Celebrating Growth & Success with High School Students at the Hatch Programme 2024

As one of the highlights of the PolyU Design Hatch Awards 2024, the Hatch Programme, joined by 60 shortlisted participants has finally come to a finale! Happened from 16 March to 6 April 2024, it is a 4-day incubation training programme that aims to support the budding design interest of the high school students, who have already shown a keen eye on identifying interesting design problems to tackle and their potentials through initial proposals. A series of design lectures, workshops and ideation consultations were conducted to help further unlock the possibilities in their design entries.

IDEATION CONSULTATION
A team of tutors (Mr Chi-Wing Lee of Milk Design and Mr Kennif Li of Kennifstudio) and senior student ambassadors spent time understanding the works and goals of the participants, thus giving them bespoke advice that best fits their needs. These design clinics were carried out regularly where the team was able to keep track of the progress of each project — a real personalised session. What comes to our surprise is the participants’ enthusiasms to explore further into other areas instead of staying in their own lane, constantly seeking out advice from ambassadors and lecturers of different expertise; the essence of design being applicable in multi-disciplinary!

DESIGN LECTURE
In order to equip participants with design fundamentals that would serve as a solid base for conducting design strategy in the future, lectures with various focus have been organised. Mr Albert Tsang of J.C.DISI introduced the basics of design thinking through his lecture “From and With: Design and Innovation for Social Impact”, enlightening participants with case studies of radical and inclusive design. In “Generative AI is for Everyone to Solve Problems?”, Mr Eddy Hui of Hong Kong Designers Association gave an extensive introduction on Gen AI, its application tips and reminders.

PITCHING EXERCISE
To better prepare for the final judging session in July, the students participated at a two-parts pitching exercise where Mr Westley Wong of Wholly Wholly shared an overview on branding and keys to nailing a persuasive pitch, while Mr Thomas Wong, an outstanding alumnus graduated from Communication Design led an intensive hands-on workshop, pushing attendees to build a compact thus intriguing presentation in a short period of time. Hopefully, students will make good use of the presentation skills acquired and apply it in their final presentation and beyond!