareInnovations
● Sheri Peifer, Senior Living Chief Strategy Officer, Eskaton
● Katie Libbe, VP Consumer Marketing & Solutions, Allianz Life
● Sha Yao, designer of Eatwell, SCL’s 2014-2015 Design Challenge winner

Mobility Judges

● Alexis Kantor, Director of Apparel and Accessories Product Development, Target
● Megan Heinen, Director of Marketing, Home Care Assistance
● Polly Dawkins, Executive Director, Davis Phinney Foundation
● Hannah Torkelson, ORISE Fellow – US President’s Council on Fitness, Sports, and Nutrition
● Scott Peifer, Vice President, Alliance Development, Aging 2.0
● Anne Friedlander, Stanford Professor of Human Biology
● Kelly Soyland, Director of Innovation and Research and The Vivo Innovation Center, Good Samaritan

Entry Judges (Finalists Selection)

● William Bao Bean, Investment Partner, SOS Ventures
● Amber Case, Entrepreneur and Author
● Josh Constine, Journalist, TechCrunch
● Katherine Dotter, Nutrition Research Innovation Manager, Stanford School of Medicine, SPRC
● James R. Doty, MD Director and Founder, Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford; Clinical Professor of Neurosurgery, Stanford University
● Anne Friedlander, PhD Consulting Professor, Program in Human Biology, Stanford University
● Gopi Shah Goda, Senior Research Scholar, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), Stanford University
● Frank (Gard) Jameson, Author and Professor, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
● Alexis Kantor, Director of Apparel and Accessories Product Development, Target Corporation
● Surya Kolluri, Managing Director, Policy and Market Planning Global Wealth and Retirement Solutions, Bank of America/Merrill Lynch
● Joanna Lahey, Associate Professor, The Bush School of Government & Public Service, Texas A&M University
● Katie Libbe, Vice President, Consumer Marketing and Solutions, Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America
● Om Malik Former, Journalist and Founder, GigaOM
● James Mahaney, Vice President, Strategic Initiatives, Prudential
● Patricia Milligan, Global Leader, Multinational Client Group, Mercer
● Jin Song, Montesano Chief Public Affairs Officer, LIXIL Group Corporation
● Sheri Peifer, Chief Strategy Officer, Eskaton
● Karissa Price-Rico, Chief Marketing Officer, Intel-GE Care Innovations
● Alison Reid, Vice President, Global Public Relations & Social Media, Bare Essentials
● Jennifer Romano-Bergstrom, PhD, User Experience Researcher, Facebook
● Anita Roth, Head of Policy Research, Airbnb
● Darren Sabo, Principal of Digital Health Solutions, Orange Silicon Valley
● Robert Scoble, Tech Evangelist
● Jason Scott, Managing Director, Retiree Research Center
● Paul Tang, MD Vice President, Chief Innovation & Technology Officer, Sutter Palo Alto Medical Foundation
● Jeanne Thompson, Vice President of Thought Leadership, Fidelity Investments
● Hannah Torkelson, ORISE Fellow, President’s Council on Fitness, Sports & Nutrition