Category: Students’ stories

  • Becoming a Design Thinker

    Nearly two decades ago I completed my Master’s Degree in Business. My work history is in consumer marketing and brand management. In the marketing, thinking “outside the box” has been a common way of working. Now, as a new Service Design student at Laurea, I am learning to become a “Design Thinker”. Design Thinking is…

  • MyData 2017 – Health Profile Hackathon

    MyData 2017 – Health Profile Hackathon

    Juha-Pekka Ahvenainen, Markus Alavaikko, Markus Torkkeli The National Institute of Health and Welfare (THL) is a state agency that promotes the wellbeing and health of the population, prevents diseases and social problems, and develops social and health services. It also is the statutory statistical authority in health and welfare in Finland maintaining a knowledge base…

  • At the Footprints of Nobel Winners – Cambridge Venture Camp 2017

    Hello, We are three Master´s Degree students from Laurea Tikkurila where we are studying in a program called “Future Studies and Customer Oriented Services”. Last autumn we participated in a course ”Digitaalisen palvelun käyttäjäkeskeinen suunnittelu” and there we started to develop a business idea for a digital application called ”Big Steps for Little People”, and with that…

  • Can Design Thinking Provide the Breakthroughs We Need to Reduce Global Poverty and Domestic Violence?

    Can Design Thinking Provide the Breakthroughs We Need to Reduce Global Poverty and Domestic Violence?

    Design thinking can help us eliminate extreme poverty, save millions more lives, inform and educate better, promote human rights more widely, and protect much more of the natural world… if funding agencies are willing to accept the same levels of ambiguity and uncertainty that designer must.

  • Educating the Design Thinkers of Tomorrow

    My Daughter My first-born started her school journey this autumn. It’s the same school that I attended 30 years ago, a respected and multicultural school, back then quite a traditional one – discipline based, classroom centric, the teacher standing in front of the class, the pupils listening. It still is a good school, but I…

  • Stages, more stages and the same stages all over again

    The Design Thinking course on September 2nd-3rd 2016 was very illuminating. Doing Design Thinking by following a specific model really shows how much work should be put in design work itself from exploring to implementing. Doing the same thing over and over again with different methods (moodboard, brainwriting etc.) truly opens up new ideas during the…

  • Learning Design thinking – did I do it right?

    That was my main concern during the Design Thinking course. Katja Tschimmel and Mariana Valença familiarized us with practical Design Thinking. Katja gave us introduction to design thinking, its background, literature and visual models for design thinking process. We familiarized ourselves better with The Mindshake Design thinking model: Evolution 62. The two days of studying…

  • Design Thinking big bang!

    “Here was a curious thing. My friend’s instinct told him the North End was a good place, and his social statistics confirmed it. But everything he had learned as a physical planner about what is good for people and good for cities neighbourhoods, everything that made him an expert, told him the North End had…

  • Creative professionals can also be design thinkers

    I must confess that design thinking is a thing  I haven´t really thought about before I applied to Laurea University of Applied sciences to study the degree Master of Hospitality Management. One of the entrance examination tasks was a text about design thinking in hospitality  management. That was really the first time I read about…

  • To creativity and beyond

    If I had only one word to describe the two days I spent with Katja Tschimmel and Mariana Valenca on September 2nd and 3rd 2016 at Laurea Leppävaara, it would be creativity. There are, of course, other possible options as well, like innovative and colorful to name a few, but if I was to choose…