~Devi da Lil' DeviL~: Genovasi - The Design Thinking

Monday, June 23, 2014

Genovasi - The Design Thinking

I bet my medulla oblongata must have been a little rusty coz it took me a while before I could really put it all together during a session at Genovasi last Saturday. Thanks to Rosalyn for inviting me to this fun yet educational session where I get to join with few other bloggers to experience what is like to understand and experience the whole process on creating something that is beneficial to the right market target.

check them out!

Genovasi is the only Design Thinking school in Malaysia and the leading regional partner for the Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI) School of Design Thinking at Potsam University, Germany. It is also a platform to promote an innovation culture through its education and training programmes. Launched with their motto of “ideate, create, innovate”, the design thinking process made me understand the basic fundamentals before I could create a simple prototype using materials surround us.

So the session starts, we were given a brief tour of their office/school which was way too cool and a little history of how Genovasi was established. Azman was our facilitator that day and a lot of input and informative points were given as he explained to us the Design thinking methodology.

Azman explaining the history of Genovasi

Their cool office doesn’t look like an normal office infact it was like a mini playground with futsal area, vintage coffee table design, colourful bean bags lying on the floor and huge wall doodled by fellow students and speakers including Dato Jimmy Choo.

traffic jams? come let's brainstorm to reduce it

futsal area

studios!

brainstorming time

the genovasi way

After a short briefing on the Design thinking methodology, we were then given a task on a mini project to create a prototype design for a severe and painful arthritis patient. The whole process revolve around there 5 elements as below :

1.Empathise

2.Define

3.Ideate

4.Prototype

5.Test

our mini design project

this is what i wrote with my whole left fingers were taped with masking tape..not bad eh?

After getting the 'feel' of being a severe arthritis patient, we move on to brainstorm with our team on some fact findings to dig deeper on how to tackle the issue. We shared some input and I was amazed on how we could actually compile unique findings for a same situation. Well its true that we will only understand when we are facing the problem ourselves or when we are in their shoes. Its a hard pillow to swallow i must add. Nevertheless the brainstorming session was quite interesting as we started to work in pairs. We managed to identify 10 ideas within the given time. Then we were asked to choose only 1 idea out of the 10 and start designing by sketching it out. Last but not least, we need to turn the ideas into a prototype! Okay this is the tricky part as all the talking and drawing can be quite easy, but when we need to make it happen, well that was the real challenge. haha. But not to worry, as all the friendly the facilitators were quick to assist us when we are clueless with our tools.

some of the items used for designing the prototype.

busy designing the prototype

most of the items are from recycled

this was my prototype..:P

Immediately after the given time, we were asked to placed all our design on the table to further discuss on the mechanics of our prototype. There were so many unique design and each member need to explain on the functionality.

look at that..few design display

Now let's discuss how it will work

Some concepts are simple while some are pretty impressively done. The session was a great mind workout for me as I get to experience and understand in depth before embarking the real projects. So it basically teaches us to save time and building something that is more beneficial and give us the most impact instead of building something based on theory only. A lot of research work can be narrowed down for the final project. Thank you for the interactive session! I definitely will practice what I've learned for my work, contest or even normal routine events.

So if you guyz want to know more about their session, please head on to their website, or follow them at FACEBOOK for more details. Till then, here are some photos I've managed to snap before we part our ways.