The Stanford Center on Longevity Design Challenge is a global competition that encourages students to design products and services to improve well-being across the lifespan. In its eighth year, the Challenge is focused on ideas inspired by the cultural shift that has occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic that support long, healthy, and happy lives for everyone. 

CHALLENGE GOALS:

1. Create well-designed, practical solutions that improve well-being across the lifespan
2. Encourage a new generation of students to become knowledgeable about issues associated with long lives
3. Provide promising designers with a path to drive change in the world

Cash prizes include $10,000 (1st place), $5,000 (2nd place), $2,000 (3rd place) and finalists receive:

• $1000 for prototyping and presentation development
• Mentorship and personalized coaching from leading industry experts and researchers
• Airfare and hotel reimbursement for 1 student from each team to attend the Finals at Stanford University to present their idea (conditions permitting).

The challenge runs concurrent with the 2020-2021 academic year, with initial submissions due by December 10th, 2020 and finalists presenting at Stanford University in April, 2021. For more details, visit the Center on Longevity Design Challenge website.

The COVID-19 pandemic is bringing into sharper focus the cultural norms that guide us through life and is providing insights about what a new future might look like. The suddenness of this transformation is allowing us to examine daily practices, social norms, and institutions from perspectives that are rarely possible. For a short window of time, before new routines and practices replace familiar old ones, we will see with greater clarity how our lives might be improved, how current shifts could become enduring changes, what new norms might emerge, and how a new future might look. 

This year, the Stanford Center on Longevity is challenging students to design solutions for this new post-pandemic future, keeping in mind both how these solutions affect people throughout the life span, and how they can be designed in ways that are accessible to all. They should take into account what we are learning during the pandemic and how it is changing our lives. 

How is the pandemic changing our lives?
In parallel to this Challenge, the Center on Longevity has launched an online project, called A New Map of Life – After the Pandemic, to gather expert opinions and perspectives about how our social and cultural norms might change as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. These perspectives are available to designers as a source of inspiration and ideas.