Ycenter x Kent State Impactathon: Design For Extremes

2-Day Experiential Workshop

Program Date: February 28 and March 1, 2025 - 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM
Venue: Design Innovation Fellows Suite - DIH 250 (click for campus map)
Registration Deadline: February 24, 2025 by 11:59pm, or the maximum capacity is reached

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Program Partner

Who Is This For

  • Students with existing early stage ideas or wanting to learn about Entrepreneurship and design thinking for new ideas.
  • No prior experience required.
  • All learning and working materials will be provided.
  • Should be available to attend the event in person on both days.
Top skills you acquire:
  • Complex Problem Understanding and Breakdown
  • Cause and Effect Analysis
  • Idea to Prototyping
  • Stakeholder Mapping and Market Research
  • Human Centered Design
  • Creative Problem Solving
  • Building A Business Model
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Get A Verified
LinkedIn Certificate

Upon completing our program, Ycenter will provide participants with a verified certificate that can be showcased as a LinkedIn badge, highlighting your achievement and new skills. This badge not only enhances your professional profile but also signals to potential employers that you've gained valuable, hands-on experience in innovation, sustainability, design thinking and entrepreneurship. We will also showcase your project on our newly launched global respository of SDGs projects for additional growth and networking opportunities.


Watch a previous Ycenter workshop experience video

About The Program

This two-day bootcamp is designed to take participants through the process of breaking down a complex problem and turning an idea into an actionable solution and finally making a business model for it.
Ycenter two day programs are truly immersive for participants to learn about Entrepreneurship, Complex Problem Solving and Human-centered design methodology. You will learn, ideate, build and explore new ways to solve real problems using the power of business. You do not need to have a team to participate in this event. Individual registrations are welcome.

Program Structure

The entire workshop is delivered using Experiential Learning Pedagogy, which means as participants you will be engaging in hands-on activities rather than learning only theories. Get a chance to specifically work on your respective project ideas (if any) or pick a problem statement under the context of United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

Registration
& Icebreaker

09:00 AM - 09:30 AM

Complex problem breakdown using human centered design

10:00 AM - 12 Noon

Lunch
break

Noon - 01:00 PM

Using Empathy as a primary market research tool

01:00 PM - 02:30 PM

Secondary research and Problem statement verification

02:30 PM - 03:30 PM

Creating a design brief and turning problem statements into Opportunity statements

03:30 PM - 04:30 PM

Optional post event hangout

04:30 PM - 05:00 PM

Registration and debrief from day 1

09:00 AM - 09:30 AM

Creative Thinking activity 1

09:30 AM - 10:30 AM

Creative thinking activity 2

10:30 AM - 11:30 AM

Idea final selection

11:30 AM - 12 Noon

Lunch break

Noon - 01:00 PM

Idea prototyping

01:00 PM - 03:00 PM

Storytelling pitching technique

01:00 PM - 03:00 PM

Participants pitching and receiving feedback and discussing next steps/resources to continue building upon the project

04:00 PM - 05:00 PM

Meet The Facilitators

Insights and mentorship from experienced professionals in the field.

Dhairya Pujara is the Founder, CEO at Ycenter. He has been a global public speaker with invitations from the United Nations, World Bank, World Economic Forum, Social Enterprise World Forum, SXSW, TEDx and top universities and organizations in 15+ countries across 4 continents. His work has been featured in magazines like Entrepreneur, INC, nominated for Forbes 30 under 30 and several other media publications like BBC radio, Huffington post, Philadelphia Business journal to name a few. He is a serial entrepreneur, working directly to support job creation, technology innovation ventures and for this work he has received a visa reserved for individuals of extraordinary abilities from the US immigration services.

Dhairya Pujara

Founder, CEO at Ycenter

J.R. Campbell serves as the executive director of the Design Innovation (DI) Initiative at Kent State University to support transition design thinking (human-centered design + design for change), challenge-based innovation, technology-infused maker communities and the curation of trans-disciplinary collaborative teams to tackle "wicked" problems. His role involves leading the DI Hub, a 68,000-square-foot facility designed to foster collaboration across all disciplines. The DI Hub environments encourage innovation and cross-disciplinary problem-solving, linking students and faculty to a network of makerspaces in the building and resource laboratories throughout the university. Campbell’s background is rich in textile arts and digital fabrication and transformation. Before joining Kent State, he led research for the Centre for Advanced Textiles at the Glasgow School of Art, where he worked on projects digitizing and reinterpreting historical textile designs. His extensive experience in both academic and practical aspects of design and innovation positions him as a key leader in driving the university’s goals for a cutting-edge, collaborative education for the future.

J.R. Campbell

Executive Director, Design Innovation (DI) Initiative

Our Global Partners

Our network includes leading universities, high impact organizations, industry leaders and entrepreneurs from around the world.

Design Innovation Initiative, Kent State University

Through the Design Innovation Initiative at Kent State, we bring together students, faculty, community and leading experts from diverse disciplines who are thoughtfully addressing technology and society through design to become creative, intersectional problem-solvers and fearless collaborators in the face of complex, messy problems. We value:

  • - Student-centered learning and engagement through challenge-based innovation
  • - Empathy, respect and diversity
  • - Addressing human-centered/user-centered challenges to activate the intersections between fields
  • - Breaking barriers and biases through trans-disciplinary communication and “perspective taking”
  • - Facilitating experiences for teams to articulate, reframe, activate, decide, and generate novel insights and solutions
  • - Building opportunities for individuals to seek temporary unity with others to create awareness, confidence, capacity and empowerment
  • - Making/Fixing/Exploring/Iterating/Thinking/Doing/Failing/Repeating




Get In Touch

If you are a university affiliate, student club member or just a curious learner, wanting more information on Ycenter programs can come to you, please contact us below!

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