Category: Students’ stories

  • UX and Service Design: are they essentially the same thing?

    Since service design started gaining ground in business conversations, it is not rare to come across questions or comments like: “what do you mean by service?”, and “Ah, it’s basically UX design” or “Ok, but can you make wireframes?”. In facts, considering the increasing intangibility of products in the digital age, the distinction between products…

  • Innovating and Designing New Organizations

    Innovating and Designing New Organizations

    By Salla Kuuluvainen I participated in the Social Tools Conference organized by Pixelache Helsinki, an artist collective. I have been taking part in Pixelache events for a quite a while since I feel that they are a great source for finding out about ”weak signals” conserning the future and trends. Decentralization as Trend This time…

  • Design Process Three Ways

    Design Process Three Ways

    By Salla Kuuluvainen I participated in Dash Design – an event that was preparation for Europe’s largest hackathon DASH. In Dash Design we heard from three companies and their take on design process: Smartly.io, Pentagon Design and Iittala. What became quite clear at the event was that the design process can look very different and…

  • A beginner’s guide to Design Thinking

    by Jenny Kurjenniemi Simply put, Design Thinking is a process for creative problem-solving. This means solving any kind of problem, from how to secure clean water supply in developing countries, to how to create the kind of service that people will be interested in and gain financial value for the innovation. It’s good to understand…

  • Utopia or Dystopia? How is the Future Looking like in Service Design?

    Utopia or Dystopia? How is the Future Looking like in Service Design?

    By Salla Kuuluvainen I recently attended two events which made me think about futures thinking and it’s relation to service design and innovation. Innovation, by definition, is an act that reaches towards the future, and and engages the innovator in creating a future that may be something they wish for.. or not. How can we…

  • What makes design thinking so appealing?

    by Piia Hanhirova Inspiration, encouragement and empowerment. In my opinion, those are the most important values and aspects, which design thinking offers, and the reason why it appeals to so many people regardless the field they work in or are busy with. Design thinking underlines the deep understanding of people – their needs, wishes and…

  • Show, don’t tell! – How prototyping influences the design process

    Post-its, Legos, markers and posters in the hands of over 20 overly-excited students can be the makings of a chaos. But with an experienced teacher or a facilitator it can actually turn into many nice service ideas or concepts. As part of the study unit of ‘Design Thinking’ we got to learn that a lot…

  • Using Design Thinking to Build a VR Study Experience

    What do you get when you put together a group of Laurea MBA in Service Innovation and Design students and Mindshake’s Katja Tschimmel and task the group to innovate a service for international students as part of the Design Thinking course? A crazy lot of innovation, creativity, collaboration, and learnings. In this blog post, I…

  • Can you learn to be creative?

    by Kati Kaarlehto This question was asked from our lecturer Katja Tschimmel at the very beginning of our contact days of the Design Thinking study module. This question in my mind I chose to read  Creative Confidence – Unleashing the Creative potential With Us All by David and Tom Kelley as my very first book…

  • What is Customer Journey and why others besides sales and marketing people should be interested about it?

    What is Customer Journey and why others besides sales and marketing people should be interested about it?   Customer Persona Before starting to formulate customer journey, it is important to define customer personas, to whom these journeys will be created. A while ago, I wrote about what Customer Personas are and why those are useful.…