Category: Design Thinking

  • First step: backwards

    It was the morning of our second school day at Laurea, and the coffee line was long. We sat in the cafe with a classmate and watched the line getting longer and longer. In a few minutes, we had come up with a solution to improve the situation. Or so we thought. When our first…

  • Measuring Services – A Book Review

    – DO YOUR MATH! “Service Design: From Insight to Implementation” by Andy Polaine, Lavrans Loevlie and Ben Reason (2013 Rosenfeld Media) is a positively different service design book, whereas this – rather loose – book review is written as an extra assignment of the course New Service Development by Tiia-Marina Tuominen de Sousa e Silva…

  • Service Design meets Futures Thinking #4

    A research based series of posts discussing the statement “Futures Research supports the Service Design process in multiple ways and throughout the whole process” by Minna Koskelo (LinkedIn) and Anu K. Nousiainen (Linkedin). Part #4: We are in the Service Innovation business! Our three (and a half) previous blog entries have been summarizing the purpose of our study initiated…

  • Facilitating an awesome ideation workshop

    “Service design cannot be learnt by reading, but through practice” described Marc Stickdorn, co-author of the black book “This is Service Design: Basics, Tools Cases” (2011). Marc Stickdorn held three days intensive service design workshop for Laurea SID Master of Business Administration students. Workshop focused on how to facilitate service design ideation workshops. This blog post…

  • Service Design meets Futures thinking # 3

    A research based series of posts discussing the statement “Futures Research supports the Service Design process in multiple ways and throughout the whole process” by Minna Koskelo and Anu K. Nousiainen. Part #3: The Process Perspective Our two previous blog entries have been summarizing the purpose of our study and the main findings including the…

  • Design Thinking: The Journey of Group 5

    Design is a central feature of our everyday life. But what is it? How do you define a good design solution?  Is it about aesthetics, quality or functionality? How do you develop the creative process and when can you consider yourself a designer? The discussions, lectures and exercises during the Design Thinking course were aimed…

  • Design thinking – easy and difficult?

    “I never design a building before I’ve seen the site and met the people who will be using it.” –Frank Lloyd Wright Design thinking is a human centred design method, transforming needs into solutions. Design thinking could be called as a mind-set, a way of using creativity to tackle design problems. How to solve a…

  • Design Thinking – Group Exercises to Train Your Design Muscles

    We formed one of the teams in the Design thinking course fall 2012, led by Mariana Salgado and Sanna Marttila.  During the course we were introduced to the main ideas and philosophy of design thinking, ways of seeing and understanding design as well as with various methods, project and cases from the multifaceted field of…

  • Hey, we are designing!

    The simplest things we do and all everyday items we use are made as they are by design.  We all contribute – sometimes unconsciously – to the outcome which is designed. Hands up, if you have thought about decorating your home or if you have done it to some point? Yes, at least some of…

  • Are you a Designer?

    How many of you consider yourself as a designer? This was one of the first questions we were asked in our service design workshop at Lahti University of Applied Sciences on October 9th 2012. Probably you can guess the answer, roughly half of the participants raised their hands. Then it was time to wake people a…