Prototype for the Planet
Connecting designers with climate conscious nonprofits to help combat climate change.
My Role
I was an organizer as well as the brand team
Duration
6 Months
Team
Climate Designers Boston (Raissa Talehata)
UXGA - Bentley (Lisette Gonzalez)
IxDF (Ciaran Crawley)
Volunteers (Abhinav Gupta, Naief Shakil)
​
Tools
Figma
Framer
Figjam
Google Docs
Slack
Overview
The Problem
Hackathons are great because one can network with like-minded people and they also have pieces that can go into one's portfolio as it counts as experience. However, in traditional hackathons, the focus is on coding, and usually it's reserved for students.
​
Climate change is a persistent problem in the world and there isn't an easy way in, as designers. Climate change is eventually going to force everybody to have a sustainability component and we found a lot of people are interested in working in the sustainability field.
The Solution
A Designathon (or Design Hackathon) is an innovation-driven event where teams of designers come together to create solutions for real-world challenges. Instead of the focus on coding, this event emphasizes user experience, design thinking, and creativity to address sustainability-related problems.
​
Climate Designers Boston, Interaction Design Foundation and UXGA at Bentley University have all organized to put this event together to help a non-profit that is in the sustainability space, Borderlands Restoration.
Research
Brainstorm
In January of 2025, we had a brainstorm session with members from Climate Designers Boston, IxDF and UXGA Bentley
At this point, we had been working on this for 3 months and this was the first time we could share what we were working on. We provided them with the proper background info:
Using the figjam post-its, we asked these questions and set 5 minutes on the clock for people to post stickies about various aspects about the event.
After this event, this gave us enough validation to move forward and it was exciting that people were excited for our event.
Design
Logo
For the logo, we wanted a lettercase that was rounded, structured and stem-like. While also showcasing an earthy, rough and organic style.
​
We wanted the logo to feel like a work-in-progress since our audience is mostly early designers while also being professional, since we want experienced designers and, of course, sponsors to get on board with our idea as well.
For some reason, I thought the title was Prototype for the World. A teammate quickly corrected me.
From the sketches, I worked on a few logo versions through Illustrator. and then shared these five versions on Slack. I wasn't sure if people would like the illustrated version or the typeface version, so I shared both.
Team members gravitated to this logo
After some tweaking, we decided on these logos to use. Both of these logos work interchangeably.
Final Design
The event went without a hitch as we managed to get so many people working together to come up with solutions for Borderlands Restoration Network.
So, in the end this is what the weekend looked like
Photo Courtesy to Naief Shakil
Photo Courtesy to Naief Shakil
Photo Courtesy to Naief Shakil
Photo Courtesy to Naief Shakil
Photo Courtesy to Naief Shakil
Reflections
This designathon is different than everything else I've done before. But it was the proudest moment I've had as a designer. The fact that we were able to get so many people involved in this event, that were passionate about climate action, whether they were participants, volunteers, workshop leaders, mentors, or judges. It was so inspiring to see.
​
We're in talks to see if we can do it again and I think next time, we'll have more time to make this event even better.