“Promoting Lifelong Healthy Habits Through Design”

The Stanford Center on Longevity Design Challenge is a global competition that encourages students to design products and services to improve well-being across the lifespan. In its fifth year, the Challenge is focused on ideas that create and support healthy habits –including financial, physical, and social behaviors—which are shown to improve quality of life.

Why habits matter: 
The extension of average life expectancy around the globe over the past 100 years is unprecedented in human history. People living in the developed world can now regularly expect to live into their 80’s and beyond. According to the Sightlines Project of the Stanford Center on Longevity, there are key factors in the realm of healthy living, financial security, and social engagement that impact the quality of life at every age. “Effective actions to address these issues via policies, awareness and innovation can improve individual and national well-being as we enable and prepare for living well and living long in 21st century America.” The 2017-2018 Challenge focuses on promoting habits that maximize physical, mental, and financial resources for individuals and families of any age.

What “Quality of Life” means:
Three out of four Americans surveyed in 2016 indicated that they want to live to 100 if they can do so in good health. But quality of life includes much more than just physical wellbeing. Compelling scientific evidence indicates that living long and living well is most realistic for those who are socially engaged, adopt healthy living behaviors, and are able to build financial security.

Optimizing for quality of life therefore includes actions and behaviors at all ages. For example, financial security begins with practices and attitudes that individuals engage in from their 20s and onward. Additionally, regular community and social engagement are positive indicators of future health and life satisfaction.

The Challenge: 
The Stanford Center on Longevity is looking for design ideas which promote habits that improve quality of life across the age spectrum. The best designs are innovative, engaging, practical, and readily understood. User testing of designs has been a critical step for past winners and novel, scalable, and inexpensive design solutions tend to be favored by judges. We invite submissions that meet these criteria and that promise to help people everywhere who wish to become mentally sharp, physically fit, and financially secure.

2016-2017 | “Aging in Place”

The challenge invited submissions to address the factors that allow individuals and families to remain in their homes throughout the lifespan and into old age.

Winners:

• First Place – “TAME” by  Hooriya Anam, Awais Shafique, and Arsalan Javed  from the  National University of Sciences and Technology in Islamabad, Pakistan
• Second Place – “Rendever” by Charles Lin and Kyle Rand at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Third Place – “UPPO” by Lane Hering, Emma Lee, Charlene Lertlumprasert, Genesis Solano, and Gerrold Walker from Virginia Tech

2015-2016 | “Using Happiness to Optimize Longevity”

The challenge invited submissions to address three tracks: Mind, Mobility, and Financial Security, reflective of the Center on Longevity’s mission to enable people to reach old age Mentally Sharp, Physically Fit, and Financially Secure.

Winners:

“Delight the Mind” (Mind Challenge)

• First Place – “Memoir Monopoly” from Cho Szu-Yang and Cheng Ya-Fang of National Taiwan University of Science and Technology
• Second Place – “Bath Chair” from National Yunlin University of Science (Taiwan)
• Third Place – “Echo” from National University of Singapore

“Discover the Motion” (Mobility Challenge)

• First Place – “City Cart” from Brandon Lopez and Eric Renard of San Francisco State University
• Second Place – “Yedi70” from Koc University at Istanbul
• Third Place – “POTALK” from National Chiao-Tung University (Taiwan)

Note: Insufficient entries were received to select finalists and make awards in the financial track.

2014-2015 | “Enabling Personal Mobility Across the Life Span”

The 2014-2015 Challenge invited designer to create solutions for empowering mobility among older adults at a personal level by: (1) reducing sedentary lifestyles, (2) encouraging and enabling physical movement and exercise, and (3) reducing barriers and increasing facilitators to mobility in the home and community.

• First Place – Nicholas Steigmann and Maiya Jensen from the California College of the Arts and their project “SPAN”
• Second Place – “HandleBar” from the University of California, Berkeley
• Third Place – “Luna Lights” from Northwestern University
• Stanford Longevity Technology Prize – “Flipod” from National University of Singapore

2013-2014 | “Maximizing Independence for those with Cognitive Impairment”

This 2013-2014 challenge focused on designing new solutions to keep individuals with cognitive impairment independent for as long as possible. The challenge asked designer to identify issues around quality of life, personal independence, and helping people experience the best parts of life for as long as possible.

• First Place – “EatWell” by Sha Yao from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco
• Second Place – “Taste+” from the KEIO-NUS CUTE center at the National University of Singapore
• Third Place – “Memory Maps” from the Copenhagen Institute of Design

Read more about the winners >