Today, we woke up early to take our private bus for the day at 7.30 am. After a two hours ride, we arrived to the HQ of the first company we will visit, Huawei. Their HQ are situated on the other side of the Pearl River Delta. You should know that Huawei is a Chinese multinational networking and telecommunications equipment founded in 1987 by Reng Zhenfei who is still the CEO. This company has mor […]

When, in 2008, Brian Chesky could not pay his rent, he came up with a solution: why not rent the spare rooms to travelers for cheaper than hotel? He then bought some air mattresses and setup a website. AirBnb was born. He did not know it at the time, but he was taking part in the rise of the sharing economy. Nowadays, it is defined as a way for people to earn money by allowing others to make use o […]

On July 25th, our exploration of Shenzhen started with the Huangqiangbei electronics market. We set off at 09:30 in the morning to get there. We were amazed by the size of the markets (there are six or seven buildings, and it took us two hours just explored two) and the variety of the items they are offering. For team Ticino, they found Arduino mini pro board offered in Huaqiangbei for 13 RMB […]

Hong Kong (HK) and Shenzhen (SZ) have both experienced an enormous growth throughout the last decades. In this process, public transports is one very important piece of the puzzle, since it ensures an efficient flow of people. In HK today 5 mio people use the Mass Transport Railway (MTR) every day, while in SZ it is 4 mio people. These numbers are actually very similar to som […]

The « Chinese » part of the China Hardware Innovation Camp is soon reaching to an end, leaving us with wonderful memories. It is probably for most of us one of the richest experiences we have had the chance to live as students. As you could read on this blog the last two weeks, we had very packed and challenging schedule, but it was exciting and we managed to have a lot of fun all the same. It […]

The fourth day of the trip to China of the CHIC project was all about exploring the beauties of Hong-Kong. The group splitted in small teams and were given challenges under the form of a scavenger hunt. Multiples areas and cultural highlights were seen on the way, with goals to mix the teams with the culture. The teams were separated and therefore did not all have the same impressions when going t […]

Already one week in Shenzhen! Time goes by so quickly, and there is so much to do on all projects! Yesterday was the last where we were assigned to work on the prototype.

However, we had one little extra activity on the planning: Elle, from Seeed, managed to organize a visit at a PCB factory! The factory was outside of the city, or at least it would have been, if we were in Switzerland. Here, t […]

For the design experience in Hong Kong we were assigned to go visit the famous HKDI in Tiu Keng Leng. It was a great opportunity as we had the chance to meet a local student called Tree Yung.

After a small bus incident we managed to arrive on time at the Hong Kong Design Institute. This was when we met the charming Tree Yung who studies Media Communi […]

Yesterday we went to the Hong Kong Science and Technology Park. After we presented our product ideas, we were informed about what HKSTP really is, what they do and what advantages they can offer to aspiring entrepreneurs and young start-ups. Following this short presentation, we were introduced to Cheong-Yui Wong, the founder & CEO of <a href=" […]

Dimitri, Luca, Nicolas, Pierre and I had the opportunity to have a tour of the HKDI (Hong Kong Design Institute) !

The building alone is worth a visit: we were welcomed by a huge escalator that allowed us to enter the school, designed by french architects Coldefy & Associates. We were explained that the four “towers” are each dedicated to one department, and a top floor (representing a pie […]

Yesterday, we met the Shenzhen Autism Association (SAS). The challenge we had (we learned it by phone) was communicating with the people of this association as nobody spoke English. So, a big shout out to Nicolas from the Livelo team who accepted to go with our Luca to be our official Todoo translator🙂. Nicolas did a really good job and we certainly couldn’t do it without him.

When we arri […]

Hi everyone! On Tuesday we finally all arrived in Hong Kong 🙂

Even though the flight was long and the weather not really welcoming we still were all glad to start our China journey.

On Wednesday morning we all met up to listen to the other teams pitches. After a short feedback we got a quick overview of the whole trip, among the 1000 word blog about a specific border ecology research topic […]

Time to make some updates about our last two days in Shenzhen. On Tuesday, we started to visit the major electronic marketplaces of Shenzhen – Huaqiangbei. Imagine buildings all around you with minimum of five floors of dozens of stands for each of them. From 2 To usb keys to every component you need to create your own hardware, you will find everything (electronic) you want and there you can ne […]

Hello dear reader,

After two more general posts we’re back at what we do best : work (héhé).
As you know we are now in Shenzhen in order to develop our first prototype. As you probably don’t know, our designer Dylan couldn’t make it to Hong-Kong or China and as if this was not a sad news enough, the mock-up he created with love and patience couldn’t make the trip either.

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Hi everyone!

We are glad to update you about the work we are getting done these days. Aside two pitches (on Tuesday at HAX and on Wednesday at Massive Hardware) since the last post, all the team members are checking boxes on their to do list.

Today I went at a mall in town to meet with locals and canvass their feeling about Ilanga. There were plenty of parents but I struggled to communicate […]

Small stuffs to share. Like the chinese food, Dim Sum Lab is a place that brings together people around a table to share something they like.
Dim Sum Lab is a small space in the neighborhood of Sheung Wan. The size of the room was not a surprise for us. Space in Hong Kong is very rare. What was the most surprising for us, especially in hongkong, was to discover a p […]

On Friday we got the opportunity to visit the Jockey Club Innovation Tower and more precisely, the exhibition that the the School of Design was holding in the building. Just like ECAL in Switzerland, this school forms the designers of tomorrow, and lucky for us, the students were exposing their work.

<a href="https://community.chi.camp/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/07/Capture-d’é […]

On Saturday we had the chance to participate to a scavenger hunt in Hong-Kong in order to discover further the city and its culture. Our team was composed by members from different projects – Valérie (Troback), Dimitri ( Ilanga) and Luca (Todoo).

We started by going to Mong Kok which is a square of Hong-kong situated in North-West of the city. Our first impression was about the architecture of […]

After quite an immersion in the startup and incubators business’ world, the design activity was an opportunity to discover another aspect of Hong Kong. Rihab, Thomas, Nicolas and I went to the Jockey Club Innovation Tower with Bérénice and it was super-cool ! The tower is a modern building designed by the architect Zaha Hadid and located on the Hong Kong Polytechnic University in […]

Today we moved for the first time to x.factory which is a hub that provides a prototyping workshop with production-level equipment and co-working space. We like the place and it’s a good news as it will be our offices during all the week.

You can see below some different workshop (e.g. Metal, Wood, or 3D Printing). Pretty cool no ?

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