The team space while we were working with Evolution 6² model.
Design Thinking
Design thinking is one of the biggest trends on service business industry and Katja Tschimmel (2012) defines it as a game changer to different industries. Tschimmel sees it as a new way of thinking which can lead to innovative new ideas. I didn’t have any huge expectations for this course, because I wasn’t that sure how I think and feel about design thinking. After the first day, I was sure that I certainly love this! We had amazing two days led by Katja Tschimmel and Sanna Marttila. During these two days, we learnt some history and theory of design thinking but the focus was to work with Evolution 6² model invented by MINDSHAKE company. Evolution 6² model can be for example used to different kind of project and workshop development. It consist six different phases to work with new ideas and improve them. Two days went over quite fast and left behind a mind full of creativeness and a bunch of new tools to work with design thinking.
I search more information about design thinking by reading the Harward Business Review article of Design thinking by Tim Brown (2008). The idea is to create something new rather than try to develop existing services or products. Also, it doesn’t have to be expensive and difficult. Focus is to find your inner creative designer and use the tools or toys companies already have. In this review, a design thinker´s persona was defined not to a weirdo hippie but to any one of us. Design thinker needs to have empathy and think people first. Optimism helps design thinkers to stay positive and see beyond the possible problem. Then add some experimentalism to have excitement towards new things and directions. Finally, collaboration completes a design thinker by mixing and matching different levels and backgrounds. On my opinion, you can be a design thinker if you want and at least teach yourself to be creative and out of the box thinker.
Evolution 6² model teaches us creativity
The beginning of this journey
At first, we were divided into six groups and then we were supposed to open our minds to creative design thinking. Teamwork, visualization, post-it´s and drawing among many other methods became familiar to us. And what was one of the best parts of the day? Katja let us play for example with MINDSHAKE design thinking cards. We all started to work with the subject: Studying at Laurea. And still the ends result was six very different ideas.
As mentioned earlier this Evolution 6² model has six different phases to work with. Emergence, Empathy, Experimentation, Elaboration, Exposition and Extension. We had change to use just few of them because the lack of time. But still this innovation and design thinking model made us to create something new.
We found out that we were interested in future studying methods and how to develop them by using design thinking models. The result was a completely new course titled The Empathy Crash Course for all master’s degree students. This course was meant to meet the humanity needs of future work life by teaching empathy with different kind of methods. We wanted to bring three different learning levels together. The theory part, learning by developing and self-evaluation through the whole course.
With these thoughts and new ideas it´s good to continue my journey deeper to the world of service design.
Enjoy your studies!
Katariina Kuokkanen
Sources:
Design Thinking Master class by Katja Tschimmel and Sanna Marttila, Brown, Tim 2008. Design Thinking. Harvard Business Review, June, 84-95.
http://www.ideo.com/images/uploads/thoughts/IDEO_HBR_Design_Thinking.pdf
Tschimmel, Katja 2012. Design Thinking as an effective Toolkit for Innovation. In:
Proceedings of the XXIII ISPIM Conference: Action for Innovation: Innovating from Experience. Barcelona.
http://www.academia.edu/1906407/Design_Thinking_as_an_effective_Toolkit_for_Innovation
Service Innovation & Design 
Thank you Katariina for your post. As I had the pleasure to innovate and design in the same team together with you, it was really interesting to read your post-thoughts on our team-work and the course as a whole! And thank you for sharing Tim Brown’s thoughts on designing. What he says certainly makes sense to me. I also fully agree on the thoughts how everyone should seek to find the the designer in him/her and how everyone of us can be a designer for instance in the companies we’re working for. Likewise, looking forward to the coming times and digging deeper into the world of design!
Jenny 🙂