About The Competition
The Stanford Center on Longevity Design Challenge is a global competition that encourages students to design products and services to improve well-being throughout the lifespan. The Challenge, now in its eleventh year, aims to make life transitions easier and more meaningful.
Longevity Design Challenge Objective:
- Creating practical, well-designed solutions that improve well-being across the lifespan
- Encourage a new generation of students to familiarize themselves with the issues related to long life.
- Designing for life transitions
As we live in a world in which it becomes increasingly common to live to be 100, the nature of the human experience is changing. The Stanford Center on Longevity’s New Map of Life project suggests that the traditional life course will become more complex and flexible, with people entering and exiting different roles repeatedly. We now have a unique opportunity to reinvent the entire course of human life and we can make different choices about how the new longevity bonus applies.
The New Map of Life identifies a variety of possibilities for making the best use of our extra years. People may take time off at different points in their working lives to focus on family or personal development. They may return to school more than once and change careers several times. They may retire, but re-enter the workforce in a completely new role.
The Stanford Center on Longevity Design Challenge 2024 invites student designers to help develop a new vision for how to manage these new life transitions. Designs that help make transitions more positive and meaningful can play an important role in optimizing lifespan. And it is essential to pay attention to the entire lifespan, because most of the problems and strengths seen in old age have their roots decades earlier.
Register to Participate
Register to participate here between September 11 and November 30, 2023. You can participate as an individual or as a team. Teams can have a maximum of 5 members. See the “Teams and Eligibility” section of the FAQ below for more information on team rules. If you register as a team, the person who registers first will be designated team leader. They can then add all other team members.
Submit your Design
Once you have prepared your materials, log in and fill out the registration form. The form will be open from September 11 to November 30, 2023 at 11:59 p.m. Pacific Times.
After the November 30 deadline, judges will evaluate all submitted creations according to the judging criteria (see Details section below for more information).
Finalists
Finalists will be announced on January 24, 2024. Finalists will receive US$1,000 and be matched with an experienced mentor.
Finalists will compete in the final competition for $10,000 in April 2023. The finals are scheduled to take place in person at Stanford University. Finalists benefit from (limited) reimbursement of travel expenses. Each team will have 7 minutes to present their idea to the jury. Judges will use the same criteria as the initial submissions and choose the top three winners on the same day as the pitches.
Key Dates
- Kick-off: Monday September 11, 2023
- Submission deadline for phase I: Thursday November 30, 2023
- Announcement of finalists (5-8 teams): Wednesday January 24, 2024
- Finals: April 2023 (exact date to be determined)
