Category: Students’ stories

  • Cross-cultural issues in Service Development

         Are you interested in different cultures, curios and want to get a deeper understanding of how you can tackle cross-cultural issues within service development? Laurea offers an elective course within this topic, which can be integrated in your MBA in Service Innovation and Design, and I highly recommend it! The course consists of a…

  • 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…

  • Wrapping up the “New Service Development and innovative service systems” course

    During this fall, we have been introduced to various business related topics. In the “New Service Development and innovative services systems” course, we have learned the basics of blueprinting and how to create a business model canvas. Course objectives include; students can create a plan for developing a service concept and also evaluate and improve…

  • Oslo Sustainability Jam 2013

    Ever heard about jamming?  I hadn’t until I joined the Service Design Jam in March 2013 and ended up in the winning team with the idea ”Memorylanes” which we continued to work with for half a year later. This fall they expected 65 Sustainablity jams, on five continents, making this the biggest Global Sustainability Jam ever!…

  • 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…

  • “Out of the Box and Then Back in Again” – The ABC of Design Thinking

    How many ways of using a pen could you come up with in two minutes? I managed to write down 10. Actually that’s not very creative. Some people can easily think of even 20 or more ways. They are more trained in Design Thinking. We, the SID group of 2013, started our Service Innovation and…

  • The journey of Design thinking begins

    There are thousands of things that can go wrong on the path from an idea to a problem solving solution. To help with the process there are plenty of methodologies and tools to formulate, conceptualize and execute ideas into a feasible business plan. At the end, the goal is to bring the ideas to life…

  • JamJaming in Barcelona

    Global Service Jams are these incredible and really fun events related to service design that are celebrated all over the globe. Twice a year, a bunch of experienced jammers and hosts meet to make them wilder, more fun and even more productive. Its the JamJam. Last time, it happened in Barcelona, on September 27th-29th. And,…

  • Failures are possibilities

    Me and 27 other students were privileged to start the Service Innovation and Design Master’s program last September in Laurea University of Applied Sciences. Our first course was about Design Thinking held by Katja Tschimmel a Design professor and an entrepreneur, and Gijs van Wulfen the writer of the excellent book “The Innovation Expedition”. How many things…