In October the University of Dundee‘s Social Digital Society ran the Social Digital Sprint Day. The Social Digital Sprint day is a day of design, fun and problem solving. It involves participants being split up into teams and working on producing a creative solution to the brief set within the space of a few hours. This day encourages people from different backgrounds in different years to all come together over a common goal to produce a coherent piece of work.
The Circle was asked to present a brief for the teams to come up with ideas for in order to win the competition. This was the brief that the teams were presented with:
“The Circle are looking for a cost effective way to ‘blackout’ a large room which is naturally very well lit. We love having a space that gets so much sunlight but we’re looking to be able to block it out for special events or for screening documentaries and movies during the day. The screen becomes unreadable with such direct sunlight hitting it.
Ideally the solution would be very cost effective. Easy to to put up as well as take down on demand. As a third sector organisation we are not cash rich and only have a small budget of around £100.
On site we have a large ladder platform so reaching high areas is both safe as well as relatively simple. There’s approx. 60sq meters of windows to cover up. Approx 3 meters high and 20 meters around the perimeter”
The sprint was set up by the Director of Community Engagement for Duncan of Jordanstone who aims to generate a good relationship with companies within Dundee and to help promote these companies projects and events more internally within the University. They also aimed to show students the opportunities companies can offer and to help reduce the fear factor of approaching businesses whilst still in education.
The winning team made up by Ewan Paterson, Euan Flynn and Kevin Malavet chose the simplistic but economic route to solve the brief. They proposed using zip ties to attach pieces of cardboard together and hanging them in front of the windows.
Before 
After
The winning team’s solution worked fantastically and we were delighted with how easy the boards were to assemble and hang, and how well they blocked out and light.
Amy Louise Bryson, who coordinated the sprint day, was very happy with how teams tackled The Circle’s brief.
“The Circle was extremely kind to provide the brief for the day and the students who participated enjoyed the practical implementation element of the task. Many briefs set you never get to see the outcomes but The Circle was very encouraging and positive of the work produced which has empowered the students to take part in similar events in future.
Personally being to coordinator of the event I found the day was a success, the participants gained insight about time pressure situations, made a larger network of peers and worked on a real to life problem a company was trying to solve. We would love to work with the Circle again for future projects and also the other businesses within The Circle premises. The values The Circle have as a company resonates to many students and young entrepreneurs so hopefully in Future we can collaborate on a similar project again.”
The cafe space is available for hire for up to 80 people for meetings and functions. You can hire the room from £100. Find out more about booking use of the cafe or our other spaces here.