Tag Archive | multidisciplinary teamwork

What makes design thinking so appealing?

Sep25
by Piia Hanhirova

Inspiration, encouragement and empowerment. In my opinion, those are the most important values and aspects, which design thinking offers, and the reason why it appeals to so many people regardless the field they work in or are busy with. Design thinking underlines the deep understanding of people – their needs, wishes and motivation – and gives voice to users and customers.

This year’s Service Innovation and Design (SID) studies started with Katja Tschimmel from Mindshake. She guided us through the past and the present of design thinking as well as introduced us the various design tools based on the Evolution 6² model.

Evolution 6² model

But most importantly, she simply made us do it, that is, work in multidisciplinary teams and use the design tools in practice. So, our team, coming from different backgrounds with multifaceted experience, moved from divergent to convergent along the way of design thinking process, and worked on tools such as the opportunity mind map, idea hitlist, vision statement, user groups, intent statement, prototype, visual business model etc.

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Design for Life

Oct12

12 hours of innovative groupwork, inspirational talks, delicious brainfood and of course: competition. What more could a future service designer ask for on an average tuesday?

USCO (Using Digital Co-Creation for Business Development) is a project managed by Laurea University of Applied Sciences and the University of Tampere. The project involves eight organizations that represent both private and public services.

10.10. 2017 a hackathon of services was arranged at Laurea Leppävaara. The hackathon was based on the human-centered perspectives of design. The aim of the hackathon was to rearrange the services as we know them and to create new human-centered services for the 100 year old Finland. 18 multidisciplinary teams participated in the event and by the end of the day 18 brilliant ideas packed in one minute videos were presented to other teams and the jury consisting of experts. The winners were announced and rewarded in a gala filled with bubbles and balloons.

Our host at the USCO gala

Matti

Our team had the privilege to create a service for a fictional persona Matti, a 60 year old chairman of his condominium. The premise of the design process was to create a human-centered service, a design for life.  As a result of an iterative and sometimes frustrating process we came up with a brilliant idea that would fulfill Matti’s needs as an enthusiastic chairman devoted to the community: a digital service that connects Matti to the other residents and the other condominiums in the area. Our service Fiksu Naapuri (Smart Neighbour) enables all the residents and condominiums to participate and communicate on different levels.

Matti in the making

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Behind the scenes – Tools in innovation designers’ sandbox Part 1/5

Nov15
Imagine what you can do with your ideas if you could do this out of sand. Source: http://www.wjunction.com/5-general-discussion/174436-amazing-sand-art.html

Imagine what you can do with your ideas if you could do this out of sand. Source: http://www.wjunction.com/5-general-discussion/174436-amazing-sand-art.html

In my last blog post I talked about key principles behind successful innovations. This time I want to share some of the tools our innovation team uses in our daily work here at UNICEF Headquarters in New York to help envision and test successful innovations. Because the list is long, I will keep posting during the upcoming weeks, so please stay tuned. This first post concentrates on effective teamwork, which is perhaps the most important tool of all.

I was inspired to write about this topic when I bought a book for my thesis work a month ago. The book is called “This Is Service Design Thinking. Basics – Tools – Cases” and it is like a bible for my MBA study program of Service Innovation and Design. Design Thinking is all about user-centered design, which is one of the key principles behind our work when innovating solutions that benefit children in real contexts. Since most of our work with country offices is done remotely, we also use more traditional tools such as sticky notes, white boarding, data visualization, and team meetings that at a first glance may seem self-explanatory but I feel deserve to be recognized as well. Let me introduce you to some of the tools that I have encountered during my time here.

Brown Bag Lunch – Rae (in the middle) teaches basics of coding to the team. Photo credit: Christopher Fabian, New York

Brown Bag Lunch – Rae (in the middle) teaches basics of coding to the team. Photo credit: Christopher Fabian, New York

Multidisciplinary teamwork is a tool in itself

Being part of the innovation unit for three months now, I have had the chance to get to know many projects and see different ways of working within those projects. Our multidisciplinary team uses various traditional and field-specific tools in their work. These tools offer the possibility of not only working more effectively but also approaching issues from new angles and enhancing the design process.

As a multidisciplinary team, we each bring different skills and experiences to the table. Effective collaboration comes from understanding the strengths of each team member, and engaging their guidance and assistance on relevant projects. Learning from, helping, and complementing each other is the beauty of multidisciplinary teamwork.

Effective communication makes a big difference for a team

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