Tag Archive | design

Unleashing your creativity – find your inner child

Sep19

The myth about creativity

The common misconception about creativity is that only some people are (or can be) creative. This is a myth and simply not true; everybody can be creative. Look at children! They have endless creativity and fun, why don’t we as adults? So, the question is, how do we get it back? As Ursula Le Guin has put it: “The creative adult is the child who survived.” How do we unlearn the things we have learned on our way to adulthood? It is all about allowing your mind to be free and look at the world with wonder, without judgment, just like when we were children.

Image from Pexels.

How to be more creative? 

Design thinking is one approach that can be used to unleash creativity, helping those who are not designers to think more like designers. Design thinking is an approach to collective problem solving, giving the best results in teams with a diverse set of participants from multiple disciplines. It is a mind-set for inquiry and problem solving as well as a culture that fosters exploration. Creativity is all about openness and willingness to learn and improve. Watch this video to learn more.

“Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes, and having fun.” – Mary Lou Cook

Judgment and evaluation are an important part of creative progress, but one must first get started by creating ideas and having something to evaluate. The best ideas come from trial and error, as well as thinking of things in ways no one else has thought of before.

Tools for creativity

In order to reach to the core of creative self, one can try different types of tools, exercises and facilitators to help. To unleash creativity, having too much room does not make it easy to explore the best options efficiently; it is good to have a frame of user-centricity by studying a situation and people in it. One needs to free themselves from judgment to create a variety of ideas, by research, inspiration and wonder. The best ideas are selected and in a fast manner explored by visuals, drawings and prototypes, failures learned from and multiple ideas evaluated. The reached solution suggestions are then improved on and optimized for maximum impact. More information about tools for unleashing your creativity from Mindshake and Interaction design websites. 

Design thinking process allows for reaching your creative core. Modified after Mootee.

Creative confidence

Tom & David Kelley have introduced a concept of Creative Confidence; the notion that you have big ideas and the ability to act on them. It is about believing in yourself and being brave enough to think, try and innovate. It is important that the environment supports creative efforts by providing time, tools, space and other resources. Everyone can create with others, if they are willing and open to believe in themselves.

“There is no innovation and creativity without failure.” – Brené Brown

Tom & David Kelley emphasize choosing creativity and believing that we can create and engage relaxed attention. It is an important part of the process to ask – like we did as children – “why”? and “Why not”? Read more about creative confidence from Design kit by IDEO.

Supporting creativity in organizations

Management has a very specific role in nurturing creativity within their teams. Allowing for failure and encouraging to try things out are fundamental to finding the best solutions for problems and possibilities. Creative culture is about living with uncertainty and ambiguity, leveraging new opportunities from it. It is about curiosity; it is a way of thinking and working, occasional workshops won’t cut it.

“There is no doubt that creativity is the most important human resource of all. Without creativity, there would be no progress, and we would be forever repeating the same patterns.” – Edward De Bono

Teach employees to be creativity ambassadors to others, facilitators and encourage them to unleash their creativity. As an educator, teach students to not give up but push forward when failing. As people, be brave, look at the world with wonder and excitement and don’t be afraid to fail and learn. Many unforeseen elements can be used creatively, as long as you keep your mind open and look at the world with wonder, through the eyes of your inner child.

Image is from Pexels.

Written by Service Innovation and Design MBA students Niina Luostarinen and ES.

Sources:

Barnhart, B. (2021). 22 Insightful creativity quotes. Vectornator. https://www.vectornator.io/blog/creativity-quotes/.

Brown, T. (2008). Design Thinking. Harvard Business Review, June, 84-95. http://www.ideo.com/images/uploads/thoughts/IDEO_HBR_Design_Thinking.pdf.  

Buchanan, R. (1996). Wicked problems in Design Thinking. In Margolin, V. & Buchanan, R. The Idea of Design. A Design Issues Reader. Cambridge: The MIT Press. 

Kelley, D. & Kelley, T. (2013). Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All. Crown Business. 

Kolko, J. (2015). Design thinking comes of age. The approach, once used primarily in product design, is now infusing corporate culture. Harvard Business Review September 2015, 66-71.

Mootee, I. (2013). Design Thinking for Strategic Innovation: What They Can’t Teach You at Business or Design School. Wiley.

Diving Into the World of Design Thinking

Sep24

“Now I want you all to introduce yourselves, but this time you will do it differently.” – this is how our Design Thinking course started and little did we know what will follow afterwards. To present ourselves we were divided into groups, where each of us had to first, speak about her/himself, second, count one minute, third, draw the speaker and fourth, listen. What a mindshake on a Friday morning! 

In this blog we will tell you what else we did during our workshop. But first, let’s focus on the definition and purpose of Design Thinking.

Our Portraits Created by Our Teammates in Miro

What is Design Thinking?

Historically design has not been a key step in the developing process. Designers came along at the very end of the process to make the product look aesthetically desirable or have a nice package. Due to the shift from industrial manufacturing to knowledge work and service delivery, the objectives of innovation are no longer physical products, but they can be services, processes or applications.  (Brown 2008)

Design Thinking today is understood as an effective method with a toolkit for innovation processes in multidisciplinary teams in any kind of organization (Tschimmel 2021). User-centric perspective and empathy for gaining a deeper understanding of the user’s needs is essential in the design thinking process (Kouprie & Sleeswijk 2009). 

Motee (2013) emphasizes the role of business leaders in creating a design thinking culture within a company. In his opinion, future business leaders should practice disciplined imagination to formulate problems and generate alternative outcomes, look beyond the limits and enable collaboration in the company.

Mindshake E6² Model in Practice

Professor Katja Tschimmel introduced us to the Mindshake Evolution 6² model, which we will describe below and explain how we used it in the workshop.

To begin with, we were given a topic of “Inclusion at work”. We started by identifying challenges and opportunities of the issue. At this stage, we created an Opportunity map and formulated an Intent statement (Emergence). 

We planned and conducted short Interviews in order to gain Empathy with the target group and filled the results into the Insight map.  

In the Experimentation stage, we used Brainwriting for ideation and learned to come up with as many ideas as possible since the first ideas are always the obvious ones. 

The purpose of the Elaboration is to figure out how to transform an idea into a tangible concept. We utilized Rapid Prototyping to visualize our concept. 

Collaborating in Miro / SID Design Thinking Master Class Autumn 2021. 

In the Exposition stage, we created a Storyboard of our concept for presenting the key results of our innovation process and the benefits of the new vision.

At the Extension stage, we collected feedback from our classmates to potentially develop our idea-solution. Normally, at this stage, the team has to think how to implement the solution in practice. Because of the time and resources frames we couldn’t fully experience the Extension stage, however, we went through the whole cycle of the Innovation process and understood the main principles. 

The Key Points Learned of the DT Process

  • Human-Centeredness and Empathy  – We need to step into the user’s shoes.
  • Co-creation and Collaboration – Include as many stakeholders as possible throughout the process.
  • Creativity – Every idea is welcome.
  • Creativity can be developed through practice.
  • Visualizations help to communicate ideas with others.
  • Experimentation – Playful thinking and making mistakes are an important part of every creative process.

Written by Sari Eskelinen & Lada Stukolkina SID MBA Students at Laurea University of Applied Sciences

Literature:
Brown, Tim (2008) Design Thinking. Harvard Business Review, June, 84-95. 

Courtney, Jonathan (2020). What Is Design Thinking? An Overview. YouTube Video.

Kouprie, M & Sleeswijk Visser, F. (2009) A framework for empathy in design: stepping into and out of the user’s life (Links to an external site.) in Journal of Engineering Design Vol. 20, No. 5, October 2009, 437–448 

Mootee, Idris (2013) Design Thinking for Strategic Innovation: What They Can’t Teach You at Business or Design School. Wiley. 

Tschimmel, Katja (2021): Creativity, Design and Design Thinking – A Human-Centred ménage à trois for Innovation. In Perspectives on Design II. Ed. Springer “Serie in Design and Innovation”. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-79879-6.

Tschimmel, Katja (2021). Design Thinking course lectures, September 3–4 2021. Laurea University of Applied Sciences.

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A Design Thinking Crash Test

Sep21

Erika Bäck & Sabine Maselkowski

Two days of Design Thinking ‘crash test’ (read: course) behind. All we think is we need to pass, like a car tested for the safety standards. Days went by at high-speed, challenging our ways of thinking and working, let’s start…

Design? Design Thinking? 

To get answers we looked both past and present practices and understandings. Design Thinking combines traditions from different fields and disciplines, arts and science alike. It is accepted that DT(=Design thinking) is found in the “everyday” and it is a procedural work. Often design is understood only as the final product rather than a process including several steps of e.g. researching, ideating or testing. Therefore, there have been more recent attempts to establish and agree on a design process.

‘Design’ can be a verb, noun and adjective. It is an approach to innovation that is applied in and between many different fields. The benefit of using DT in problem-defining and solution-finding processes is the focus on learning from each repetition, i.e. iteration. Design’s role is currently understood as creating something that meets consumers’ needs rather than “just” making it more attractive to them. The change lies in the understanding of consumers’ role: from passive recipients to active participants. The future component of design and DT are in “changing existing situations into preferred ones” (Simon, 1996, in Michlewski, 2015). and in the possibility of affecting the future. 

An incomplete checklist for potential designers 

(based on Brown, 2008, Michlewski, 2015, and the course)

Example of a (wicked) design problem

During our crash test, the theme of the DT challenge was introduced as inclusion at work. We were not expecting to solve the challenge in less than 48 hours. Rather this challenge opened our eyes for so-called wicked problems. Wicked problems are characterised, amongst others, by 

  • intederminancy
  • non-existence of clear definition
  • underlying higher-level problem
  • multitude of explanations 

(Rittel, 1972, as cited in Buchanan, 1996)

Such problems can have many solutions, all affected by context and actors, as our trial on inclusion at work showed.

What exactly happened in class?

During the ‘crash test’ with Katja Tschimmel, we took first steps towards “designers’ culture” (Buchanan, 1996). We shifted between the roles: facilitators, active participants, potential consumers. The role during class seemed to be ambivalent, and pointed out the difficulty to detach oneself from the DT process, e.g. when noticing how own assumptions made their way into interview questions and data gathering. We also learned to work on confidence; be brave with the ideas in order to get recognition from the audience and be confident to accept uncertainty e.g. when using the Miro Board.

Starting from not even a brief but only the three words “inclusion at work”, all these new ways of working, new people and new contents interestingly led six sub-groups to six distinct angles and solutions to the vaguely defined problem. Those pointed out a) the ability of designers to discover new relationships as well as b) design thinking as a “liberal art” (Buchanan, 1996: 14), be it by combining play with age discrimination, the environmental need of reforestation and equal access to information, or others. 

We might need a bit more finetuning after this initial test, but it seems we’ll hit the design road eventually!

Sources:

Brown, Tim (2008). Design Thinking. Harvard Business Review, June 2008: 84-95.   

Buchanan, Richard (1996). Wicked Problems in Design Thinking. In: Margolin, V. & Buchanan, R. The Idea of Design. A Design Issues Reader. Cambridge: The MIT Press. 

Michlewski, Kamil (2015). Design Attitude. Farnham, Surrey: Gower.

Pushing the boundaries of innovation

Sep11

I participated on 10.9.2020 in an online event hosted by Design Club, a business community within Design Museum Helsinki, and Aalto University. The topic of the event was “System Innovations for Business Sustainability” and featured a presentation by Dr. Idil Gaziulusoy, an Assistant Professor in Aalto University and a panel discussion with Dr. Heli Antila, the Vice President of Biobased solutions in Fortum.

The event tackled interesting, necessary topics regarding sustainability challenges and the need for large transformations in the field of innovation and business. The urgency of the changes cannot be overstated as we are already very late in the game. Businesses need to be on the forefront of the change and be able to radically adapt their views and ways.

Transformation zones

Gaziulusoy discussed the three transformation zones that we need to understand and explore in order to fully embrace sustainability innovation.

Dr. Idil Gaziulusoy’s presentation slide “Three Spheres of Transformations”

The inner circle is the practical zone that consists of mostly technical solutions and the usual product innovation. Gaziulusoy stated that in this area most focus is put today but the innovation process needs to be extended further.

The second layer shows organisational aspects such as systems and structures and while it gives more depth than the practical sphere, it is not enough for an overall, radical change.

The last layer is the socio-cultural level which includes beliefs, values and existing worldview of all societal factors. According to Gaziulusoy, this level has the least attention from businesses and policy makers. She called this area the “zone of difficult questions” due to the importance of challenging existing, deep-seated views and beliefs.

From operational to visionary

As the old saying goes: “easier said than done”, so how do we actually start the change? How can companies realistically transform their “business as usual” without compromising their position? The question is not simple nor is there an easy answer, but there are methods available.

Gaziulusoy suggested that companies implement a shadow-track strategy, a transition strategy where they simultaneously operate in their usual area of business but also invest time and money for new innovation areas. Gaziulusoy urged companies to boldly step away from their reactive role and reach for a more profound transformation.

Dr. Idil Gaziulusoy’s presentation slide “Strategic and Creative Foresight”

Panelists were asked for examples of companies that were engaging in truly sustainable innovation. In general, micro-enterprises were mentioned to be the leaders in the field as they have the ability to find their niche and ask the question: “How can we do business differently“. A local Helsinki zero-waste-restaurant Nolla, was mentioned as an example of this.

Needless to say, more established companies have a different strategy than micro-enterprises. Antila mentioned that the burden of old traditions might be a reason for older, more established companies to be held back. Change is happening, but still slowly.

Collaboration is key

Gaziulusoy encouraged companies to push the boundaries of doing business by engaging policy makers and collaborating with researchers, stakeholders and even competitors.

Antila emphasized the role of universities in making change happen as they commonly have the resources for basic research in different topics and by working together with companies, they could reach even more concrete ideas.

The key is the change in mindset and values, and the overall signal to the public should be “We don’t cater to mindless consumption”. Showing that more determined businesses are ready for the challenge, is both a competitive advantage but also the only way forward.

For more inspiration:

  • Story of Nolla, a Helsinki-based zero waste restaurant
  • Design Club’s next event on 23.9.2020: Creative practices for transformational Futures
  • B-corps, list of businesses that meet the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance
  • Designs for a Cooler Planet Exhibition by Aalto University video:

The art of design research

Sep3
Photo by Unsplash

I participated on 20.8.2020 in an online event focusing on design research. The event was hosted by Reach Network‘s Bas Raijmakers and featured a panel discussion with two experienced service design professionals Geke van Dijk from STBY and Babitha George from Quicksand, both part of the Reach Network organization.

Both Van Dijk and George discussed their projects, the craft of design research and what it takes to succeed in their field, with an active participation from other participants.

Iterative process instead linear

The design research process of Reach Network is described as more iterative than linear. New ideas often come up during fieldwork, so quick adaptation is key. The process starts with immersion phase where they usually study people in their own environments. Afterwards in insight creation the design researchers identify problem spots and opportunity areas. Last phase of idea generation includes workshops, brainstorming and modeling of strongest ideas.

Photo by Unsplash

George started the discussion by explaining a project she had been working with which dealt with public healthcare in India. She discussed the difficulties of when dealing with an intimate, hard topic and how to overcome these obstacles. She mentioned that the ability to adapt your methods and getting people comfortable were vital, for instance using hypothetical scenarios instead of asking direct, intimate questions for a softer approach. She listed building trust and offering a judgement-free-zone as key to the success in her project.

Both George and van Dijk discussed the importance of design research. They were asked during the panel discussion on how to get clients to understand the importance of design research and pay for design research. They emphasized that when design research is done right, it is very informative and helps with implementation longevity. Engaging with stakeholders and having a thorough, mutual understanding and clear communication is vital.

Qualitative research vs. design research

The panelists briefly talked about differences of qualitative research and design research. With design research, you have creativity included and you’re always looking for opportunities. It’s rich in storytelling and bringing a design aspect via persona posters and images from field, for example.

A participant in the event asked for tips on how to transfer complex data to a more understandable, audience friendly format. George and van Dijk mentioned that having key insights, summaries and lots of illustrations is a good starting point. They emphasized finding a balance with complexity and clear storytelling because you also don’t want to lose the richness of your findings.

Photo by Unsplash

The art of the craft

The panelists discussed the craft of design research and what it takes to succeed in their field. Design research is about constantly reiterating and customizing your methods. It requires a lot of experience and openness to learn new. It’s about learning of complexities but also keeping things simple. “It’s about constantly zooming in and out”, one panelist explained.

The needed skills include observation, conversation, creative listening, ability to adapt, motivation to always learn new things, but also being reflective and self critical of own biases. It’s not just about learning tricks of different tools but learning the craft and adapting those tools to own projects.

During the panel discussion, it was mentioned that design research is much like the Netflix documentary “Jiro Dreams of Sushi”, which featured Jiro Ono, an 85-year-old sushi master in Tokyo and his relentless pursuit of perfection, who even after three Michelin stars was always striving to be better.

In a way, a design researcher is never finished with learning their craft but instead always reiterating and customizing their approach.

For more inspiration:

Trailer for Netflix documentary “Jiro Dreams of Sushi”

The growing role of design in government

Nov29

Last week the city of Rotterdam (NL) hosted the latest edition of the International Design in Government Conference. 

Previously hosted in London (UK), Oakland (USA), and Edinburgh (Scotland), last week’s edition was already the third happening in 2019, suggesting that the interest in the topic is growing world-wide.  

Hosted officially by Gebruiker Centraal (User Needs First), a Dutch knowledge community for professionals working on digital government services, the conference took place between November 18th and 20th and its participation was completely open to anyone. 

The International Design in Government Conference aims at sharing best practices, takeaways and discussing common challenges so that they can be tackled through a collaborative approach. In facts, established by Government Digital Service in 2017 as an opportunity to bring together design-minded people that work in, for or with the government all over the world, in the last two years the international design in government community has grown to over 1500 members from 66 countries. In addition to participating to face-to-face meeting occasions such at the conference, community members engage every month in sharing knowledge through calls and other collaborative digital tools, contributing to keep the discussions alive and make some steps further. 

 

Keynote speeches

 

I attended the conference on Tuesday, November 19th, where the morning was entirely dedicated to keynote speeches, whereas the afternoon had a more dynamic connotation as participants could choose to attend a wide range of talks, workshops and breakout sessions. 

Below a summary of the morning keynote speeches and their related visual notes I made on the spot:

 

  • Measuring service quality – Willem Pieterson

 

Willem Pieterson is a researcher focusing on the intersection of data, technology and their orchestration with the aim of helping organisations become more innovative and data-driven. Presenting his work on how to better assess the quality of governmental services, he introduced a quality model based on 20 dimensions of quality, which helped defining a service evaluation model that suggests “satisfaction” as the biggest predictor of quality. 

 

E1C3747C-C68C-4089-AA36-EFBBB24C8DF7.JPG

 

 

  • Designing digital to meet user needs – Francis Maude

 

Francis Maude is the former Minister for the UK Cabinet Office. He was responsible for the establishment of the Government Digital Service, with the aim of reinforcing internal IT and bringing all government services onto a single web hub: GOV.UK. By telling the story on how the UK moved from having its digital services spread across more than 2000 government websites to winning the award as “world leader for online and digital public services”, Maude suggested that leadership, capability, and mandate are the three elements to implement a functional reform. Additionally,  the implementation of horizontal, cross-silo functions (by ensuring the commitment of several Departments to redesigning all existing Government services) as well as building a critical mass of technical capabilities were pointed out as the key to execution of such an ambitious strategy. 

Maude’s office estimated that moving services from offline to digital channels could save approximately £1.8 billion a year. 

 

C68F8243-1709-430F-A4A6-C24F8C9EF78B.JPG

 

  • Digital social innovation – Audrey Tang

 

Audrey Tang is listed number 3 in the World’s 100 Most Influential People in Digital Government in 2019. She took office in Taiwan as the “Digital Minister” on October 1, 2016,  and was assigned the role of helping government agencies communicate policy goals and managing information published by the government, both via digital means.

Through her talk, Tang stressed the importance of implementing “radical transparency” in all governmental processes, and highlighted how Taiwan is promoting presidential hackathons as a means to co-create solutions around several topics related to the SDGs.  

 
CB3AB191-809A-4EE4-8CBD-A64937300A20.JPG

Key takeaways

 

Although I could only attend one day, my brief participation to the International Design in Government was very interesting and it triggered a few considerations that I summarise below:

 

  • The understanding and recognition of (service) design is skyrocketing

 

If only five years ago it would have been unimaginable to have designers in a municipality, now designers working in Government are thousands and, based on the networking I did, most of attendees either knew what service design is or had service designers in their teams. In this landscape, the NL and UK are commonly acknowledged as the two countries in Europe who are the forefront of design and innovation in their governments. 

 

  • Inclusion and diversity are not an optional in government services

 

Although public and private sectors are facing similar challenges (such as defeating a siloed mindset), the public sector must deserve some extra attention to designing for diversity and inclusion: in facts, governmental services need to be used by all citizens and therefore must be accessible to all kind of users. Of course, diversity and inclusion should not be considered as an optional in the private sector. However, they often are shadowed by other commercial priorities. 

 

  • What is designed for some users might be very well received by other users

 

The story of Gemeente (Municipality) Rotterdam, who prototyped and tested visual letters for citizens with learning disabilities in the attempt of delivering a more engaging way for these users to read important communications, tells how this solution turned out to be a success for other citizens too. What we can learn from it is that at times what is designed for a specific target of users might very well apply to other kinds of users too. 

Habitare must listen to its users

Sep25

Habitare 2019 is an interesting convention, but overall it could be so much more. A convention is a service and I approached this furniture, interiors, and product design event with a service design perspective. I was actively looking out for mentions of service design and observing what the experience of being a participant at the convention was like. I must note: I myself am not specifically a connoisseur of interior design. From a partially foreign perspective, when one thinks about Finnish design it is furniture and interior design which come to mind first and foremost. Finland is one of the leaders of elegant, minimal, and functional interiors. Whichever Finnish design field comes after interior design is surely a more distant second place. However, within the much smaller world of service design, Finland also shines. Finnish governmental, health and digital services are known within the inner circle of the service design community. Knowing this, I was keen to see if there was any possible overlap of service and interior design at Habitare 2019.

Admittedly, as I had predicted, there wasn’t much overlap between the fields. Or at least, the overlap was below the surface and one that if elevated could make the convention an overall better experience. There were interesting moments which could’ve been improved through the use of service design: through adding more interactivity into the convention and perhaps researching their potential convention attendees to see what exactly they would like from such a convention.

Upon first walking into the main convention I was greeted by a pleasant surprise: a slide going downstairs! What a wonderfully playful way to begin! In service journeys, just like job interviews or dates, first impressions really matter. There were other such moments of playful interaction occasionally scattered through the experience and they broke the overall passive experience joyously. My favorite example was the small table which allowed the creation of moodboards using different textures, props, materials and fauna. Moodboards are used by some designers to literally set or depict a rough atmosphere they are striving towards when creating a piece of furniture or an interior. This moodboard table allowed participants to experience a fun glimpse of a designer’s work in an accessible and (importantly for today’s Instagram generation) shareable fashion.

Personally, I would’ve liked to see even more of these moments. Habitare should strive to be more than just a large version of a Finnish design shop – it should involve its participants more. Many participants come to browse the beautiful interiors, yet fully knowing that the life on display in front of them is if not out-of-reach then at least overpriced. Assuming this, they should be provided a means to attain at least a hint of redesigning their own interiors through, for example, active co-learning of what a designer does or how to design.

There was one specific mention of service design, which took place at a talk given on Friday. Unfortunately, due to it being a talk in the middle of the day, I was not able to attend. It was a talk given by Virve Penttilä and Sini Ala-Nikula, who work at Rune & Berg. After a little research I was able to find Virve’s thesis from 2016 discussing the design of physical service environments and its effects on service delivery. Having looked at Rune & Berg’s work on their website, the thesis, and the title of the talk I can assume that service design was represented at Habitare – albeit for a very brief moment.

The talk’s title, Have you listened to your user? The importance of service design in the design of environments is a good generalism on my thoughts about Habitare. I was also surprised to see what I would call a lack of understanding of the participants of Habitare. To describe what I mean I’ll take sitting as an example. As is to be expected with Nordic design, there were plenty of elegant chairs with minimal lines and ergonomic curves in naturally reserved colours. These seats were pleasing to both my eyes and (from having walked around the convention so long) my feet. As I sat, I pondered: Who are these convention attendees who browse pricey furniture? What do they do? Well, the ones who can occasionally afford to buy into this lifestyle are most likely office workers of some kind who want to come home to a beautiful and comfortable home and rest. If that is the case, where do they spend much of their day sitting? Many do not work from home – most work at the office. And yet, at Habitare I barely saw any office chairs – or much office furniture in general. Where were the beautiful desks or elegant workstations? Where were the office chairs or where was the Nordic designed version of those big bouncy ball seats which your colleague persuades you will solve all your problems but you never end up using? Where, in short, was the office?

Perhaps the lack of a dedicated “office” furniture section should not come as a surprise, the name Habitare is derived from habitat or a place where one calls home and where one lives. Work, however, is an integral part of life. Working life was simply ignored at the convention. This omission underlines my fundamental issue with Habitare. For a convention dedicated to designing the interiors of our lives it takes a too narrow approach to what interiors, and perhaps even our lives, can be.

The power of design thinking

Sep25

And why you should consider using it to innovate and solve business problems.

Rashpal Bhati


On the first weekend of September amidst the beginnings of Finnish Autumn, the SID class of 2019 gathered at Laurea’s Leppävaara campus for their first contact session in Design Thinking. As we listened to the energetic tutor Katja Tschimmel, we were introduced to the history of Design Thinking.

It all started in 1969 with Herbert Simon who pondered the science of design in his book The Science of the Artificial, investigating its problem solving logic and potential place in the workplace and professional disciplines. Between 1980-90 this earlier work was further developed into visual design thinking and the design process, by Bryan Lawson (1986) and Peter Rowe (1987).

Design Thinking as a term and discipline really gained business attention during the 2000’s with publications like The Art of Innovation by Tim Brown & Jonathan Littmann as well as a seminal article in HBR by Tim Brown (2008) where Design Thinking as a business term was first popularised. Tim Brown highlighted that “Design Thinking expresses the introduction of design methods and culture into fields beyond traditional design, such as business innovation”.

Thinking like designers

Storyboarding ‘Study Buddy’ concept

This theoretical foundation led us to form student groups and explore practical design thinking for ourselves. Through the goal of designing better services for Laurea and thinking like designers we ventured into using visualization, prototyping and holistic methodology. We looked at various visual design models which explain the design thinking process, before settling on the Evolution 6² model which was followed for two days of intense group work activities culminating in the presenting of our ‘Study Buddy’ visual elevator pitch to the rest of the groups and faculty.

Many of us found the creation process rewarding and I echo Tim Brown’s sentiment from his 2008 HBR article that “Thinking like a designer can transform the way you develop products, services, processes – and even strategy.”

Design Thinking by Tim Brown, HBR, June 2008

He tales the inventor Thomas Edison whom he describes as having broken the mold of the ‘lone genius inventor’ by creating a team-based approach to innovation. We experienced the positive effects of this multidisciplinary approach first hand within our own teams. I can also identify with Brown’s sentiment that innovation is hard, and requires countless rounds of trial and error – the “99% perspiration.”

Brown explored the potential of design thinking to create customer value and market opportunity and posited that asking designers to create ideas that meet consumers’ needs and desires is strategic and leads to dramatic new forms of value. In closing he suggested that “business leaders would do well to incorporate design thinking into all phases of the innovation process.” I think this is sound advice when we look at today’s increasingly digitised economy as well as shifts in societal needs and greater environmental consciousness; society and its more engaged citizens demand action and solutions to deliver sustainable modern living with greater empathy for our shared global responsibility, incorporating the human-centered and holistic design thinking frameworks could indeed play a greater role in delivering these strategic and value driven benefits.

Usefullness of design thinking

Design Attitude by Kamil Michlewski, 2015

Kamil Michlewski in Design Attitude, 2015 discusses the usefulness of organisations taking design inspired frameworks like Design Thinking or its sub–genre Service Design to unlock their innovation pipeline to achieve meaningful business innovation objectives. Although design is “still on the margins of interest of most business schools” he states “design ideas are starting to significantly inform public service provision and policies including UK, Danish governments, and more recently, the EU has been pursuing design-inspired innovation policies. He cites gov.uk as a great example of the impact of design inspired frameworks, and refers to it as a UK government digital service run remarkably like a service design consultancy with full focus on the user with great aesthetic dimension.  Or MindLab, the Danish Government’s innovation unit that involves citizens and businesses in creating new solutions for society.

These examples Michlewski says, highlights the power of following a design-driven approach, it empowers managers and business people to think more laterally, creatively and openly, and importantly to experiment and iterate solutions within the business environment they will be deployed. This resonated with our group and following the 2-day contact session we also felt more empowered by what we had learned, and experienced firsthand, about the potential and power of design thinking.

References:

Tschimmel, K. 2019. Design Thinking. [lectures]. Held on 6-7 September. Laurea University of Applied Sciences.

Tschimmel, K. (2018). Evolution 6² : An E-handbook for Practical Design Thinking for Innovation. MindShake.

Brown, T. 2008. Design Thinking. Harvard Business Review, June, 84-95.

Michlewski, Kamil 2015. Design Attitude. Farnham, Surrey: Gower.

Published 25 September 2019

The key take-aways from POLISHOPA Design Thinking 2019 conference

Jun30

POLISHOPA is the biggest Design Thinking conference in Poland, two days of interesting lectures and two days of workshops, 16 experts from different fields and 4 speakers from abroad. It was the sixth edition. You can find more details on this page: https://polishopa.pl/

I recommend signing up for the newsletter to get information about the next edition in advance.

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It was the fourth time I attended this conference and this time I had a chance to participate in the lecture days, so-called Revolution & Innovation Days. I will share my key take-aways with you.

Year by year I see an increase in the quality of this conference showing that the knowledge and interest about Design Thinking is growing. However, as one of the presenters (Dymitr Romanowski) showed, although the popularity of Design Thinking grows, web searches for the term “Service Design” decrease. It seems there is still a lot to do regarding educating people on what service design is in Poland.

This year the healthcare and financial sector was highly present. There were representatives of Santander Bank and mBank as speakers. Piotr Sałata from Symetria spoke about how they created a more user friendly vindication platform by Kruk. Adrian Chernoff from Johnson & Johnson spoke about how they solved the challenge of helping patients with diabetes improve adherence and outcomes thanks to patient-led innovation and user centricity. They developed the first diabetes app in the US – OneTouch reveal app.

The participants also had a chance to listen to the story of creating a restaurant in Krakow – Handelek by Socjomania. Silke Bochat told us about implementing and scaling design and design thinking in FMCG companies. Piotr Chojnacki from Allegro (“Polish eBay”) told us how to scale the UX in a large organization without losing the consistency of user experience. Radosław Ratajczak from SHOPA explained how they designed the user experience of Olivia Garden – 8270m2 in one of the skyscraper offices in Gdynia. Tey Bannerman from McKinsey & Company shared a story of disruption at Pizza Hut. Olga Bońka from Motorola Solutions Systems told a virtual lesson of empathy for a dog.

Among all of the mentioned lectures, my key learnings are described below.

If you want to introduce Design Thinking to a company, don’t ask for permission, ask for forgiveness. In Santander Bank, Andrzej Pyra and Jakub Tyczyński simply started organizing Design Thinking workshops. The more people took part in it, the more they wanted to work using Design Thinking methods. What is more, product owners started to ask for their help in managing the whole process in the end.

Empathy is key for making a change. Empathy also makes the transformation last after the Design Thinking project finishes.

Design Thinking is just one type of method used for innovation, it is good to be familiar with other methods such as business model innovation (more in the picture below) as well and juggle with tools and methods depending on the project and its phase, company, and situation.

Innovation methods graphs

Once introducing Design Thinking, there is usually a phase of skepticism which takes up to 2-3 days, it is good to simply overcome it. We also need to understand the cognitive biases and “stamp them out for innovation’s sake” as Mike Pinder from Board of Innovation advised.

skepticism

Mike Pinder also had an interesting definition of MVP: “ MVPs are a way of asking questions about critical assumptions within the features of your concept and business models”.

Piotr Chojnacki from Allegro (a company with 20 million users and 100 million offers and over 150 processes) listed three key points to successful scaling in such a large organization:

  • Diffused structures of teams who work in agile way
  • Local innovation within the global structure
  • Consistent user experience

Silke Bochat presented John Maeda’s list of the top 8 skills that designers need to understand in business as well as the top 10 emerging trends that have the biggest impact on design published in Design in Tech Report.

The Top 8 skills that designers need to understand are the following:

  1. Product Roadmap Strategy
  2. Company strategy
  3. Retention/ Engagement metrics
  4. Conversion Metrics
  5. Funnel Acquisition Metrics
  6. Revenue Model
  7. Financial Metrics (i.e. Revenue margin etc.)
  8. Resource Allocation

In terms of the top 10 emerging trends with the biggest impact on design, here is the list:

  1. AI and machine learning
  2. Augmented Reality
  3. Virtual Reality
  4. Behavior tracking and modelling
  5. 3D printing
  6. Distributed teams and virtual workplace
  7. Democratization of design
  8. Algorithmic design
  9. Crowdsourcing and open source
  10. Facial and voice recognition

For those who are interested in the newest Design in Tech Report, here is the summary of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Czq2j4p924s

She advised to start implementing Design Thinking with a small project with a limited budget and low risk. Deliver value from it as early as possible. Then promote it if it becomes a success. This gives more chances that it will persuade the decision makers to scale it.

She also recommended to try this canvas in practice: https://www.xplane.com/designops

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Arian Chernoff from Johnson & Johnson recommended answering what, when, where, how and why questions once solving the challenge. In terms of their diabetes app, the answers look as below:

We…

why

…make diabetes easier to manage…

when

…to improve patient adherence and outcomes..

what

…placing the patient at the center…

how

…on a connective cloud ecosystem…

where

…by personalizing experiences.

Dymitr Romanowski explained the role of empathy in health care and shared the results of the projects Human Behind Every Number:: https://humanbehindeverynumber.com/

This is how the project is explained on the website: “Human Behind Every Number is a non-governmental organization that provides research, insight and education on the first-hand experiences of patients involved in clinical trials. In today’s active research industry, our results deliver clear information to industry professionals that will help shape the development of clinical trials around the globe.”

This website gathered patients’ stories throughout their patient journeys which might be helpful for designers working in the Health Care sector.

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From the story of creating Handelek, a restaurant in Poland, I walked away with a feedback tool –  a physical one in the form of a board in the restaurant as well as a virtual one on Instagram. They called it  the card of transparency with Your opinion, Status and What we changed. It obviously helps to deliver real value to customers.

Here is the POLISHOPA summary by professional illustrator, Agata Jakuszko.

Polishopa summary

I would recommend this conference to any DT enthusiast. See you in 2020 in Bydgoszcz, Poland :).

Author: Cecylia Kundera

Health Design 2018

Dec17

Event: Health Design 2018, Experience Better Healthcare

Time: 29.11.2018, 9.30 – 18.00

Place: Aalto Learning Centre

IMG_6735

I need to start this post with a disclaimer: I happened to got a free ticket for this event, which I’m very happy of, since I don’t feel that the event was worth of the actual price of 150€. For a free event it was interesting, though, and provided useful information especially for those planning to enter the health tech field as a designer or an entrepreneur.

The event consisted of a panel discussion with healthcare professionals and several keynotes approaching the subject from different angles. I identified a couple of themes that were brought up by the speakers througout the presentations and will discuss each of the themes separately.

Clinical relevance

The key to success for any healthcare application that is quite unique to the field is clinical relevance. Products and services dealing with health need to provide 100% patient safety as the first priority. It is also good to remember that the primary users of many health tech solutions are actually doctors and nurses, not the patients. You need the doctors and nurses to trust the devices and applications they use as that provides trust to the patients as well.

In order to achieve the trust and relevance amongst medical experts a product/service needs to go through a number of regulatory tests and get medical approvals. This is not a straightforward process and needs strong support from influencial people from the very beginning.

Creating common language

In addition to the official approvals, you need to find a common language between the doctors and technology. You need to understand both what the doctors need and what the technology enables and combine those to provide added value.

IMG_6732

From random ideas to added value

In addition to creating a common language between the doctors and the technology, you also need to involve patients, their family and caretakers as well as other stakeholders. There are often strong opinions when one’s health or life is at stake, which is why designers need to carefully read between the lines to find the true needs.

Multi-disciplinary collaboration

In order to be able to create a common language between all stakeholders, you need to collaborate. Collaboration starts with finding the right collaborators: you need to have the right people in your team to do the right stuff. In the field of health tech you should include people with both clinical and technical perspectives as well as both pragmatic and visionary people.

It is not enough to have the right people in your own team but you also need to collaborate with the end users in an authentic environment. Testbeds in hospitals enable feedback and can falsify and stop dangerous ideas.

Health tech applications, such as the Oura ring, often aim for changing people’s behaviour. That’s not an easy task, especially if the actual change happens outside the product and the product only measures the change, and it requires experts on various fields, such as UX designers, behaviour change experts, storytellers and data scientists.

Active role of the patient

Every healthcare application aims for the best patient experience. This is achieved by bringing the patient in the centre of all activities. Healthcare is transforming from good-dominant to service-dominant logic, which requires co-creative approaches with the patients.

HUS Virtual Hospital aims for giving a more active role to the patient and putting more activities to the internet in order to save resources for quality care when it’s really needed.

Noona application for cancer care is designed for patients with patients, using user research, testing and user panels actively. Noona thinks that everybody in the team should interact with the patients, not only the designers.

IMG_6734

Noona brings cancer patients to the centre of their design.

In the end, all business goals, technological achievements and design efforts in the field of healthcare should aim for patient safety. This can only be achieved by true patient-centricity.

Other insights

I gathered some insights from the presentations that are relevant for health designers and entrepreneurs but for anyne else working in the field of design as well:

  1. Thing big, network and go global
  2. Be brave and believe in yourself
  3. Give people choices
  4. Provide a safe environment
  5. Ask for another opinion

More information and ideas:

https://www.healthdesign.fi/

https://experience.aalto.fi/

https://www.terveyskyla.fi/tietoa-terveyskyl%C3%A4st%C3%A4/virtuaalisairaala-2-0-hanke/the-virtual-hospital-2-0