They are not finished products yet, neither their prototypes nor their journeys. As part of Samsung Solve for Tomorrow, challenges have not ceased for the Top 40 innovators. These young changemakers are still building, modifying, expanding, testing, and sometimes discarding ideas altogether. What they are discovering, however, may be as relevant and important as the innovations themselves: that design thinking is not just a toolkit but a mindset that demands empathy, patience, and an openness to failure.

Over the past week, participants were on a frenetic pursuit for perfection in ideas guided by mentors, workshops, and their first exposure to the FITT labs.

In an AI-driven world where speed and automation dominate the public discourse, these students are being reminded that the true test of technology is whether it can connect to the human heart and the human behaviour.

Sitting With the Problem

In this context, it will be pertinent to speak about the story of the Pink Brigadiers. A team comprising of Vivek Sawant from Maharashtra and Shriya Aditya Dalai from Odisha, both NIT Rourkela engineering students. What are they doing this year? They are working on what they call Bharat’s first AI-driven breast care app. At first glance, it’s a technical marvel: convolutional neural networks with edge deployment that can detect anomalies and connect women with doctors. But the breakthrough, they admit, has not been in the code.

“Our product requires immense sensitivity. The design thinking training encouraged us to sit with the problem longer, understand users more deeply, and keep adapting to their needs. UX/UI and trust are as important as the AI itself,” they explain.

For them, design thinking is a reminder that how an app makes someone feel may be as critical as what it does. Building technology for a deeply private health concern means that tone, colour palettes, language, and interface all become questions of empathy. This insight resonates with recent Stanford research showing that building fair and trustworthy AI systems requires attention not only to algorithms but also to transparency, edge-case behaviour, and user comfort.

Humanising AI

Elsewhere, inside the FITT lab there is a duo trying to grasp the lesson on AI from their product – How can AI provide intelligence, and how can design thinking make it intelligible.

Take Mindsnap, a personalised education platform created by Devayanee Gupta and Sayan Adhikary from Kolkata, both engineering students. Powered by large language models (LLMs), the platform adapts to neurodiverse learners, whether they are dyslexic, on the spectrum, or simply learn better through games.

“We realised no algorithm works if the interface doesn’t speak to the learner,” they explain. “Design thinking made us focus on UX/UI, accessibility, and the lived experience of students.”

Aditya Verma from Chennai is making a similar discovery with Mama Saheli AI, a holistic pregnancy app inspired by his mother’s experience in remote areas where medical access was limited.

“My app had to feel like a friend, not just a tool. Design thinking pushed me to see it through the user’s emotions, behaviour, and even cultural context. That’s what makes it scalable and trustworthy,” he says.

His app synthesises information, filters out misinformation, and integrates with wearables to provide hyperpersonalized insights, but its soul lies in the idea of companionship. His approach aligns with the PADTHAI-MM framework, which shows that transparent, human-centred design, combining explainability with user context, produces far more trust than opaque “black box” AI.

Design as a Strategy for Scale

The Prithvirakshak team from Ludhiana: 12th graders Abhishek Dhanda, Prabhkirat Singh, and Rachita Chandok are fighting India’s colossal waste management problem with what they call the nation’s first modular automated vermicomposting centre.

The idea began as a classroom experiment, it has now become a three-year journey of prototyping, testing, and learning how to collapse a 90-day composting process into just 30 days.

“Traditionally, vermicomposting has been labour-intensive and hard to scale,” they explain. “Design thinking helped us imagine modular models that can work in a garden, a housing society, or even at city level.”

For them, scalability is not about size but about adaptability, the ability to shape the same core idea to serve farmers, urban families, or municipalities.

The Journey, Not the Destination

None of these teams know if they will eventually win the Solve for Tomorrow challenge. Their prototypes remain imperfect; their pitch decks are still being rewritten. Yet what binds them together is a recognition that design thinking has already amended their approach.

While global conversations around AI often spiral into questions of ethics, bias, and speed, these young problem-solvers are grounding their innovations in something older and steadier: human-centred design.

AI, they are discovering, may be the brain. But design thinking, in all its humility and discipline, is the heart. And as these students continue to fight for their place in the Top 20, that may turn out to be the most important lesson of all.

Solve for Tomorrow 2025: Nudging young minds to see problems as opportunities and innovation as a way of life

A quiet revolution is underway. With Samsung Solve for Tomorrow Season 4 in full swing, India’s youth is rising to the challenge with ideas that aim to transform lives, communities, and the country.

After a successful launch earlier this year, the programme has now entered a dynamic phase: Design Thinking Workshops for school students and Open House sessions for college innovators. These events are not just about learning, they are about sparking a mindset shift, nudging young minds to see problems as opportunities and innovation as a way of life.

With roadshows already underway in nine cities – New Delhi, Gurugram, Jaipur, Patiala, Ludhiana, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Ranchi and Sonepat, the excitement is palpable. Thousands of students from 20 schools and colleges have participated so far. And this is just the beginning. Samsung plans to take this initiative to every corner of India, including the North East.

“Solve for Tomorrow is important because it gives students the tools and mindset to identify real problems around them and create practical, innovative solutions, something traditional classrooms often miss,” said Dr. Ashish Dwivedi, a faculty member at O.P. Jindal Global University, which recently hosted a Design Thinking Open House.

At the university, curious students spent the day immersed in the design thinking process. The energy in the room was electric. Ideas were born, problems dissected, and visions shared. The students emerged inspired, transformed, and ready to take on the world.

“It helped turn a vague idea into a clearer, actionable solution,” said Aditya Naresh, a student at O.P. Jindal Global University.

Similarly, another student, Riddhima Sharma said that she learnt how to work in a team and listen to different perspectives while solving a problem.

In schools, the Design Thinking Workshops from Samsung left an equally indelible mark.

Young minds at work during a Design Thinking Workshop at a school

“The workshop conducted by Samsung and FITT-IIT Delhi has been really insightful,” said Surbhi, a teacher at ITL Public School, Delhi. “Many students from the first batch have already approached me for help with the application process.”

At Mother’s Mary School in Delhi, the girls of Classes 9 and 10 are dreaming big.

Aanya, for instance, wants to build an AI-powered app to help design sustainable homes, while Kritika is working on an eco-friendly Kindle to replace school textbooks. Interestingly, Kriti, a Class 12 student, is exploring safer menstrual products to prevent cervical cancer, all under Solve for Tomorrow’s key themes.

The passion to solve and lead, is just about as fierce among college students.

“There are many problems in the world but very few solvers,” said R. Deepika, a Business Analytics student at University of Hyderabad. “This workshop made me want to be one of them.”

“It’s helped me figure out how to build a startup and chalk out my ideas better,” said Sawan Kesari from the BA programme at University of Hyderabad. “I want to improve diagnostic services in rural India through telemedicine.”

With roadshows already underway in nine cities, the excitement is palpable as students queue up to apply for Solve for Tomorrow 2025

The clarity and purpose with which these students are identifying community problems is nothing short of inspiring. Whether it’s Aditya’s mission to make clean drinking water accessible in rural areas, Riddhima’s drive to tackle plastic waste, Prerna’s dream of assistive devices for visually impaired students, every idea echoes the larger purpose of Solve for Tomorrow, to empower the next generation of changemakers.

“Our students are eager to connect with mentors and experts through Solve for Tomorrow to bring their ideas to life.” said Poonam Verma, Principal of Shaheed Sukhdev College of Business Studies.

The application window for the initiative will be open till June 30, 2025.

After the initial application phase, the top 100 teams will be chosen, with 25 teams selected from each of the themes. At this stage, participants will undergo online training led by thematic experts, followed by a video pitch round where 40 teams will be shortlisted – 10 teams from each theme.

With thousands of students now engaged and more joining each week, Solve for Tomorrow is no longer just a competition, it’s a national innovation movement.