Tag Archive | Creativity

Design thinking: Innovation with creativity and confidence

Sep23

Getting back to studies after a decade was like, having butterfly effect and feeling equally anxious and excited! Moving ahead with hopes and believes, that this course in Service Design and Innovation will be a serious learning curve for current and future growth in my career path. We jumped into the course of Design Thinking with Katja Tschimmel at Laurea University on 8-9 September, along with many new faces around and hundreds of new thoughts churning in my head.

A course stimulating, creative, full of learning and findings using Design Thinking methodologies – Evolution E6 introduced to us by Katja Tschimmel. We explored this highly complex tool, which usually takes months when practiced professionally,  in just two days. It was an intensive experience of learning with creativity and building confidence among group. Started off with pre preparation to build group spirit and gain understanding of group members by sketching and writing on post-it about each other, soon we realised our group was  – ‘Vegabond Yogi’s’

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The first question arises in the group work was; So what is Design Thinking?

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Think like designer: Trust others and step out of your biases

Sep22

In design thinking human is always in the center. Having that in the focus of your goals you have a good start as a design thinker. The service innovations meet the needs of people as the result of a cross-discipline approach by co-creating minds. Technology and other resources are enablers to increase people living good life being parts of designed product or service.

Tim Brown points out that integrative thinking leads to going beyond existing models. Fast and rough prototyping leaves room for thought and increases ability to create novelties. Tangible prototype helps the designers and end-users to identify the improvement areas. Or if the model does not serve the purpose at all.

Our two-day design process simulation proved that a heterogenous group of people can create something new. What occurred to me that to be successful you must step out of your biases and try new ideas without self-criticism. Analyzing skills are essential, but during the ideation phase and while constructing the prototype you must find your inner child to be playful and spontaneous. Continue reading →

Let´s be creative!

Sep16
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The team space while we were working with Evolution 6² model.

Design Thinking

Design thinking is one of the biggest trends on service business industry and Katja Tschimmel (2012) defines it as a game changer to different industries. Tschimmel sees it as a new way of thinking which can lead to innovative new ideas.  I didn’t have any huge expectations for this course, because I wasn’t that sure how I think and feel about design thinking. After the first day, I was sure that I certainly love this! We had amazing two days led by Katja Tschimmel and Sanna Marttila. During these two days, we learnt some history and theory of design thinking but the focus was to work with Evolution 6² model invented by MINDSHAKE company.  Evolution 6² model can be for example used to different kind of project and workshop development. It consist six different phases to work with new ideas and improve them. Two days went over quite fast and left behind a mind full of creativeness and a bunch of new tools to work with design thinking.

The Card Game
The Card Game
Teaming up!
Teaming up!
Basics of Design Thinking
Basics of Design Thinking

 

I search more information about design thinking by reading the Harward Business Review article of Design thinking by Tim Brown (2008). The idea is to create something new rather than try to develop existing services or products.  Also, it doesn’t have to be expensive and difficult. Focus is to find your inner creative designer and use the tools or toys companies already have. In this review, a design thinker´s persona was defined not to a weirdo hippie but to any one of us. Design thinker needs to have empathy and think people first. Optimism helps design thinkers to stay positive and see beyond the possible problem. Then add some experimentalism to have excitement towards new things and directions. Finally, collaboration completes a design thinker by mixing and matching different levels and backgrounds. On my opinion, you can be a design thinker if you want and at least teach yourself to be creative and out of the box thinker.

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Killing the Inner Critic – How Logic Can Destroy the Design Thinking Process

Sep15

IMG-0504Let’s start with a thought experiment. You have been working in the same job for years and now you are tasked with creating a new service for your customers. Where do you start?

Probably where you already are. Your first ideas are what have always been done and how to improve them, but only slightly.

To innovate, you need an open mind. To facilitate the innovation process you can use Design Thinking. Katja Tschimmel writes in her article Design Thinking as an effective Toolkit for Innovation[1] that Design Thinking offers new models of processes and toolkits for every creative process. It can be used in any business or organization. When you open your mind, and let the crazy ideas out, you can find something new.

The Service Design students at Laurea got a crash course on Design Thinking with Dr Tschimmel in the beginning of September. The students were tasked to create a new service around the theme Studying at Laurea. Every group could do whatever they thought might be useful, but in the end most new service ideas focused on solving everyday problems with quite traditional approaches. Why was it so difficult for us to let our imaginations fly and go for something completely different?

My suspicion is that it is the Inner Critic who is to blame. Often innovation processes suffer from the innovators’ fear of failure. In companies, upper management controls the time and resources available for trial and error. In universities, the students’ grade depends on the teachers’ understanding of their brave new idea.

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Future of Service Design – does it exist?

Jun15

Ever thought about this? Is service design just one ism, which comes like a wave: First small, getting strong and then fading away. When reaching the end of its existing curve, the ism is so worn out that no-one even wants to hear the words “service design”.

PaneeliAalto University Executive Education arranged on the 1st of June 2017, on International Service Design Day, networking event around this very interesting theme. Speakers and panelists who game from different backgrounds looked at the topic in a versatile and detailed way. They represented front line service design expertise: Peter Barkman, Managing Director from Palmu Helsinki, Laura Franck, Client Service Director from Hellon, Ulla Jones, Business Designer from OP Financial Group and Pekka Toivonen, CEO of Muotohiomo. Next I will raise some points from the discussion to give some thoughts to this important heading.

Transformation is the point

Service design have to grow from project oriented way of doing to be way of thinking that leads to cultural change and transformation in organization. “Human” and “experience” should be taken as a part of business plan in the organization. The experts see that service design as a concepts and the term might disappear. The content itself becomes an everyday part of organizational approaches and practices. Whatever the term that is used, important is to make measurable changes with goal of creating better experiences and focus on customer. Continue reading →

#Generate, #dream, #take risks, #inspire

Oct12

Design Thinking offers a variety of new ways to accelerate the creative process. During the first contact session at the SID program we were immersed in the world of Design Thinking with an intense two-day workshop held by guest lecturers Katja Tschimmel and Mariana Valença.

BRAINSTORMING is a widely spread idea generation tool that can be extremely effective when conducted appropriately. As explained in Katja’s article Design Thinking as an effective Toolkit for Innovation, brainstorming is a participatory idea generation session, which is done without discussing the ideas or thinking them through to the end. The main goal is to generate a myriad of ideas in a short period of time, being emotions and intuition more important that rational thinking.

The process

Team members start generating new ideas in complete SILENCE. Each of the members write down their ideas on post-it notes and sticks them on the wall (see Fig. 1). After a while, participants start elaborating on the other ideas. The goal is that an idea of one participant can be a source of inspiration for another. Brainstorming is a good technique to generate ideas that the whole group feels ownership of.

Brainstorming session SID

Fig. 1 Brainstorming session during the DT workshop

While reading the book The Innovation Expedition I was introduced to the spiritual father of the brainstorming technique, the American Alex Osborn. From him I learned two essential rules when brainstorming – ‘Defer your judgment’ and ‘go for quantity’. The underlying assumption of brainstorming is that people are scared of saying something wrong.

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My Minds Boggling with Design Thinking!

Sep20

Last spring I received a letter from Laurea University of Applied Sciences, I was accepted to study Master degree of Hospitality Management, service design. I was thrilled! I have been looking for such an education where I can exploit my past as an Artist and professional of Horeca. First semester started with Design thinking, lead by Katja Tschimmel and Mariana Valenca from Portugal. What a great topic to start  this creative study of services. I had not heard of Design Thinking before. I was very excited and looking forward to hearing more.

What is Design Thinking?

Tschimmel introduced Design Thinking to us via a model called E6.
This process model has six “E”s – each process space starts with letter E.

Emergence
Empathy
Experimentation
Elaboration
Exposition
Extension

This model can be used under several contexts such as trainings, courses and coaching.

e6

“E.6, because in Portuguese and in English, the division into 6 process spaces, which we consider the most appropriate ones, start with an ‘E’: Emergencia (Emergence), Empatia (Empathy), Experimentação (Experimentation), Elaboração (Elaboration), Exposição (Exposition) and Extensão (Extension). Since there are moments of Exploration (divergence) and Entering (convergence) in every phase of the model, we call the model E.6 elevated 2.” – Katja Tschimmel The graphic solution of this version of the model was developed by the Design Atelier Nunes e Pã.

Design Thinking is observation and research. Companies may benefit from designers of their way of thinking and working. Design Thinking offers new tools to develop organizations and their services. It is a very effective toolkit for any kind of innovation process. As a great example of this innovative thinking and creative confidence gives David Kelley on his speech of “How to build your creative confidence”. He shows in his lecture example of children´s hospital´s scanner and how they re-design such a fearful experience as being scanned to an exciting adventure. Designer creates a story of a pirate ship when going to be scanned. Scanning becomes exiting adventure! This is an excellent example on how to bring creativity to life by using people involved in the service. In this particular case children wanted to come back again tomorrow – for a new trip!

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The Inspirational New Children’s Hospital 2017

Apr7

I am glad to have participated in The Service Day 2015 on the 18th of March. As a new student in the field of service design and innovation it really made me open my eyes to how much service design has already spread into the health sector. I saw a lot of commonalities in the projects, which were presented. All of these projects included a great holistic view of the all the parts tied with the service and even better, an innovative fresh way of organizing them in a new customer centric and efficient way. This holistic view of customer insight was a part of all of the projects.

What impressed me was how these projects really had people believing in them. In their minds there was little space for pessimism, a bit of sanity and a huge believe in the idea and a great deal of professionalism. What comes out when all these talented people with a different background are put in the same room, are these incredible service design projects.

People need other people, and what all these projects had in common was an impressive amount of collaboration. Good service design is creating together. This is where I emphasize the word co-creation! The best sand castles are built with many hands and ideas.

Children have the best imagination together, so why not adults? One raising castle is the new pediatric hospital, which has been largely discussed in the media and a lot of debate (e.g. 1a, 1b) has been going on about the funding of the project, which hasn’t followed the traditional norms of building public buildings. A foundation for building a new children’s public hospital was founded in 2012 and the hospital is going to be ready in 2017.

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Anne Berner presenting the Children's Hospital 2017 project

Anne Berner presenting the Children’s Hospital 2017 project

Anne Berner had the first presentation in the Service Day 2015. As her presentation really impressed me, this blog post is devoted to her project. Among many other duties Anne Berner is the Chairman of the board of the Association and Foundation New Children’s hospital 2017. She pointed out that in the beginning of the project it wasn’t known who owns the project and who is in charge of it. She says that this was not easy as it wasn’t clear if it is the county of Helsinki or the state paying the bill. The solution was an open fundraising campaign, so that everyone anywhere could partake in the project. But … especially the media and part of the Finnish public seemed to think this was wrong. Happily not everyone. The funding is based on donations which some people think is begging.

The way Anne Berner talked during the Service Day made me believe that this project is in the right hands. She has a humble and an iterative attitude towards the project which characterizes a good service design. She is very well aware of the critics and sees even the negative discussion around the hospital as positive. She takes critique in a constructive and strengthening way, which is necessary in service design. She also says that the more there is discussion, the more important the campaign becomes. According to her, best innovations are built only with criticism. Myself, I think this project is revolutionary and shakes the traditional thoughts of service into a new service design way of thinking. She pointed out that there has always been a lot of community effort in Finland, especially during and after the wars. Hospitals have been built using fundraisers before, so why should it be different now?

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Experiences from the Global Service Jam Helsinki 2015

Mar11

10393857_741350965951185_8017900955231328757_nGlobal Service Jam is a yearly event enabling anyone interested in service design and design thinking to co-create, experiment and develop new solutions inspired by a shared theme.  This year, the Jam was arranged in 100 cities during the weekend of February 27th – March 1st all around the world.

In the Jam, the participants will go through the entire service design process in one weekend, gathering customer insight, creating new service concepts in interdisciplinary teams, building prototypes and testing the new concepts with real customers.

For me it was the first time I have ever participated in the Global Service Jam. I had high expectations and have to say that my expectations were exceeded. The Jam is an absolutely fantastic event to learn about service design, customer oriented service development, creative methods, concept development along with meeting new people and getting new friends. It is a 48 hour journey, focusing on “doing and not talking”, creating solutions based on real customer needs – and having a lot of fun!  The following video will provide a glimpse of what the Global Service is all about and revealing what the shared theme for 2015 Jam was.

During the Jam we also had inspiring presentations by Jani Turku from IMPROVement and Anton Schubert, the Head of Design at Futurice. The key message from Jani Turku was that creating new services requires you to allow yourself to play, be human, listen, say “yes, and…” instead of “no, but…”, dare to try new things and to be open-minded.

Anton Schubert talked about the importance of prototyping and how everything can actually be tested. It is just the matter of using the right tools and methods. Prototyping is about learning, failing safely and inexpensively, i.e. failing often to succeed sooner, as stated by David Kelley, the founder of IDEO.

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A Crash Course on Creativity!

Sep12

Where do ideas come from?

Creativity is looked at as the engine to bring ideas, but also most of us think creativity is an epiphany, where some will get it, while others will not!

What if I told that creativity is something that every one of us can learn, its only a matter to understanding its underlying framework and how to unlock it.

Creativity is more than imagination!

How can we understand creativity as persons and how can we enable it in the world we live in? This is the topic of this fascinating course provided by Tina Seelig the Stanford professor, who has spent the last 13 years or so looking for the answer to the question, how we can unlock creativity?

Most of the efforts in the course where in the psychical group sessions (+videos) as we have formulated as team of 5 from the same location to carry on the assignments. The team was called Alien Team, just in case we pumped in the name below 🙂

5 + 5 = ?

Can you solve this equations? The answer may be obvious as we learned in school that there is only one right answer to this problem, but what if we looked at the equation in this way (? + ? = 10)! Suddenly we have infinite numbers of answers that we can suggest!

What happen is that we have changed our perspective of the problem and this helped spared our imagination.

Click on the image to watch the video!

Click on the image to watch the video!

The innovation engine

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