Category: Students’ stories

  • 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…

  • Design Thinking – from brain errors to innovations

    Have you ever been in a situation when you know your business isn’t going as smoothly as it should? You know that something should be done but you don’t know where to start or can’t identify the business problems or the customers’ needs? How do you feel about failure as a part of innovating? Have…

  • Post-its vs. Design thinking

    Do the Post-its kill the good intensions of Design Thinking? When our pro Design Thinking (DT) teachers from Portugal start to show us the method – Evolution 6² – already in the second face I’m sitting with the Post-its in my hand. My brain stop working, no ideas are coming to my mind… Are all…

  • Design Thinking – Divergence and Convergence supported with Visualisation

    My first touch to study Customer Centered Service Design was 2 days Design Thinking class. I have a background in Human Computer Interaction design and Usability testing so I had rough idea what the design thinking could be even though I completely lack the Service background. For me user centered design process has always roughly…

  • Design Thinking – just another buzzword?

    Nowadays service design is a hot topic everywhere. What is behind the word design, that gets easily associated with luxury and high price. How is it linked with building better services?  Little ironically to the association, the roots of design lay firmly on the ground of functionality, simplicity and purpose. In the book Design Thinking…

  • Digitalising Everything

    On August 18th I had the pleasure to participate in Aalto University’s annual Make it Digital! event. Having visited the event already last year I greatly enjoyed both the event’s and the university’s focus on the Internet of Things – its impact on transforming business models, enhancing customer centricity, and the application of service design were the…

  • Growing a community

    One of the things I’ve always loved about Service Design is that it’s not just a profession, it’s a community. Across the globe one can find a network of self-starters promoting Service Design and Design Thinking in all of its human-centered glory. These are the people planning Global Service Jams, conferences, Service Design Network chapters…