Interviewee feedback and reflections pointed to four factors that underpinned the success of the Virtual Ideation Challenge:

• 'virtual immersion' in the challenge context: student participants were offered a unique access to the national Covid-19 environment, from both public health and clinical perspective, with exposure to the ‘front line’ of Singapore’s response in both the hospital wards and foreign workers dormitories. This immersion in the clinical context, together with targeted support offered by the clinical mentors, was pivotal to the students’ progression in this time-limited activity and supported the development of insightful and innovative solutions. Interview feedback made clear that this access and mentorship also underpinned high levels of student engagement and focus, despite many working with previously unknown team-mates in an online environment.

• on-demand, flexible support offered to participants: participants spent the majority of the two-day challenge working in Zoom break-out rooms with their team. Given that more than half of participants had yet to start their formal studies at SUTD, a lack of clarity on both the design process and the challenge deliverables presented a real risk for teams in this time-limited activity. However, interview feedback suggested that the on-demand facilitation offered by the graduate mentors allowed teams to call for support as and when needed. Facilitators offered both practical support, but helped students to consider the types of mindset and approach that might help them to tackle the challenge.

• close working relationship between SUTD and the regional hospital (CGH): the Virtual Ideation builds on an established and close working relationship between SUTD and CGH, which has already seen the development of a new undergraduate healthcare and engineering track. The trust built through this relationship, as well as a pre-existing understanding of constraints and opportunities offered by each partner, appears to have been pivotal to the rapid development of this activity and its ability to secure so many clinical mentors.

• significant levels of pre-planning: the Virtual Ideation Challenge was devised and designed in a very short time period: in the three period prior to it launch. Despite this rapid turn-around, significantly levels of time had been dedicated to planning and preparation for the activity. For example, in addition to training of the graduate mentors, rehearsals were held with clinician mentors and activity judges to identify and resolve any technical issues and ensure that all contributors understood the challenge context, the scoring rubrics, and the structure of the two days. The organisers also prepared back-up versions of all presentations, in case of network problems and even located organising committee members in different parts in Singapore to mediate the risk of internet connectivity issues in a localised area.

Interviewee feedback pointed to two key challenges faced in the delivery of the activity; plans are in place to tackle each of these issues in any future iterations of the activity:

• lack of breaks in the two-day schedule: although the activity scheduled two half hour breaks for lunch each day, in reality, team-working and mentoring sessions expanded out to fill the two days. Unsure of when mentors or event organisers might check-in on teams, students were often left unsure when they were able to takes breaks from their screen. As a result, most teams continued to be logged on throughout both days, without taking formal breaks, leaving many very tired at the close of the activity. For future iterations of the activity, organisers plan to embed mechanisms by which teams are able to take structured breaks from working without penalty to their access to mentoring support.

• omission of hands-on, prototyping opportunities: hands-on learning and prototyping are core features of the SUTD education, features which are highly valued by current and prospective students alike. It is therefore perhaps not surprising that participants pointed to the lack of a prototyping element as a major constraint of the Virtual Ideation Challenge. While embedding a hands-on element was understood not to feasible for the 2020 activity, particularly given the three-week development window available before launch, plans are in place to support prototype development for future iterations of the activity.

Interviewee feedback suggested that the online nature of the Virtual Ideation offered a number of important advantages to the activity organisation and student learning, beyond what might have been possible it the activity was held face-to-face.

The key benefit was the ability to secure a group of 21 clinicians – each of whom was engaged in the testing, prevention and treatment of Covid-19 in Singapore – to play an active role in this synchronous activity, through offering information, support and mentorship to the student participants. As many interviewees notes, it would not have been possible to secure the time of this group if they had been required to travel to the SUTD campus to make these contributions. With clinicians connecting remotely from home, work or while travelling, the online nature of the activity facilitated such real-time connection.

Interviewees also pointed to a number of other benefits of the activity's online delivery. For example, the ways in which teams were able to connect with design mentors – through the messaging app Telegram – allowed them to benefit from targeted support as and when it was needed, with mentors able to join the team almost immediately after they requested help. Some also noted that the online nature of the activity supported ongoing sharing of learning between teams, with students benefitting from accessing the questions posed by peer teams through the messaging app and learning from the responses given by mentors and organisers.