Assignment on March 17 – My favourite nesta idea

THE OPEN BOOK OF SOCIAL INNOVATION BY NESTA.

Tip #139.

A working museum. A workplace should provide a clear and engaging insight into the work that goes on and culture that rests within the organization. Some ventures go further and make their workplace into a working gallery or museum. They demonstrate much of their work visually, through photos and graphs. Some arrange tours and generate income from them. For example, Vauban in Freiburg, Germany, and Bo01 in Malmo, Sweden, are examples of low-carbon communities which allow visitors to touch, use and see the results, as well as see the work of the employees and staff. It is always a useful exercise for a venture.

We have chances to see their work in the public gallery or museum, but what about their studio? or home office? Even better. I believe visiting people’s work space is a very intimate thing, its like looking at the very raw drawings and rough design. It must be amazing to know how the final product was develop from sketch. Conversely, if I know people are visiting where I work normally, I would have try even harder to express what I want to say through art and design. Let people feels like they are in a wonderland. Also, hopefully by looking the initial ideas of my work, I will gain more recognitions and inspiration feedback. After all, life is about learning from each other.

Filed under: Design thinking, Innovation

A bit less thinking and a bit more doing!

Reflections after New Year Break:

From the Welcome back Jan 15 post on mace blog, Corrine has written

It (creativity) was all about breaking away from default, observing and pulling two seemingly unconnected ideas together. That is a big part of creativity… culture will change the default from one person to another

I want to emphasis the point how culture will change our default image of an objects. Weighting from my childhood, my default image of ‘bread’ is Chinese hot dog bun.

Therefore I really understand how culture can influences us in different way. If we are working in a team for a creative project, this could be a very brilliant thing. We can have a diverge range of ideas in a very short time. However, if communication failed within the team, it can still be very difficult for a creative project to work.

The one good idea will not get accepted and develop since the person who present or receive the idea do not understand each other clearly. So with culture, it can be a good influence or bad influence too.

Also, from the design thinking checklist, I realised with my team Creativcontrol, I found my own innovation blocking behaviors and I hope that I can eliminate them in order to improve our overall performances as a team.

> not iterative (project dies because unwilling to build on weaknesses)

My of my weaknesses is I am very easy to give up on unrealistic idea, despite I have realised this problem and trying to improve. Ideas which involve with very high budget or very difficult manufacturing process, my passion will drop and step out from the team. This behavior is so weak that it reflects my pessimistic thinking and unwillingness.

Ways to improve is to be more risk taking!

Instead of banning an idea immediately, allow ideas to come in from different perspectives. Instead of banning some of the idea which seem unrealistic at a time, give room to develop and if logically I really disagree, back up by research and evidence, then explain to the team why the idea is not working. If there is no research to back up the fault of the idea, it means that I shoud give it a go!

>valuing personal intuition over experimentation

I have to admit before the push from MACE class, even coming out from an Art Uni. I do not like prototype and experimentation. Once again it because of my lack of confidence in some risky ideas and unwillingness. I only put effort into things that I can guarantee myself a success. IT IS SUCH A BAD HABIT.

Ways to improve this is I believe is encouragement. Lots and lots of encouragements and the influences from MACE has helped me a lot  and so it makes the title of this post one of the aims for this year

A bit less thinking and a bit more doing

Filed under: Design thinking

Pier’s Class I

First of all, I want to say this is an excellent class!! I will always remember what I have experienced today. We talked a lot about creative leadership and have some very inspiring activities together. There are  a few points I want to share here.

The raw materials of Creative Leadership
- ‘Constraints.’ i.e. Time constraints,  environment constraints and a open-mind to allow the birth of a good idea.
- ‘Principles.’ Creativity needs good principles but not limitations in terms of the working styles and format.

Three fears of a Creative Individuals
- fears of being wrong, being rude, seemingly mad.

Piers also explained what is an artist’s mind in his views, his belief is that ‘nothing is come from nothing’, everything must have a cause or a reason.  if you come across difficulties and got stuck with a creative process. It’s not too much to worry about, ‘metamorphosis  is unstoppable”, if you go nothing, it will still change!

This is so similar to my final year project for my undergraduate degree, I design a book and try to express a statement “allow unresolved“, it is an abstract psychological approach. It was about a year ago that I produced that, I still have a very high acceptance of this method of thinking, however I could have explained it further with the support of Pier’s idea. Also, where I was reading the articles written by Piers, the way how he express abstract idea taught me a lot and I could have express my idea in a better way. I am glad that I have a chance to have a class with him, it really do means a lot to me as we are similar kind of artists mentally!

Filed under: Design thinking, Leadership

Week 6 Class Reflection on Prototyping- 30 Oct

Corrine recommend some videos to watch in the class and using what we learn from the videos, we should be able think about how can they apply to our own business.

The first video we learned about is to share the ideas. Sharing is always a good thing. I have learned the benefits from sharing years ago since I was doing Graphic Design for my undergraduate. and its all about sharing ideas, talking to others and get feedback and inspiration. I think my team -creativcontrol will need more of that. Oleg and I has send out some questionnaires and got some feedback but I think more importantly is to really start a conversation and talk to more people.

The second video is about the student project from Standford. The video demonstrates the whole design thinking process, how they discuss an idea, then prototypes and more prototypes. And most importantly they managed to ask other students from the school to test it out for them and follow up by some useful reflections. So for our team, it is very important in the later stage we should all go to an airport with our prototypes and able to take pictures and survey the audiences.

There are more videos shown in the class but I think the most important thing that we ought to learn is there are many different ways to do Prototyping. By trying all of them, we will soon realise our problems behind and fail early! Role play, very quick dirty prototyping are all useful in a way. The reason is that some people think these are all wasting time but ‘Failing early’ is the fastest route to going to success!

Filed under: Class Reflection, Design thinking

Week 4 Class Reflections -Own systems triangle numbers

In order to have a success business, what do I need to know or have? (10 mins task)
This is what I have written down:
Luck, Ideas, Experience, Expertise, Time, Cost, Personal Management, A business plan, networking,
…
…
… and the list goes on.

We discussed about Activity Theory and looked at a systems analysis model. Here’s my individual results:

Provider: Wendy Ng.

User: (A specific description of your customer)

Constraints: 7

Community: 2

Roles: 11

Objects: 5

User needs: 0

Total: 25

Looking at my results, I quickly realised how I have neglect the ‘users’ in my business and they are almost the most important position of a business. Same as what I concluded from listening to other teams business idea. Me and my team are currently lacking concern on the users.

Very important note from MACE’s blog “By understanding all of the elements of the activity and how they fit together, it can be easier to visualise and understand where areas for improvement can be found, and track your thinking. It can also act as a way to find new innovations by trying it with extreme users, or changing a category in a new way.” I quickly understand how I have neglect the user in my business.

Couple other things to remind myself after discussion during the class:
1. When we look at potential market, we need to think about the constraints but not just from the market research! For example research shows that there are 2000 people in UK who love hot dogs and willing to have one per day. Howver, the stalls that you owe can only provide 200 hot dogs a day. Therefore we need to take that to consideration when we looking at market research and the real situation.

2. Toilet papers in UK vs China
If you are a company producing tissue pack in China and thinking about investing the market in UK. You should realise a shift of role from the community network to users themselves – the fact that no one carry pack of tissues in UK whereas in China it’s almost a personal responsibility to provide yourself tissues paper when using toilets.

Filed under: Class Reflection, Design thinking

Week 4 Class Reflection on Systems Analysis

Our class started off by watching an video advertisement from company Volkswagen. During the video we have not seen any image of a car produced by the brand, instead we got introduced to the idea called  ‘fun theory’. When a company is so well developed and got a long history of itself, advertisements sometimes need not to show the products but more likely to state a lifestyle that the brand is subjecting with the little support of the logo.

Another company that I can think of has recently use the same way to advertise themselves and have successful result is Blackberry.

Follow by the video, different business teams were asked to present to the class their initial business idea and different roles of their members. Oleg is our team leader, he introduced our company  ‘creativcontrol’ by presenting our business statement and business objectives. You can read about our company and our roles on our blog.

Other companies in the class also have some fantastic ideas, I am very interested at Team 2 and looking forward to their products. One point that I picked out by listening to other companies was we are lacking of public opinion. I think our team should set out some questionnaires about our products.

Filed under: Class Reflection, Design thinking, Week 4