Class Begins at Vincci Real Estate Hackathon Training!

Last Saturday, Vincci Group and Collective Responsibility jointly held a training session in Chengdu for the upcoming real estate hackathon, where students design “The Educational Hub of Tomorrow”. Together with their mentors, six student teams from Sichuan University, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Southwest Jiaotong University, Sichuan Agricultural University, Chengdu University of Technology and Chengdu University brainstormed solutions to tackle the following challenge:

How to design an educational hub that satisfies the community’s educational wants and needs?


The challenge has 3 parts: 

1.    Design the services of the educational hub
2.    Propose a strategy to attract residents to the educational hub
3.    Design the exterior of the educational hub 
Chuli Duan starting and conducting the training.
Chuli Duan, Corporate Advisory Manager of Collective Responsibility, was the training’s emcee. She opened the event and explained the reason behind this challenge:
“At this information age, there are no longer limits to education. Be it age, space or time. The community comprises of thousands of families, hence it is the best place to fulfill the goal of “universal learning”. We hope that through this Hackathon, we can redefine the community, via innovation in architecture and business model, to transform the community into a big classroom in order to satisfy the different education wants and needs of the residents.”
Students brainstorming during the training.
Then, she invited the team leaders to state the team’s background and goals for the Hackathon. Moving on, Meng Yi, CEO and director of Vincci Group introduced the firm.
Meng Yi, CEO and director of Vincci Group introducing the firm.
He mentioned that Vincci Group is one of the first foreign real estate developers to enter the Chengdu market and once led the innovation of Chengdu’s residential real estate. In recent years, Vincci realized that the original business model is no longer competitive in an increasingly competitive market. Thus, they hope to find a breakthrough while tackling the challenges in education and elderly brought by urbanization, to develop a series of projects that will satisfy the market needs.
He concluded by thanking the students for their participation and encouraged them to be bold in their imagination and trials, to have no limits in innovation and welcomed them to take part in the development of future Vincci projects.
William Morris teaching the concepts of design thinking and research, and how students can apply them in their preparation for the hackathon.
William Morris, Research Manager at Collective Responsibility introduced the concepts of design thinking and user centered research:
“A good design starts from understanding the users’ needs. No matter if it is through a phone call or face-to-face interviews, you need to collect real user data and create a user journey using that data.”
This was followed by introductions by thirteen external and internal mentors. The six external mentors are:

  • Alvin Hung, Executive Director, First City Group
  • Jeff Xiong, Consulting Director, ThoughtWorks
  • Yupeng Zheng, Chief Designer, Banzuo Architecture Consulting
  • Yi Lin, PM, Center for Teaching Advancement of Sichuan University
  • Caspar Lysen, Urban Planner, Non-A Studio Chengdu
  • Kamaljot Singh Panesar, Co-Founder, Urban Hybrid Architecture
The seven internal mentors are the leaders of various departments of Vincci Group, namely from the finance, human resource, business development, sales, engineering, garden property and square property departments. Every student team has an internal and external mentor. They will assist the students during their research process and the Hackathon by providing one to one mentoring and technical support.The training ended with a mini-hackathon: To design a better school canteen. In a short span of 30 minutes and under the guidance of mentors, students analyzed the user journey, discovered their pain points, proposed and refine their solution, to design an ideal canteen experience.
Students presenting their ideas for a better canteen.
After the training’s official conclusion, students and mentors are optimistic and confident for the upcoming hackathon in two weeks. Grabbing markers and paper, the students began brainstorming their perfect educational hub. Excited to see the teams’ final designs!


Vincci’s Real Estate hackathon is a week away. Stay tuned for updates.

To find out more about the challenge and previous hackathons hosted by Collective Responsibility, please check out our Hackathon Landing Page.

 

 

 

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