Product Design Sprint • 2026
Giving AI hardware a second life
- Timeframe
- 24 hours
- Role
- Product Designer
- Team
- 3 Product Designers
- Skills
- Product Design, Competitive Analysis, Prototyping, User Research
Designing a hardware marketplace for businesses and hardware enthusiasts in 24 hours
Rapid upgrades in AI data centers lead to millions of tons of discarded hardware each year
The current state of things...
Rising adoption
AI usage is continuously increasing across both personal and business use.
Environmental strain
AI usage contributes to significant environmental strain.
Easy access for everyone
Free access lowers the barrier to entry, accelerating the widespread use of AI.
Reboot: A marketplace for repurposed hardware that helps companies and hardware enthusiasts discover parts and build projects.
Browse through our hardware product catelogue
Keep track of your impact
Build projects and keep track of missing materials
Short hardware lifecycles are driving e-waste growth
62 million tons
of e-waste generated in 2022
Only 22%
of e-waste is being recycled today
2–5 years
between servers and GPUs replacements
E-waste recycling companies exist but aren’t flexible to a wide audience
LOOKING AT EXISTING COMPANIES
How might we repurpose retired data center hardware to make computing more accessible while reducing e-waste?
Making hardware accessible to a broader audience
Brainstorming core features
Browse hardware
Browse a catelogue of hardware.
Statistics
Gather insights on your impact.
Project builder
Keep track of inventory and projects.
Purchase hardware
Purchase hardware in bulk or individual parts.
Home page
Project Builder
Statistics
PURCHASE HARDWARE
Building upon feedback despite limited time
Points of improvement
Make searching hardware more clear
The search button in the navbar was confusing since people thought it was for searching pages.
Allow bulk order for businesses
Since our target audience are both businesses and hardware enthusiasts, allowing bulk order would make it easier for companies to purchase large orders.
Final Design
Making the most of a 24-hr competition to create a meaningful product
Design emerges from research, not assumptions
Since we only had a day to build a product from research to design, we prioritized the idea by grounding it in research.
Think out loud
Especially under a tight time crunch, spitballing ideas and thoughts with my team, mentors and other designers at the event helped us navigate our product direction faster.
Fun moments from the competition
Image 1: Photo with my team while we were working. Image 2: Photo with my teammate when we won third place at the competition.
