This year’s edition of the Designathon was divided over two days: one full-day session with a focus on designing the Cell Lab: a hub where players, patients, pathologists and scientists unite to map human cells and advance cancer research/immunotherapy, visibly increasing the learning capacity from algorithms to doctors and researchers, to patients and players.
The second half day allowed the participants to zoom in on their own research by impact mapping and presenting to each other. They were also asked to send in a short presentation afterwards.
The designathon was joined by a group of 11 PhD’s from various backgrounds and very diverse in expertise, discipline, cultural background and gender. The highly motivated participants seemed to find this transdisciplinary collaboration both refreshing and challenging. From the beginning, the group was engaged and grasped by the project, challenging themselves beyond the boundaries of their own research and perspectives by opening up to each other.
Feedback from participants:
“Multidisciplinary working inspired me, it was very good to take a few steps back from my own project and allowing myself to question why I am doing what I am doing. I am more able now to put my research into a more structured layout from an impact perspective”.
“It made me help look differently at my own research, becoming more aware of the essence: the impact I am striving for. Wish there was more time to further explore!!”.
Feedback from the caseholder Changegamers/NKI:
“We made assumptions; hearing fresh perspectives from different angles was very fruitful to zoom out. The Designathon outcomes will help our team to sharpen and rethink decisions. It made us aware that our concept of a virtual Cell Lab should be more tangible with a clear visual framework. An important lesson for the future as we need to better define the Cell Lab to show potential stakeholders.”
