Creative Challenge Salzburg

Date: 26 Feb - 2 Mar 2018
Location: Salzburg University of Applied Sciences (Austria)

Discover how creativity can boost your company and your career!

Results

Within the framework of the Decoding European Creative Skills project, three creative Challenge are organized in each of the partner universities.

The second creative challenge took place in Salzburg (Austria) from 26/02-02/03 2018. It was organized by the research team of design & product management, DE|RE|SA (Design Research Salzburg). On the first day, five SME from the region of Salzburg presented their design challenges and answered questions from the students. 10 interdisciplinary teams of 4 or 5 students (Master students from design & product management, incomings and guests from Brno University) worked on these challenges during the following days. They were supervised by mentors from Salzburg University of Applied Sciences as well as from the center of Human-Computer Interaction in Salzburg. Additionally, each team was observed by a researcher, who kept record of their behaviour during the first days.

The companies that took part in the Creative Challenge Salzburg are:

The Café Hipp has been practicing the rare craft of gingerbread and wax-making for over 400 years. Out of this long tradition today’s Cafe? Hipp evolved, in which they offer 400 cafe? seats, high-quality chocolates and chocolate goods, pastries and loose tea. They were looking for new ideas for the consumption, sale and experience of their high-quality sweets.
lebensDESIGN is a social design project born out of a cooperation between Lebenshilfe, Porsche Design GmbH and the Salzburg University of Applied Sciences. The idea is that people with handicaps can produce beautiful luxury products which customers never purchase out of pity but for genuine interest in the brand. The challenge included design development of urban/street furniture and lighting solutions for the current product range of lebensDESIGN.
Phantom Athletics is a sports company based in the city of Salzburg. Their most important product is the Phantom Training Mask, a resistance breathing device, which limits your air supply during training. They want to add a pollen / fine particle filter to their existing Phantom Training Mask. They already had the proper filter material, but were looking for a solution to integrate the filter in the mask.
The organisation Phurdo is a center for consultancy and promotion of the Roma and Sinti community. Within this context of labor integration basket-weaving workshops are offered as well as traditional Baskets sold. At the moment the presentation of the shop’s retail space towards the outside is less than optimal. The new concept has to be flexible, especially since a new location is being planned. The showroom should function for multiple purposes (coffee house, educational center, production).
Rainer Holzbau are a small timber construction company and carpentry with 5 to 10 employees. Their area of activity covers the whole spectrum of carpentry and wood construction including residential buildings, bridge construction, carports, wooden terraces, renovation and thermal strengthening. By developing a recognizable visual product language, a clear design strategy should become visible and tangible.

The challenge started on Monday with the kick-off meeting and closed with final presentation on Friday. On Wednesday, most projects were presented to representatives of the companies to allow them to give feedback.

The final presentations on Friday demonstrated the great quality and enthusiasm of the participants. Representatives as well as the mentors were happy with the results and see great potential for the future realization of these ideas. The insights from the observations serve as further input for mapping and decoding European creative skills.