Shaping the future
What could it mean, personally or for our business, if we fully realized the magnitude of the changes that are in our future are as great as those in our past? What if we used that knowledge to shape the future? This post introduces the concepts of end of history illusion and Futures Thinking and how they impact these questions.
The Culture Map
Empathy and Culture
Empathy is a core competency for designers. We talk about and practice putting ourselves in another person’s shoes. In truth, it is an illusive competency most of us will live a lifetime striving to contain. This is especially true when it comes to culture. It is nearly impossible to quantify, the number of societies, cultures and sub-cultures that exist in the world, let alone to step into the shoes of each and every person.
To really begin to dig (or swim) deeper, we can supplement our senses with research as well as good ol’fashioned human experience.
Design Weekend
This month I took part in a Design Weekend hosted by Futurice and the local University of technology. The approached resembled the Global Service Jam, only the challenge we were working to solve was real. Our task was to design a solution that would allow social workers from Save the Children, Finland to collect feedback from children in a way that minimized adult interference.
I write about my takeaways from the UX portion of the event on the SID Laurea blog.
Playing with Legos®
After my first Service and Innovation Design masters seminar at Laurea University I was proud to report to my five-year-old niece that I played with Legos at school this week. Yeah, my school is pretty cool.
This left me to ask "What does it mean that a five-year-old identifies with my profession better than some adults?" At this question, I searched for a way to explain how designers balance the benefits of play and the design attitude within the context of more traditional business attitudes. Read about my journey on the SID Laurea blog.