The world will always find new ways to challenge people. COVID-19 has tested the way everyone has lived their lives on both an individual and collective scale.

Thankfully, there are always people rising to meet such obstacles; HeroesToo, for instance, challenged the GrabCAD community to create an innovative and creative solution for social distancing. 

As everyone knows by now, social distancing and wearing face masks have been proven to reduce the spread of COVID-19; however, it also sacrifices a basic human need to physically interact with one another. 

And that’s the problem the HeroesToo challenge wanted to solve.

HeroesToo is a non-profit organization in Hong Kong that promotes sustainability and empowers students to bring positive change to society. This challenge asked participants to 

construct a barrier to stop the spread of the virus and still maintain pre-social distancing closeness.   

“We at HeroesToo applaud your efforts and thank all those who have participated in the challenge! You are all winners here, as you’ve all been working hard to solve a real-life challenge!”

HeroesToo Challenge Winners

First Place: The Compact Queue

“The compact queue reduces the length of the existing queue, maintains spacing and acts as a protective barrier between its users as it allows them to rest while waiting and communicate securely.”

“Fantastic idea and can be developed to a larger scale. Need to further work on the stability and stocking features, but I can see it for ephemere events and useful for impromptu crowd creation” — HeroesToo

Second Place: Lounge Sofa

Yuda Hernanda explains that “This sofa design was made with the aim of maintaining distance to prevent transmission of the Covid-19 virus. This sofa is suitable for in public spaces.” 

“Very creative idea mixing art , design , collaboration and modernism. Feasibility should not be an issue. What sustainable material can be used to make it outdoor, durable and scalable.” –HeroesToo

Third Place: Social Distancing Watch

“The Social Distancing Watch maintains social distancing in enclosed environments by measuring the distance between users via Bluetooth and other sensors and alerting the users if they’re too close. Furthermore, the Watch also sends data to a database so it can be used to improve social distancing guidelines.” explains Matthew Veloso

“Great idea and instant use of this functional tool. Could be maybe annoying when facing a crowd. Easy to carry and can be a nice, useful, and modern watch”

HeroesToo interviewed the international winner of this challenge, Chamya Bedoui! She, as an educator, plans to use her newly won 3D printer to set up a print-club at her local childcare center. 

Congrats to all the winners of the HeroesToo Design Challenge!