On November 17-18, 35 bright young students from China’s top design schools gathered at the Kohler Design Experience Center to compete in the 2017 Kohler Hackathon, where they were challenged to re-invent the bathroom experience for the Chinese elderly. The six student teams are from China’s leading design schools – China Academy of Art, Tongji University, Donghua University and Shanghai Institute of Visual Art. They were selected from over 40 teams who applied initially, and went through 1-month training and field research prior to the Hackathon weekend.
Event Background
In 2016, 30.2% of the permanent population in Shanghai is above the age of 60 (Xinhuanet). It is also estimated that the number of elderly will overtake the number of youths in China around 2020.
Aging has become one of the biggest challenges to the quickly urbanizing China. Not only is the government struggling to provide enough beds for senior citizens in public hospitals and senior houses, the labor market is faced with a quickly greying workforce. On the other side of the story, there is a huge market potential for products and services targeting this community. Studies have shown that the elderly in China today are much more willing to spend money on traveling and shopping, and most them have access to technology.
As a world leading bathroom brand, Kohler has spent many years studying the bathroom experience of the elderly, and have successfully launched several elderly-friendly bathroom products to meet their wants and needs.
Also presenting were 18 mentors from Kohler and other leading design firms.
We were honored to have 5 distinguished judges:
Let’s look back at what happened during the exciting 24 hours!
Day One, 06:00 pm
Jack Feng, Director of Fixtures Engineering, K&B China, Kohler gave a welcome speech, speaking highly of students and mentors’ arduous work over the past month.
Students and mentors sharing moments of the month-long experience.
Students explaining design concepts to mentors.
Mentors working with students to improve details.
Teams brainstorming with mentors in individual rooms.
10:00 pm
Bathtubs & inspirations
Building prototypes from scratch
Keep optimizing solutions
01:00 am
Searching for inspiration
Till the last minute
Taking a break
DAY 2, 08:00 am
Street interviews
04:00 pm
Teams doing 10 min presentation & 3 min Q&A
Making full use of every minute of the presentation!
Judges from Kohler and WeCare WC carefully scoring teams’ proposals based on:
• User journey map
• Quality of solution
• Feasibility of idea
• Presentation quality
After rounds of heated discussions, the judges decided on the following winners:
1st Prize: Shanghai Institute of Visual Art, Obsidian
2nd Prize: China Academy of Art, Homie Five
3rd Prize: Donghua University, Yinfa Guardians
Team Obsidian, Mentors：Jordan Meyers, Steven Zhang, Jack Niu
Team Homie Five, Mentors: Kenny Zhang, Jenny Fang, Amy Ly
Team Yinfa Guardians, Mentors: Sophie Gu, Yan Yang, Amy Ly
Congratulations to winners! A big shout out to the other three teams from Tongji University and China Academy of Art for their impressive performance.
Not only were the 6 teams offered Kohler internship opportunities, the winners were granted the chance to go directly to the group interview round in Kohler’s Management Trainee program. Meanwhile, all solutions will be presented to Kohler’s global office, with the potential of further commercialization.
Thanks everyone for the splendid work!
If you are interested in learning more about student hackathons, please contact us