Category: SID methods

  • Design Thinking For Business Innovation

    Design Thinking For Business Innovation

    Innovation has always be seen as a myth, where genius is the main ingredient for it. Unfortunately this is not the reality! Innovation can be a systematic process. The key to successful innovations is to understand where the process starts. The process starts by first understanding the current needs, the current obstacles the target audience want to overcome and then formulating insights that can guide…

  • Behind the scenes – Tools in innovation designers’ sandbox Part 5/5

    Multidisciplinary teamwork, simple but effective tools, virtual work, visualization, prototyping, design thinking… There are tons of different tools designers can use in their work. This is my final blog post about the designer tools our innovation team uses in our everyday work here at the UNICEF Headquarters in New York. This time I’ll introduce two projects relating to…

  • Behind the scenes – Tools in innovation designers’ sandbox Part 4/5

    The New York University (NYU) students I referred to in my last blog post about virtual work were asked to prepare a 1-minute video to communicate their ideas for the next class. There are so many ways to visualize projects and their components that I can only just begin to grasp the subject in this post. I…

  • Learning in Action – How We Won the Second Place in a Service Design Competition

    ”Could you send a female inspector?” This is how Jaakko started our pitch at Sitras’s Service Design competition on March 3, 2014. The competition was part of Sitra’s new security forum, and it intended to test how service design could help to improve public services and make them more user-centric. The actual design goal set…

  • Attitude matters in lean thinking: learn to fail fast for success!

    “Focus on the problem, not solution. You cannot quantify your way to the big max.” – Ola Sundell I still remember when ‘lean’ was a buzzword in manufacturing industry years and years ago. Lean concept was originally based on production process optimisation principles invented in Toyota for automotive industry back in early seventies. Now the…

  • Behind the scenes – Tools in innovation designers’ sandbox Part 3/5

    My last blog post discussed simple tools our team uses in our everyday work at the UNICEF Innovation Unit in New York. This time my topic – virtual work – is especially current for our team. At the moment, we are having “virtual January” which means we can choose where we want to work, be it…

  • Behind the scenes – Tools in innovation designers’ sandbox Part 2/5

    This post is a sequel for my last one that dealt with teamwork – one of the most important tools in design. I briefly introduced our team’s working habits here at the UNICEF Innovation Unit in New York. Now, I will discuss simple design tools that have a much bigger impact than we might first think. Simple…

  • Behind the scenes – Tools in innovation designers’ sandbox Part 1/5

    In my last blog post I talked about key principles behind successful innovations. This time I want to share some of the tools our innovation team uses in our daily work here at UNICEF Headquarters in New York to help envision and test successful innovations. Because the list is long, I will keep posting during…

  • Thinking like a Designer

    In September 2013 started my SID journey at Laurea Leppävaara unit with Design thinking –course and I must say – what a start for our Master program!  Laurea had invited Design professor and entrepreneur Katja Tschimmel and Founder and author of FORTH Innovation method Gijs van Wulfen to teach us what Design thinking is. During…

  • Innovating mind should be like a parachute

    New innovations are launched by companies worldwide almost daily. I have been wondering how many new innovations in design has for e.g. toothbrush evolved. What customers need is what customers get. However you can’t just ask them for what kind of toothbrush they would like to have, because they don’t know. Of course companies need…