University of Leeds students designed a prototype product for visually impaired schoolchildren as part of a global classroom experience in Mexico.
Ten students from the Leeds BSc and MDes Product Design courses, visited Tecnológico de Monterrey to take part in joint workshops, digital marketing global classrooms, technical entrepreneurship and makerspace sessions.
One project involved creating a prototype for visually impaired Mexican secondary school students. The brief, set by an external company, was to produce a game for 11-13-year-olds to help them learn new topics at school.
MSc Product Design student Sahaana Sainath took part in this 48-hour project with two students from Tecnológico de Monterrey and another student from the University of Leeds.
It’s fantastic that our prototypes could help people.
Sahaana’s team worked on a toy to understand states of matter. The toy was made up of a ball with a bell inside and would move from box to box from a solid state to plasma.
Students sketched their ideas and technicians from both the University of Leeds and Tecnológico de Monterrey helped them to make a prototype with materials in the Monterrey InnovAction gym design studio.
Sahaana said: “It was inspiring to see how the project was connected on a more personal level and the ideas being taken forward. It’s fantastic that our prototypes could help people.”
Dr Cristina Reynaga from Tecnológico de Monterrey works with visually impaired students and will take the ideas from the workshop forward.
Students learnt how to work with project stakeholders including small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and chemistry teachers, while receiving feedback on their pitches.
Sahaana’s team presenting their project
The visit also included a poster showcase exhibition by Tecnológico de Monterrey students from design and engineering-related courses. Leeds students spoke to them about their work to understand the process they followed.
Sahaana added: “It was great to see the way Tecnológico de Monterrey students and academics worked to compare the differences to how I’ve been working.”
Sahaana is graduating this year and plans to start her own business and look into further study.
Leeds students also had a tour of the InnovAction gym design studio at Tecnológico de Monterrey where they took part in a problem-solving IDEO workshop, which looked at a case study on Mexican business travellers.
Rosa Alejandrina Martínez Gaspar, a Professor from Tecnológico de Monterrey said: “It was a great experience. To being able to meet excellent students, Professor Lisa-Dionne Morris, and work with them towards frugal innovation and design projects is beyond words.”
At the end of the visit, students received a global classroom certificate following their experiences of cross border teaching.
Further collaboration in Leeds
AKTO Conference
Following the visit to Mexico, a conference week was held in Leeds organised by Professor Morris. The AKTO conference included presentations about frugal innovation from the University of Leeds, Tecnológico de Monterrey, University of Cape Town and University of the West Indies. The week showcased how resource constraints can lead to creative sustainable solutions.
This provided a cross-collaboration opportunity to work on frugal innovation and a medical devices project where suggestions are being taken forward in the form of a toolkit book.
Sahaana added: “The event has really helped with networking, and I am still in touch with academics in Cape Town and one of the MSc students.”
Professor Morris said: “The students have shown that frugal innovation and design is not just about cutting costs; it's about creating more value with fewer resources, making ingenuity and resourcefulness the heart of innovation.
“AKTO led by the University of Leeds exemplifies this by transforming constraints into opportunities, demonstrating that limitations can be the catalyst for groundbreaking advancements.”
Further information
For more information, please contact Rebecca Hurrey at r.hurrey@leeds.ac.uk in the University of Leeds Press Office.