Designing educational challenges for schools and companies, before and during the pandemic

SolarBuddy, an Australian charity, helps children in energy poverty. They educate students and employees about energy poverty while having them build solar-powered lights. These lights are given to children globally to help them study at night.

Given strong interest from our corporate user base, we focused on event organizers and corporate employees as our primary users. Since this audience was quite broad, we started by gathering insights from employees and organisers at local partner companies, including Flight Centre, ci-events, and Technology One. We then conducted secondary market research to analyze competitor programs and survey existing products in the marketplace.

Through our charity partnerships, we invited past event organizers and participants to join a collaborative workshop with the SolarBuddy team. They expressed interest in a program that not only had purpose but, more importantly, delivered concrete outcomes. Together, we brainstormed ideas for the new program and defined clear goals based on their needs, expectations, and our expertise.

To ensure the program was purposeful, we centered our efforts on the sustainability goals. While SolarBuddy had already tackled SDG 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy), we wanted to empower teams to develop solutions for any of the other 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Our market research revealed that companies weren't yet using SDGs as challenge material, making this approach unique.

SolarBuddy partnered with a facilitator to design the program structure, mapping the user journey into three stages: before, during, and after the event. The facilitator helped create an engaging presentation that would maintain participant interest throughout. Building on this framework, we incorporated design activities and the double diamond process to build a comprehensive journey. We created targeted questions and "Shuffle Cards" to guide teams through different thinking phases.

After creating a minimal viable product, we conducted an internal trial session to test the program's feasibility. I helped present the informational segments, then observed participants working through the design process. We gathered feedback on both the presentation and participant activities. To maximise our learning, we tested various activities to identify which ones resonated most with the teams.

Before the team could develop the program further, COVID-19 swept across Australia, halting the project as conferences and team-building workshops became impossible. I took ownership of the project and repurposed the activity content into an interactive PDF. To validate this new format, we conducted another internal session over Zoom to test its virtual viability. The session proved successful, revealing the program's potential for a digital future.

Recognising the limitations of interactive PDFs for the user experience, we searched for alternatives and discovered MURAL. This platform's enhanced capabilities allowed us to improve and refine the overall experience.

To ensure a seamless experience, I designed "session cards"—digital invitation cards for participants. Though simple, these cards were vital to the user experience. We sent them to participants one day before the event along with the Zoom meeting link. The hyperlinked PDF cards allowed users to join their designated design rooms, and our technical support staff used them to assign participants to Zoom breakout rooms.

Using Mural, we created pre-work activity rooms that allowed participants to familiarize themselves with the platform before the event. While we initially included a challenge in the pre-work phase, feedback from our trials showed that participants needed this time simply to learn the software.

SolarBuddy conducted external trial sessions with 25-50 users at a time. The trials evaluated group sizes, session timing, design exercises, pre-work activities, and the Zoom and Mural platform experience.

During the trials, we gathered feedback from all participants at the end of each session. We organised this feedback into five key categories: Zoom experience, Mural experience, Design exercises, timing, and pre-work activities. The insights we received helped us refine and improve the overall experience.

After six sessions and six rounds of feedback, the team refined the program's experience and content, establishing a standard operating procedure for future facilitators and technical support staff. 'Solve the 17' now runs globally in its virtual format and in person at schools across Australia. SolarBuddy has conducted online sessions with organizations including Salesforce, Deloitte, Atlassian, Flight Centre, and more.

When schools began reopening, we collaborated with our education partners to adapt the challenges and activities for all grade levels. Students from Kelvin Grove State College participated in our inaugural "Schools Solve The 17" session. Their feedback on this engaging program is shared below.