Service Innovation & Design

  • Wicked, wicked problems

    New study in the field of service design! Mari Suoheimo’s doctoral examination was held on 18th of September in the University of Lapland. The opponent was professor Mikko Koria from Loughborough University London and thesis supervisor was professor Kaarina Määttä. First Suoheimo introduced us to complex and simple problems and made some examples of them. A…

  • Human in Center

    Design thinking can be learned and utilized by everyone: whatever is your expertise or field in business, anyone can do things experimentally, with an agile and human-centric way.  The importance of humanity and empathy in today’s business is enormous: during the Covid19 Pandemic, companies have been required to learn to consider the customer experience in a whole new way. During the Design Thinking course, we learned that customers’ voice needs to listen carefully, but a Service Designer must also dare to make visionary and bold decisions based on knowledge, and in some part, with intuition. From 3I to E.62   Highlighting two takeaways from Design Thinking workshop, the first would be the whole design thinking model Evolution 62 (E.62). Professor Katja Tchimmel presented the various DT process models from simple 3I-model to broader models, which introduce also prototyping and amount of iterations. The E.62 model differs from others by systematically and practically offering…

  • Designing your own way with design thinking

    Designing your own way with design thinking

    Making career choices when you’re 18 years old can be cumbersome. The childhood dream jobs, being a doctor or a policeman, probably have changed multiple times leaving you uncertain about what the future will look like. So, what does it take to find your dream job? As we started out journey in the SID program…

  • Use storytelling to turbocharge your design thinking

    Humankind has transmitted information through stories since time immemorial. Indeed, hearing and telling stories seem to be a fundamental need for us. Friends are made through the exchange of stories: they bring us together and build trust and intimacy in a relationship. Design thinking comprises of 5 factors (Carlgren, Rauth, Elmquist, 2016):  1) user focus,…

  • Unblock your creative potential with Design Thinking

    Unblock your creative potential with Design Thinking

    Do you remember yourself back in kindergarten? You played and experimented and tried out weird things without fear or shame. And then you grew up and started to see yourself as “not the creative type”, if you happen to be like us. What happened? In this blog post we’ll show how creativity isn’t a rare…

  • Thinking with our hands and hearts

    Thinking with our hands and hearts

    With emerging complex health and societal problems, such as Covid-19 and climate change, the world needs creative mindset and collaboration more than ever. Two new Laurea SID students interviewed each other about the key elements of design thinking after taking the master class of design thinking at Laurea. M: Ahmed, what made you interested in…

  • Becoming a Design Thinker and Doer

    Design Thinking in action Our journey to the realm of Design Thinking started in extraordinary conditions, because our lecturer Katja Tschimmel wasn’t able to attend the course physically – nor some of the students – because of COVID-19. In spite of this, we got an inspiring and participative start for our studies. The best thing…

  • Failing fast can get your idea to fly

    Swimming noodles, bubble wrap, hula hoops, playmobil toys and lego blocks – yes, this definitely is the Design Thinking master class of the Service Innovation and Design Master Degree Programme. During the two-day workshops we ran through Mindshake’s model Evolution 6², guided by professor Katja Tschimmel from Mindshake. The model has six phases: emergence, empathy,…

  • A complex conversation over the (business) world

    A Helsinki Design Week’s Aalto University’s Designs for a Cooler Planet’s program Design Club talk on 10th of September about the topic “System Innovations for Business Sustainability” and how does the talk transfer into today’s global business environment with academic researcher Dr. İdil Gaziulusoy and business Dr. Heli Antila, the Vice President, Biobased Solutions at Fortum was highly interesting and complex. …

  • Fail like a designer

    Fail like a designer

    Our image of the world is built on assumptions and schemas. Without them, our everyday life would feel chaotic and quite burdensome. However, in an innovation process, our assumptions mainly work against us. They keep us from thinking outside the box. You could even say that assumption is the mother of all screw-ups.   Without intentionally…