Location : MIT Media Lab, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Date : Septempber 23-25, 2022

The Samsung Experience & Insight (E&I) Lab, working within Samsung Research, is driven to address big issues and real-world problems, always exploring how we can support people through life products and technologies. We employ technologies such as artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and so on in the pursuit of solutions that serve human needs—always through the lens of the users. To that end, the E&I Lab—in partnership with the MIT Media Lab— co-hosted a hackathon in late September at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The hackathon explored several questions about the future of wellbeing with which the E&I Lab has been grappling. Can traditional notions of health and wellness be expanded beyond the physical? Can we achieve a holistic wellbeing that combines the personal and societal? And how might human-centered technologies serve these objectives?
Who better to engage with those same questions than thoughtful, talented young people whose lives will unfold in that future?

The three-day event brought together 12 teams of engineering, design, and art students from across MIT, Harvard University, and Wellesley College to reimagine the future of health, wellness, and wellbeing. Each team was challenged to create a novel project concept and working prototype that addresses real problems in the health, lifestyle, and wellness space.

“It was great to do this at MIT,” said E&I Lab head Federico Casalegno. “We’re following in the spirit of the late William J. Mitchell, who was dean of MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning and inspired hundreds of students over the years. Bill and I worked together at MIT for a long time, and we were among the first to use cross-disciplinary teams, hold design charettes, and apply human-centered design across a wide swath of challenging problems. This hackathon was like that—and it’s how we work at the E&I Lab.”

The September hackathon— “Project the Future of Wellbeing”—was organized around three guiding principles: push boundaries, foster innovative ideas, and nurture the best talent. Their fresh ideas are going to stimulate Samsung Research. They approach problems from diverse perspectives, with creativity, and free of complicated procedures. That leads to unexpected solutions.”

To push boundaries and foster innovative ideas, students were challenged to imagine projection and augmented reality supporting health and wellbeing and, ultimately, empowering people’s lives. Having teams that broke down silos between disciplines—a multidisciplinary approach is at the center of how the E&I Lab itself works—helped advance their thinking about the possibilities.

Over a long weekend of hacking, each team tackled projection in the healthy lifestyle space from different angles—and came up with some truly provocative ideas, from utilizing projection to connect people through storytelling to creating virtual cooking experiences. At the end, the industrious students shared their concepts and prototypes with Samsung executives, E&I designers, and MIT student mentors. Teams were judged on their problem evidence, prototypes, story, impact, and overall uniqueness, and the weekend closed with the excitement of having the winners announced (see below).

For the E&I Lab, this hackathon was a great opportunity to introduce students to our design ethos and our approach to work. “Our design ethos is humanity-centered and experience driven,” Casalegno explained, “and we aim to design experiences that address human needs and foster connections. Products are simply the outcome of that ethos.”

Hackathon participants learned about that ethos, and the E&I Lab got a chance to test their skills. “We don’t just get great ideas out of events like this,” Casalegno noted. “We build relationships. And it helps Samsung attract talented students from some of the best universities around the world, laying the groundwork to further solidify our position as a global company and leader.”

Judges
Dr. Sebastian Seung: President at Samsung Research
Dr. Federico Casalegno: EVP Design at Samsung Research

Hackathon Winners
1st Place: Story ++ by Valdmar Danry, Cathy Fang, Yuval Gur, Jason Hou, Aastha Shah, Wazeer Zulfikar
2nd Place: Collaborative Cooking by Dekai Xiao, Rick Wierenga, Peter Møllgaard, Davide Gusmini, Christian Ulmer
3rd Place: ReKnew by Bernice Sun, Shellie Hu, Vickie Liu, Levin Brinkmann, Keith Rebello, Kartikesh Mishra, Agnese Sacchi

WJM Design Awards
1st Place: FeltMate by Chen Huang, Jason Leo, Prem Sagar, Yiou Wang, Tatiana Estrina
2nd Place: ConstEllation by Jocelyn Shen, Xiajie Zhang, Sharifa Alghowinem, Yubin Kim, Daniella DiPaola
3rd Place: The Window by Rongxin Liu, Nemo Shi, Yu Lai, and Illuminate by Dishi Gautam, Jade Wu, Jon Chinen, Tara Bassi